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World Food Crisis 
Sat Feb 19, 2011 at 13:44:45 PM PST
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If you follow this blog, you know about the recent efforts to have a "Second Green Revolution." The word "Green" in Green Revolution has NOTHING to do with environmentalism. It just means that a lot of chemicals and hybrid or GE seeds will make fields of green plants grow. Over the past several weeks, there's been a new round of pro-Second Green Revolution campaigning in some major publications. I'd like to juxtapose them here with a piece by the Rodale Institute on having an Organic Green Revolution and a second piece by Eric Holt-Gimenez of Food First about corporate efforts to solve world hunger.
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Thu Feb 03, 2011 at 09:07:14 AM PST
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Slate has an interesting piece out called "Protesting on an Empty Stomach: How the Egyptian economy is fueling unrest in Egypt." I visited Egypt in 1999 and I was floored by the very apparent and horrific poverty there. Everyone wasn't poor. The lovely woman guiding our tour to the Pyramids was doing very well, thank you. But the beggars in the street - and there were tons of them - were as destitute as I had ever seen. According to Slate, neoliberal policies have allowed the country to prosper on paper, but the gains only went to the wealthiest 20%. At the same time, the poor remained poor.
According to Slate, Egypt is the world's top importer of wheat, and food inflation has topped 20% lately. Already, Egyptian families spend some 40% of monthly income on food, so you can imagine the impact of food price inflation.
According to Slate:
The Egyptian government does subsidize bread and other staples for poorer Egyptians, ameliorating the price increase somewhat. But most Egyptians purchase bread beyond what the subsidy allows. And the threat of instability has already pushed food costs higher in the Egyptian capital and elsewhere. Plus, rising food prices have a long history of causing social unrest in the country. In 1977, the state cut subsidies of basic staples, leading to deadly riots. In 2008, when food prices hit their first peak, Egyptians again took to the streets.
Another point of interest is why Americans HAVEN'T noticed rising global food prices:
So why haven't Americans noticed an uptick in costs at the supermarket? Mostly because raw food costs are a smaller proportion of overall food costs for American consumers. When you buy a box of Wheaties, you're paying for packaging, advertising, and processing, as well as the wheat, making the price more insulated from inflation. In addition, U.S. food producers tend to trade in the futures markets to smooth costs-meaning ingredient costs get locked in months or even years in advance.
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Fri May 28, 2010 at 14:48:01 PM PDT
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At the start of this month, the U.S. unveiled new efforts by USAID to feed the world. Instead of merely providing food aid, now the U.S. plans to support developing nations with agricultural support so they can feed themselves. In theory, this is brilliant. In practice, I doubt it will be. The reason - which I've said before on this blog - is simple: the U.S. is following a plan that runs counter to the recommendations of 400 scientists from around the world (the IAASTD report).
This past week, USAID head Rajiv Shah gave a speech at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. This heavily corporate funded group came up with their own study to counter the IAASTD report findings and to say what the U.S. wanted to hear. In short, they recommend a continuation of industrial agriculture and an increase in biotechnology and genetic engineering and they do not address the harm free trade has on developing nations.
More on their recent event below.
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Wed Oct 28, 2009 at 12:28:13 PM PDT
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WHY Hunger, Food and Water Watch, and the NYU Wagner School co-hosted an event last Thursday in NYC called "Exposing the Green Revolution: Myths, Realities, and Community Responses," featuring Josphat Ngonyo of the Kenyan Biodiversity Network, Bronx community gardener and food justice leader Karen Washington, and Brother David Andrews, recent Senior Advisor to the President of the UN General Assembly. I had the pleasure of meeting Josphat recently, so it was a real thrill to hear what he had to say once he visited Madison, WI and arrived in New York City. You can listen to the podcast of this event here or read my brief summary below.
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Mon Sep 07, 2009 at 11:58:23 AM PDT
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I always find it fascinating to read what the people of Sub-Saharan Africa think about the food aid they receive from the U.S. In my view, help is not actually help unless the receiver of the help wants it. That's why a Ghanaian article called "Obama Pushes GM Foods on Ghana, Africa" caught my eye.
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Fri Jul 10, 2009 at 19:48:43 PM PDT
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Tomorrow Obama is expected to make a big speech in Ghana, announcing a new American policy for food security in the Global South. There's a tiny bit of good in what he will announce - and a whole lot of bad. On the occasion of its Italy meeting, the G8 released a statement on food security that recognizes the need and the urgency for action. They say:
Effective food security actions must be coupled with adaptation and mitigation measures in relation to climate change, sustainable management of water, land, soil and other natural resources, including the protection of biodiversity.
That much is good, but sadly, they also call for more free trade, even after the ample amount of proof we already have that free trade policies (particularly coupled with the government subsidies in developed countries) harm food security rather than helping it. Their failure - and Obama's failure - to recognize the problems caused by free trade is nothing short of tragic.
So where's the good part I spoke of? Well, the U.S. is shifting from a "give a man a fish" strategy to a "teach a man to fish" strategy. Instead of shipping American-grown food to the developed world, we will focus on helping needy countries produce enough to feed themselves. And that much is fantastic - almost.
The problem is - and this is a big problem - the U.S. has no interest in taking the scientific, peer-reviewed, global consensus approach to global agriculture. We'd prefer to go a different route, one which has been dismissed by experts but embraced by multinational corporations.
More below...
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Fri Jul 10, 2009 at 07:30:23 AM PDT
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Today's episode of Democracy Now! featured 2 Ghanaians commenting on Obama's trip to their country. When asked about the G8's recent promise of food aid, the two Ghanaians were far from joyous. Their reaction was actually quite skeptical. One said that "the devil is in the details" because often the U.S. & other developed countries' end up screwing over Africa by dumping cheap sudsidized commodities on them in the form of food aid and undercutting their own farmers. He added that we need to look closely at what is being promised because often these big announcements involve repackaging old money and calling it new money in order to promise a large dollar value in aid. All in all, he said, the promised aid may "do more harm than good."
On that note, Food and Water Watch just put out a press release that was critical of the Obama Administration's efforts to combat global hunger and poverty. They say Obama's policy "merely dusts off the tired, failed approaches of the Bush years," referencing free trade and reliance on biotechnology as policies that do not work. I've pasted it below in its entirety so you can take a look.
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Tue Jan 27, 2009 at 10:53:02 AM PST
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Headline after headline tells of a world food crisis. What, exactly, is going on? Marion Nestle links to Agricultural Economics, which she describes as follows:
These authors blame the world food crisis on weak monetary policies, demand for food as biofuel, and restrictive trade policies. Others may disagree but whatever the causes, the consequences are unlikely to be good.
As for me, I'm a fan of an article that appeared in The Guardian that sums it up by saying:
The basic problem now is not even one of absolute shortage so much as the inability to pay for food, and this problem will get worse for many developing countries and their poorer citizens.
In other words - the problem is NOT a lack of food. We have enough food. We'd rather throw food away or feed it to animals or make plastic or fuel out of it than give it to people who can't pay for it. More below...
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