The global food crisis will be at the top of the agenda when leaders of the world’s eight richest industrial nations meet in Hokkaido Toyako, Japan for their annual summit next month. Despite a recent drop in rice prices, at least in part due to CGD’s push for Japan to release its surplus rice back onto the world markets, millions of people in Africa and elsewhere continue to face hunger and starvation because food prices still remain too high. While the U.S. gave Japan the green light to export the rice in mid-May, Japan has yet to release any of the surplus rice. CGD senior fellow Vijaya Ramachandran, visiting fellow Tom Slayton, and non-resident fellow Peter Timmer urge the Japanese government to take the lead at the G8 Summit by releasing its 1.5 million metric tons of unwanted rice to the World Food Programme or to international markets and in doing so, set an example for other governments to help swiftly mitigate the immediate impacts of the food crisis.