Cuba's Fidel Castro warned of food crisis a year ago

HAVANA (Reuters) - As global fears about food securitymount with riots in Africa and panic buying elsewhere, oneworld figure can sit back and say he warned a year ago of acoming food crisis -- Fidel Castro.

Cuba's ailing revolutionary has not appeared in publicsince he underwent intestinal surgery in July 2006 from whichhe has never fully recovered.

He finally retired as president in February but from hissickbed he has been writing columns on world affairs sinceMarch 2007, when he launched an attack on the biofuels policyof his ideological enemy, the United States, saying it waspushing up food prices and threatening global famine.

"More than three billion people in the world are beingcondemned to a premature death from hunger and thirst," Castrowrote in his first column.

"It is not an exaggeration; this is rather a conservativefigure," he wrote, criticizing plans to turn food crops intofuel as a "sinister idea" hatched by the Bush administrationand the U.S. auto industry.

In recent weeks, riots have broken out in more than a dozencountries, from Indonesia to Egypt and Cameroon, some countriesare restricting food exports, and global panic buying of riceforced even some U.S. retail chains to limit purchases.

Violent protests ignited by rising food prices toppledHaiti's government earlier this month.

Increased demand from rapidly developing nations led byChina, the use of crops for biofuels, low global stocks, exportcurbs and market speculation are blamed for pushing worldprices of wheat, corn and rice to record highs.

As U.S. rice futures marched to new record highs, theU.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, last weekexhorted farmers and governments to ensure this year's crop isa success.

The FAO has said 37 countries face food crises.

"This steeply rising price of food has developed into areal global crisis," United Nations Secretary-General BanKi-moon said last week.

The price of basic foods from corn and wheat to soy,powdered milk and rice are in some cases more than double whatthey were a year ago, when Castro first warned of trouble.

His closest foreign ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez,says Castro was way ahead in predicting the crisis and that therest of the world is only now realizing that governments haveto get involved to regulate the market.

World Food Program executive director Josette Sheeranearlier this month said the first global food crisis sinceWorld War II was comparable with "a silent tsunami".

ENERGY REVOLUTION

Instead of biofuels based on food crops, Castro hasproposed that the world follow an "energy revolution" helaunched in Cuba in 2005 when oil prices were still relativelylow.

To crack Cuba's energy crisis, Castro ordered thereplacement of all the country's incandescent light bulbs withenergy-saving florescent bulbs.

Other developing countries, such as Argentina, havefollowed Cuba's example in switching to florescent bulbs.

Castro, now 81, also moved to revamp Cuba's wasteful energygrid and replace inefficient electrical appliances such asrefrigerators and cookers with energy-saving equipment made inChina.

Castro, one of the world's best known critics ofconsumerism, has advised countries such as China, India andBrazil to avoid disaster by not copying what he sees aswasteful U.S. patterns of consumption.

"I think that reducing and recycling all fuel andelectricity operated engines is an urgent and elementalnecessity of all humanity," he wrote in his first column.

Critics say Castro's energy revolution was little more thana scramble to overcome a crisis caused by Cuba's obsolete powergeneration system, and Cuba has moved to relax some of Castro'santi-consumerism policies since he retired.

He was succeeded by his younger brother Raul Castro, whohas lifted bans on Cubans buying computers, DVD players andother electronic goods, and is also allowing them to stay athotels previously reserved for foreign tourists.

(For more stories on the global food price rises, click on:http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcoverage/agflation)

(Editing by Anthony Boadle and Kieran Murray)