Filling up at the high table

Delegates eat well at the G8 summit, even as a world food crisis looms.

This year’s G8 summit has just concluded in the town of L’Aquila in central Italy. The town was hit by a killer earthquake in April. Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi’s government shifted the summit there to highlight the region’s ongoing recovery. It was a sober step down from the original venue: La Maddalena, a scenic island off the coast of Sardinia.

The headline initiative this time was food security. Plans have been laid to raise funds to support poor farmers in the developing world, and people without proper access to food. But, as observers note at every G8 summit, a limited generosity towards the poor (Italy has fulfilled only 3 per cent of its own aid pledges of four years ago, according to reports) is paired with lavish eating by summit participants.

One Guardian journalist, after the 2007 summit in Heiligendamm, in the poorest region of Germany, described the contents of his post-summit “goody bag”: biscuits, sweets, moisturiser, frisbee, beach towel and milkshake recipe book. While the meet was on, participants enjoyed free drinks and big buffets. At a summit in France, Michelin-starred chefs fed the visitors. At Gleneagles, journalists walked away with free Scotch bottles. Japan laid on a 25-course banquet last year.

Despite the effort at austerity and an emphasis on “working” lunches and dinners, on the last evening billionaire PM Berlusconi played the generous host. His personal chef Michele Persechini fed the delegates a six-course meal, each course paired with a high-quality wine.

It started with an insalata caprese, a tomato-mozzarella salad, and went on to a pasta of macaroni with meat sauce; roasted lamb with local truffles and vegetables; wound down with cheeses; and ended with a sweet pizza dessert. The wine list featured Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, the world-famous local, and five others including a Cerasuolo Hedos Cantina Tollo 2008, the favourite wine of President Obama.

Last month the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that 1.02 billion people go hungry every day — not because food is lacking, but because the economic crisis has made it harder for many to buy it. Admittedly, the best negotiation at international meets happens over food or drinks rather than in the sessions, but the plenty at the table casts into stark contrast the relative parsimony of the funds pledged to protect the world’s poor and hungry.