Groups Begin to Tackle Hunger Crisis
WASHINGTON - Far away and close to home the growing world food crisis is taking a toll. While Americans are increasingly shocked at their rising grocery bills, hunger threatens lives and stability in several developing countries.
In response, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and international agencies called last week for a sharp and immediate increase in giving for food, along with longer-term policy changes aimed at alleviating poverty, boosting agricultural production, and improving the way aid is given.
Oxfam America is urging Congress to release $200 million in emergency aid to developing nations. “Congress should act now to make our food aid more efficient by allowing food to be purchased closer to where it is needed, reaching many more people,” said Oxfam America president Raymond Offenheiser.
At present, U.S. food aid is limited to U.S.-made products shipped on U.S.-owned vessels, causing lengthy delays. “On the verge of a massive worldwide crisis it is unconscionable to allow special interests and bureaucracy to deprive poor and vulnerable people food,” Offenheiser charged.
Mercy Corps and other U.S.-based NGOs are seeking individual donations to fight hunger in countries where families are now reduced to eating just one meal a day.
A Washington, DC-based think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), offered an analysis of the factors fueling the crisis and three long-term policy prescriptions. IFPRI asserts that food prices are at their highest since the mid-1970s, mainly due to high energy prices and increased demand for biofuels.
“With oil prices at an all-time high…and the U.S. government subsidizing farmers to grow crops for energy, U.S. farmers have massively shifted their cultivation toward biofuel feedstocks, especially maize, often at the expense of soybean and wheat cultivation. About 30 percent of U.S. maize production will go into ethanol in 2008 rather than into world food and feed markets,” according to IFPRI director general Joachim von Braun.
In addition, the gradual rise in buying power of global consumers — who now want more milk, meat, and wheat-based products — has placed new pressures on existing food stocks. The coincidence of this trend with the reduction in cultivation of agricultural products has worsened the situation, as has quirky weather conditions, such as the severe, ongoing drought in Australia that is demolishing the country’s wheat production.
Climate issues are also a key factor in East and West Africa, where lack of rainfall this year threatens 18 million people with another year of poor crops and resultant humanitarian crisis, according to CARE and Oxfam. The groups advocate the urgent creation of social protection mechanisms to help the poorest families cope with rising food bills and avoid starvation.
IFPRI agrees with the need for such mechanisms and recommends, in the longer-term, more investment in agriculture and research on market access to help boost supply, along with trade policy reform, particularly changes in wealthy-country subsidies for biofuels and agricultural products.
According to Mercy Corps, spiraling food costs are producing near-famine conditions in Niger, Syria, Tajikstan, and Kazakhstan as the price of bread, powdered milk, corn, and wheat flour spike ever-upward. Food riots have already taken place in at least eight countries, including Mexico, Egypt, Morocco, and Haiti, where the prime minister was unseated earlier this month as a result of the protests.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization will host a high-level conference on World Food Security in Rome in early June.
© 2008 One World.net
With the exploding price our government has given us for food and fuel I think that we could sure use a man like Mr Aziz to bring sanity to America.
“Mr Aziz and seven other former members of Saddam Hussein’s regime are accused of involvement in the execution of about 40 (price gouging war profiteer) merchants after speedy trials.”
I shant eat the rice my taxes paid not to grow.
But a bounty of lush green leaves under yellow flowers
grow for the gleening `til the dogs or Roundup rains…
http://www.survival-international.org/campaigns/progresscankill/starvation
It only takes a minute. Please write to Brazilian Justice Minister Tarso Genro regarding the Mbya Guarani who are starving. Perhaps others know of links for international letter writing. It isn’t much but every little bit helps.
RE: While Americans are increasingly shocked at their rising grocery bills, hunger threatens lives and stability in several developing countries.
It is not as dire for us, but when the price of food goes up, parents buy their kids less books - kids who read less don’t do as well in school.
But when one rarely had enough to eat any way, the higher prices bring the danger of starvation - and meagre earnings bring in even less.
Seems that the cause is a scarcity of food crops since one can sell one’s crops more profitably for use as fuel.
You remember David Suzuki?
Food shocks, biofuels and green solutions
Food prices are soaring. Your bill at the grocery store in Canada has gone up and people in many other countries where up to half of incomes are spent on food are even worse off. The reasons are diverse, ranging from hikes in crude oil and labor costs, poor harvests and regulatory policies in various countries (North Queensland Register).
The biofuels industry is a factor, even if its significance is overstated. As corn gets diverted to fuel production, there is less for people to eat. Less supply along with increased demand means higher prices at the grocery store.
But aren’t biofuels the eco-friendly panacea that will reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and help lower the threat of global warming?
Actually, biofuels are not necessarily all that green.
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blog/archive/Archive_2008_04_01.asp
When are people going to start calling it for what it is. It’s an overpopulation crisis. Hunger, habitat loss, species extinction, greenhouse gases … those are all just symptoms of the underlying problem.
We need to feed th hungry in America. Charity begins at home There are too many hungry children, homeless families that we need to take care of right here in our America Let George Bush and Dick Cheney go hungry for a week then waterboard both of them until the fall election. There is nothing too bad for those two, the Supreme court and many of the congress.. Most of those need to go home, too and learn how we are living.
Less books and NO computers.
nemoplanetia
Yes its an overpopulation crises:
An overpopulation of gas guzzling vehicles using oil and biofuels. An overpopulation of to much meat eating, wasting precious resources to feed animals for the dinner table. An overpopulation of subsidized corporate farmers dumping cheap grain on small scale Third World farmers and pushing them off the land. There is actually surplus agricultural land in Africa that could be farmed, but for various reasons it is not. That is another debate.
If you are talking of reducing the birth rate, thats a good thing, less money needs to be spent on wars and more on education and increasing living standards. Research has shown that these two factors naturally result in lower birth rates.
More on education and improved living standards will mean negative population growth.
Hopefully the “overpopulation” school will become part of the solution rather than just bleat about that one aspect of the problem.
Andrew Taynton, although I firmly believe that overpopulation is one of the biggest factors causing hunger, I will agree with you that it is one of many factors. No doubt that biofuels have greatly exacerbated the problem recently.
More education, especially for women, will lower birth rates. Getting birth rates down should be one of a number of different actions taken to combat long-term hunger. So, I pretty much agree with your post.
What I don’t understand is why the population issue is ignored so much in all the news stories about the food shortages. The news reports mention a big array of causes of our shortages in 2008, but don’t mention population growth at all. It seems to be a totally taboo subject in the news media. Obviously, with all other factors being equal, the more mouths you have to feed, the less there is per person.
You can blame biofuels, climate change, free trade pacts, etc etc for increasing hunger in poor countries, and you will be correct- I’m sure these factors do contribute to food shortages. What I’m saying to most of you (not including Andrew and nemoplanetia), is don’t IGNORE population growth as a causitive factor- it is a big factor.
menos_poblacion
What is your solution to “overpopulation”? Keeping in mind that pre-1900 with a world population of less than 1.6 billion the world experienced its 3 worst famines in history in the 1700’s and 1800’s.
An immediate solution to the food crises would be to stop using food for biofuels and eating less meat. Another urgent measure is stopping agricultural sudsidies and stimulating sustainable agriculture and economies. Better living standards will help reduce birth rates.
How else are you going to reduce the birth rate (create negative population growth) without improving education and living standards, unless you euthinase people or put in draconian one child per family policies?
You are not going to convince the countries with the fastest population growths to implement one family policies unless they are run by extremely powerful dictators, who probably don’t care about the food crisis or population growth anyway.
I really do look forward to your solution.
menos_poblacion
Keep in mind the “Richest 2% Own Half World Wealth; Bottom 50% Own 1% - UN Report”
So if you immediately halved the worlds population, miraculously half the rick folk dissappeared and half the poor folk dissappeared, you would still have a food crises, because the poor half could still not afford the available food, which is the situation today. There would be exactly the same percentage of starving people in the world with half the population.
This tells me the food crises is far more urgent than overpopulation, not that we should not work on educating and uplifting people so they breed less and negative population growth kicks in.
Cities suffer from population migration from areas taken over by agribusiness monoculture. The gargantuan model of capital/profit/manifest destiny/homogenization/hydroelectric damnations has begun to ‘hit the wall’.
Like waves lapping the shoreline, the shockwaves reverberate throughout. By the same token we discount the knowledge of peoples who live subsistance stewardship. The simplicity of living living simply is a wisdom that as yet has no recorded ‘economic value’.
No one speaks of the millions of people who have this knowledge. We are conditioned to regard them as a ‘problem’ in need of ‘aid’. The aid they need is recognition that given back their natural environment, they provide an invaluable missing link.
There is an unrecognized paradigm shift here. The problem is the dominant paradigm of homogenized perspecivism. We have no ears to hear the slow, cyclical, biome specific methodologies. Technological tools need to stand back, work toward getting these people back on the land, listen and respond with what is identified by them. Impossible? Nothing is impossible.
Think about it. Capital accumulation is dependent on a limited perception of sweeping together ‘cost effective’ elements. These include resources on a massive scale, cheapening ‘labor’ that ignores integration of natural elements not applying to business plans. Within that sweep are the relational necessities of soil/water/seasonal/flora fauna/social - life in other words.
We need an article on Earth Jurisprudence.
Well said old goat.
“So if you immediately halved the worlds population, miraculously half the rick folk dissappeared and half the poor folk dissappeared, you would still have a food crises, because the poor half could still not afford the available food, which is the situation today. There would be exactly the same percentage of starving people in the world with half the population.”
Ummm…Andrew, as I stated, nobody is advocating immediately halving the world’s population. BUT, let’s say hypothetically, people starting having smaller families 2-3 decades ago, and world population in 2008 ended up being what you describe above. Would some poor people still be starving? Yes. Would food prices be as high as today? Almost certainly not. Because, the amount of farmland would have to be cut in half also, making the supply and demand ratio exactly the same. The only way your statement above would be true, is if you also abandoned half the farmland, which would never happen.
I will state that if we had had a lot less population growth the past 30 years, and cities and their housing weren’t expanding outward much, we would actually have MORE farmland available, and there would be plenty of food for all. Whether it would be distributed to all who needed it worldwide is another question; this would depend on whether rich countries were generous in food aid. BUT, the price of grain would be cheap, and organizations like the WFP wouldn’t have to cut food rations sharply, while spending the same amount of money.
Right now, the situation is grain stockpiles everywhere are dwindling, and price goes up as supply diminishes. The number of hungry people is sharply increasing everywhere. I will state that if we had less growth in human population the last few decades, and therefore MORE land being farmed, there would be less mouths to feed, much larger grain stockpiles, and low grain prices.
“What is your solution to “overpopulation”? Keeping in mind that pre-1900 with a world population of less than 1.6 billion the world experienced its 3 worst famines in history in the 1700’s and 1800’s.”
Andrew, first let me state that there’s nothing that can be done about CURRENT overpopulation of the world. We have about 6.6 billion people on the planet now, like it or not. The fact we have so many people is largely due to not enough efforts done to reduce population growth 10-30 years ago. Looking to the future, long-term solutions to this food-shortage problem, we can take action now to sharply reduce the amount of additional population growth that will occur in the FUTURE. We are adding about 70 million people each year to world population.
The famines that occured centuries ago, due to local crop failures, were during an era of almost no food trade between nations. There wasn’t a global shortfall of grain, there just wasn’t any way to transfer large quantities of grain from one continent to another that needed it. That was a totally different world, long before the era of big tankers moving huge piles of grain in a few days to another land. It’s like comparing apples and oranges.
Almost 100 percent of those who advocate slowing down population growth, like me, want efforts to slow that growth done on a purely voluntary basis. No family should EVER be told they can only have one child, like in China. What can be done is educating people to the benefits of having small families; providing low-cost or no-cost contraceptives; providing low-cost, totally voluntary sterilizations to those that want them; and providing financial incentives to have less children. This should be provided equally to all races and ethnic groups.
And, yes, to echo your comments, improving living standards and providing more education, especially for women, will help reduce birth rates. Nobody, outside of China, wants to see draconian one child per family policies or powerful dictators. I just want to see a lot more attention paid to voluntary ways to discourage large families.
As an example of a constructive step to reduce birth rates, and slow future population growth, read the story at this link:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=3219391
First few paragraphs:
Brazil to subsidize birth control pills
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the plan will give poor Brazilians “the same right that the wealthy have to plan the number of children they want.”
Brazil already hands out free condoms and birth control pills at government-run pharmacies. But many poor people in Latin America’s largest country don’t go to those pharmacies, so Silva’s administration decided to offer the pills at drastically reduced prices at private drug stores, said Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao.
The price for a year’s supply of birth control pills under the new program would be $2.40, and anyone rich or poor can buy the pills by simply showing a government-issued identification card that almost all Brazilians carry.
The number of outlets selling the pills will start at 3,500 and is expected to rise to 10,000 by the end of this year. When the $51 million program is fully under way, the government expects to be handing out 50 million packages of birth control pills each year.
Each government-subsidized package with enough pills to last a month will cost 20 cents. They now retail for $2.56 to $25.60.