Entries For: June 2008

At the Food Aid Organisation in Rome forty World leaders arrive at the invitation of the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon. Speech after speech they speak about the causes of this crisis. Insufficient investment in agriculture, already for years. High oil prices. Unfair trade allowing rich countries to dump subsidized high-oil-intensive agricultural products in developing countries.

Western tariff walls, monopolistic practice from agrarian multinationals, financial speculation, more meat-eating middle classes in China and India.  And the farming for biofuel instead of food. They agree about everything except that: president Lula from Brazil claims that not a millimeter of rainforest is lost, nor a single bite of food less available because of bio-fuel production. According to him it provides work, makes profit and benefits the environment. He compares it with ‘good cholesterol’ instead of the ‘bad cholesterol’ of the protectionism of the west.

Emotions and figures fly across the table, and each of the speakers could be employed by Oxfam. Why then don’t we find the 15 billion dollars needed to send each child and person to bed with a full stomach – and the second 15 billion needed to invest in sustainable local agriculture? “Yes indeed”, I foam in my small NGO corner of the enormous conference hall (where no more then 80 people were allowed in with great difficulty), “Yes, indeed leaders, you are right, so why don’t you do something about this?” In the last six months America has passed a farm bill of nearly ten times the 30 billion needed – to subsidise their own megafarmers. Forty times this amount is spent on arms yearly. Europe arranges EPA's (European Partnership agreements) with African countries to open their boarders for our trade, or they’ll get less aid. Europe has spent 75 billion less in aid this year than promised. And is going to spend less on the millennium goals in the coming years, more on transport: for European contractors? And the worst fact: since December 2007 the European and American Reserve Banks have magically found 1000 billion dollars to ‘stabilise the financial world’. And then we can’t find one-thirtieth of that for the food crisis?

‘Boys’, I think angrily as I sit there, ‘Stop talking and solve it!’, because they are nearly all gentlemen speaking here whilst food production in the world is mainly in the hands of women. Mostly bare hands: only 5% of the measly 3.4 billion invested in agriculture in developing countries reaches women. When they can’t repay their micro-credit loans or can’t bear to hear the cries of their starving children any longer, they commit suicide. Often by taking pesticides. In the last five years more than 200.000 of these suicides were recorded in India. Because of the cheap cotton dumping.

I speak very politely about the mobilization in many countries to Mr. Ban when we get a quarter of an hour of his time. We hand over 340.000 support emails that Avaaz and GCAP (Global Call for Action against Poverty) received in the last weeks: symbolically placed in a grain bag.  We speak of the 43 million people who stood up against poverty last October, and Ban Ki-Moon immediately puts on the white band I give him. He says explicitly that he agrees with me strengthening the role of women is part of the solution of the world food crisis.

So shall we finally really start supporting women? With money, not just words?

Visit: Take action: Stop the food crisis!

The crisis is already affecting millions, women in particular that cannot afford basic food like rice, maize and corn and are going hungry. Women cannot feed their families- they already spent three quarters of their income on food and have now the stark choice of eating less food or switching to less nutritious, cheaper food. As hunger rises so 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. Farmers are committing suicide. 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 and the increased need for child labour and government investment in essential services is redirected to emergency areas.

The crisis is a build up of several factors that came in to play to create the current situation. Some include; crop yield is not commensurate with population growth; rate of consumption has gone up particularly in terms of animal products like poultry in many rich countries. Decades of neglect in supporting sustainable local agriculture; agricultural subsidies and other distorting trade barriers in developed countries;  the diversion of maize yields toward bio fuels; the high cost of petrol, fertilizers and seeds; climate change, desertification and decreasing water resources; a weak US dollar; commodities futures speculation, etc.”

 There is a high range of variability in food consumption e.g. in countries like the US and Russia one tonne will support one individual, in poor countries, one tonne supports nearly six individuals. The average in the world is three persons per tonne. At present more than 65 countries are either producing or importing less than this food average.

The major trigger was the increase in energy price that has a downstream impact on all inputs. Agriculture in many countries is energy intensive. As a result of increases in) energy prices, industrialised countries diverted some of the grains for bio-fuels. United States in particular is diverting 30% of corn, maize production for ethanol. Above all, global warming and uncertain meteorological factors also affected the situation.

The high level conference by Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bio-energy in Rome may address this issue. Among many other state delegations from member countries the meeting will be attended by the UN Secretary General, several Heads of State as well as World Bank and IMF representatives, where they will discuss ways to address the current global food crisis. This meeting can be an opportunity to address the structural problems contributing to the crisis such as under-investment in agriculture, unfair trade rules, lack of progress on the MDGs, lack of delivery on aid commitments and gender injustice. Further to minor initiatives nothing much is done or promised by the developed countries to address the problem. UN call to for immediate support to countries facing sever crisis to buy and produce their own food and prevent a starvation has not received the response the crisis requires UN also alerted that food prices are not going to go down in the next 10 years, ringing alarm bell to the world leaders. Some civil society groups like Global Call to Action against Poverty is organising people’s response on the food crisis and brining people’s voices, testimonies to these global leaders and forums. But we need more than just meetings and discussions. Concrete steps need to be taken immediately to avoid any mass scale hunger or starvation. At global level clear political decisions should be taken to stop using food products for bio-fuels, provide immediate support to countries facing crisis to buy food and control oil prices.

At national level all these governments must take immediate measures to legalise land and succession rights for women, provide agricultural and micro-finance input to lift (mainly women’s) subsistence farming, monitor food prices in a transparent way and support food production and storage before the crisis reaches a higher level. Take away the control of the private and market forces on fixing prices of food items. Land must be secured for food production as a percentage of the population and diverting corn for fuel production must be banned immediately.

It is also advised the crisis of the first decade of the 21st century should lead to a green revolution. This is a war against hunger where every state, has own degree of  responsibility. We can't play politics with hunger; all governments, international institutions and political forces should work together. We need a global approach to agriculture and food security. If we miss this opportunity, we will have a very serious situation coming up very soon. Famine may not come but we will have famine of work, famine of income, breakdown of law and order and greater social unrest.