Today's global food crisis shows "we all blew it, including me when I was president", by treating food crops as commodities instead of as a vital right of the world's poor, Bill Clinton told a UN gathering today.

The former president, addressing a high-level event marking October 16's World Food Day, also saluted US President George W Bush - "one thing he got right" - for pushing for a change in US food-aid policy. He chided the bipartisan coalition in the US Congress that killed the idea.

Clinton took aim at decades of international policymaking by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others, encouraged by the US, that pressured Africans in particular into dropping government subsidies for fertiliser, improved seed and other farm inputs, in economic "structural adjustments" required to win northern aid. Africa's food self-sufficiency subsequently declined and food imports rose.