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Mobilizations across the globe press for action to combat food crisis

Asians urge interventions that benefit the rural poor

Actions to combat the global food crisis must benefit Asia’s rural poor otherwise the crisis will not be tackled at all and will only worsen into a global disaster of famine and unrest. This is the statement of the anti-poverty coalition Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) as it led coordinated mobilizations across Asia to press for international action to fight the food crisis. 


GCAP-Asia called for the initiation of emergency employment programs in Asia’s rural areas where poverty rates are very high, saying that while projects aimed at improving long-term food security are vital, a main concern also is enabling poor people to afford the rising prices of food to halt the plunge of more people into hunger. 


“We are calling for urgent actions that will benefit Asia’s rural poor.  They are many and they are the most affected by this crisis.  We are also calling for emergency employment programs that will create jobs for the rural poor and enable them to have enough money to buy food,” said GCAP-Asia in a statement.


“Projections hold that sharp price increases will continue for the next few years. We are calling for urgent responses such as the provision of immediate job opportunities to protect the poor from being adversely affected by high food prices. We believe labor-intensive interventions aimed at improving the income of the rural poor will bail out millions of people from the risk of hunger.”


GCAP Indonesia coordinator Nur Amalia said they are concerned that if interventions do not reach the most affected people immediately, millions of poor will be pushed into the urgent hunger category in no time, exacerbating malnutrition, triggering unrest and ultimately undermining the gains in poverty reduction in Asia.       


“In Asia, the majority of the poor are in rural areas. These are the poor households already suffering from the effects of drought and flooding that have been devastating many parts of Asia in recent years. Many of these people are landless or unemployed or earning poverty wages. If their incomes are not improved while the sharp rise in food prices continues, the ranks of the extremely poor will swell and reverse the impacts of poverty eradication efforts in the region,” said Amalia.



According to the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), skyrocketing global prices for grain crops had pushed 100 million people worldwide into hunger, exacerbating the hunger problem, which has been taking 25,000 lives daily.


“World food prices increased by 40% last year, but in South Asia it was much higher. The price of essential food such as rice, wheat, bread, and milk increased two or three times and the impact is greatest on the poor who spend about 80% of their income on food.  To put this into context, 1 in 6 people in India are living in hunger every day,” said Anil K. Singh of the GCAP coalition in India.


Singh said the situation in Afghanistan is even more desperate. Afghans import the majority of its wheat requirements from neighboring Pakistan. However, Pakistan, like India, has restricted food exports to ease the strain on domestic markets. This has caused the price of local Afghan wheat to spiral out of control. The price of wheat is now thrice what it was at the beginning of the year. “Prices can go even higher when you factor in transportation costs to the remote regions of Afghanistan,” he said.

The poor’s income now worth less than nothing

“ I was watching television and saw the news about a mother who killed her children then killed herself because she could not afford food for her family. This is really disturbing and I can’t comprehend why this kind of tragedy could happen to us,” said Ijah, a 40-year old mother of two from Central Java, Indonesia.   


Ijah works as a laundrywoman while her husband works as a security guard. She said they struggle with their small income to feed the family and send the children to school. Now that food prices have gone up, their income is almost worth nothing.


“ In the beginning of 2008 the price of rice was 4,000 Rupiah per kilo.  Now, it’s already more than 4,500 per kilo. But that is only how much we have to spend for rice everyday. But I have to buy other things, too, such as vegetables, fish and eggs to feed my family. We need more money than what we earn per day just for food. We do not know anymore how to cope with the situation. I took on a second job so now I don’t have time for sleep anymore, but that’s what I have to do otherwise my family will go hungry,” Ijah said.


Dory Sacaguing, a 20-year old mother of one from Quezon City Philippines, said her family is eating less these days. She is unemployed. So is her husband. They live with her parents and her siblings who also have their own families. Her mother is the only one earning to support the whole family of nine.


“We have to queue to get the government-subsidized rice that is cheaper. It is worth 18.25 pesos only. A kilo of rice is not enough for all of us in a day. But that is all we can afford, plus some fish to go with the rice. We cannot afford to buy vegetables anymore because the price of vegetables has gone up. The price of everything has gone up,” she said.

Widening inequality despite rapid economic growth

Poverty remains a massive problem in Asia. More than two-thirds of the world’s poor people -- about one billion people living at the margins of survival on less than $ 1 a day -- live in Asia. The region is hard-pressed to meet the Millennium Development Goal of liberating at least half the proportion of poor people out of extreme poverty by 2015.


Poverty is basically a rural phenomenon and problem in Asia. In the major countries of this region, 80 to 90 percent of poor people live in rural areas. Many poor rural people in Asia share a number of economic, demographic and social characteristics, the most common of which is landlessness or limited access to arable land. Poor rural households also lack basic amenities such as a safe water supply, sanitation and electricity. Their access to credit, equipment and technology is also severely limited.


Despite the declining incidence of poverty in Asia over the last two decades resulting from the rapid economic growth which are among the fastest in the world, there are concerns about the rising or widening inequality, increasing poverty gap, and relatively slow pace of human development in the region, especially in basic education, primary health care and livelihood/income generation.



Notes:

June 1 Day of Action to Stop the Food Crisis:

GCAP actions taking place on and around June 1 are registered on www.whiteband.org and include mobilizations and marches in Italy, Indonesia, Philippines, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. In Rome, a handover of a global petition in conjunction with Avaaz (http://www.avaaz.org/en/world_food_crisis) containing over 200,000 signatures will take place at the opening of the FAO meeting on June 3. Press conferences, expert panel discussions will highlight the testimonies of people, especially women, most affected by the food crisis in over 20 other countries including Spain, Canada, USA, and the UK.


Contact:

Lani C. Villanueva
Communication Officer
GCAP Southeast, North and Central Asia Secretariat
Mobile no. +63 917 811 6871
Email: villanueva.lani@gmail.com

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