Food crisis: an overview

The Facts:

The current food crisis has been caused by a combination of factors including:

1. rising oil prices
2. depreciation of the US dollar
3. a push towards biofuel production
4. the neglect of the small-holder food producers over years in favor of transnational food producers and their dumping practices
5. changing and growing food demand from emerging economies
6. the failure to develop a just global trade system/ failure of Doha trade round
7. failure of rich countries to fulfill their 0.7% commitment of GNI in aid which would have lifted more people out of poverty and left them less vulnerable to fluctuating food prices
8. failure of many governments to legalize land and succession rights for women.
9. insufficient literacy, agricultural and micro-finance input to lift (women’s) subsistence farming and local trade to a sustainable level.
10. failure of governments in some poor countries to monitor prices in a transparent way and support food production and storage before the crisis reached this level
11. speculative investment which has exacerbated the crisis.

 
However, there is sufficient food in the world to feed everyone
 

The effect on people:

• Millions of already poor people cannot afford basic foods like rice, maize and corn and are going hungry.
• Families, led by women in general, which already spent three quarters of their income on food have now the stark choice of eating less food or switching to less nutritious cheaper food.
• As hunger rises so too does civil unrest - in many countries protests have already been quashed and dozens of people have lost their lives in clashes with police. Hunger riots have taken place in at least 40 countries
• Efforts to meet the MDGs are being seriously undermined as maternal health and child mortality rates increase due to lack of food, families fail to send their children to school due to hunger, government investment in essential services is redirected to emergency areas and so on..
• Incomes are decreasing and many workers are losing their jobs as the chain effect of the food crisis hits employers.
• Movement of displaced people in search of food is set to intensify and in some countries preparations are even being made for evacuations

Food crisis: the people
Watch videos and read stories of people affected by the food crisis.

The Impact:

• Protests from thousands of hungry Somalis on their capital’s streets last week were met with gunfire and at least five people were killed.
• Thousands of people are lining up for free food handouts in Nigeria where bakeries have gone on strike to protest at rising flour costs.  For a country rich in commodities, poor city-dwellers often don’t eat more than a small loaf during the day.
• In Punjab, a region once known as India’s breadbasket, thousands of (women) farmers have committed suicide in the last decade because of a crisis blamed on neglect of the agricultural sector, leaving behind children widows and families to fend for themselves.
• More then 200.000 cotton farmers (majority women ) have committed suicide (often by swallowing pesticides) in the last ten years in India because they were unable to compete with prices of heavily subsidized, dumped American cotton. They could therefore not pay back their micro-credit nor feed their families
• In Dhaka, Bangladesh a group of widowed women who have been part of their local community’s social justice campaign for years, are now queuing up with small bowls to receive a meagre rice handout from the military and don’t know how long this will last.
• In Latin America, GCAP campaigners are calling on their leaders meeting at a EU LAC Summit in Lima to urgently address the growing crisis of rising hunger levels in several countries across the region.
• In Mexico and Haiti the local maize and rice farmers (of a wide variety of strands) have increasingly given up in the last decade because of cheap staple, subsidized, USA imports. These prices are now above local purchasing power, whilst affordable local produce has dwindled.

The crisis in numbers

• 800 million people (over 70% women) already affected by chronic hunger are suffering severe hardship

• The price of vegetable oils is up 97 percent in the first three months of 20082
• The price of wheat is up 87 percent
• Dairy products are up 58 percent
• Rice is up 46 percent
• There is a recognized food crisis in at least 37 countries
• Of the 2.13bn tonnes of food produced only 1.01bn is grown for feeding people
• Developing countries could face an increase of 33% in aggregate food import bills this year if trends persist – this is too much too quick
• The Mitchell report to the World Bank says up to 65 percent of the rise in prices is related to biofuels factors

Sources:
World Food Programe  - http://www.wfp.org/aboutwfp/introduction/hunger_who.asp?section=1&sub_section=1
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) - Crop Prospects and Food Situation - No. 2, April 2008  - http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ai465e/ai465e00.htm
Mitchell Report to World Bank

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