Our daily bread - and our trespasses
The spiraling world food grains crisis has been a long time coming.
There have been warnings aplenty, but they didn't really grab the
headlines. The two things that seem to have caught the world's
attention are rising prices (ie food seen in monetary terms) and the social unrest of riots. We rightly fear instability.
Another food crisis is as old as the hills - that of the chronically
malnourished. In India alone, before the current situation erupted, in
times when there was enough grain to go around, over 260 million people
were going to sleep at night without enough food in their bellies. They
were the quiet, ground-down poor, chained to the desperation of trying
to earn enough to get the next meal and hardly anybody gave a damn
about them. These were people whose lives would end far short of
anything that could be considered a normal course for one simple reason
- a shortage of calories. Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur on the
Right to Food, took the only rational way of looking at such deaths
when he said: ‘Every five seconds a child under 10 dies of starvation.
A child that dies of starvation is in effect murdered.' He said this
before the current crisis. So one has to wonder what the true scale of
amplification is for the rich world in particular to now sit up and
take notice.
By now we are familiar with the confluence of factors that are being
mentioned. Biofuels crops taking over land previously devoted to food
(hands up those who didn't see that one coming), a rise in carnivorous
appetites channeling more grain down the gullets of farm animals, a
series of disastrous weather events for agriculture in many parts of
the world and human population at an all time high (wonder how long
before we start to see comment along the lines of the irresponsible
poor having too many kids).
It's time we heard a lot more about the other factors involved. About
the speculation and profiteering of global food giants who are intent
on further changing agricultural policies around the world to benefit
themselves and not farmers or consumers of food. About the hoarding
that accompanies any food shortage real or created. About the deep
rooted crisis of the cash poor who go hungry even when there is food
available. But mostly about the shitty treatment the world's small
farmers have been receiving.
Why does it bother so few of us that the people who produce the food
are often so impoverished their own families face constant hunger? That
they are driven to risky ventures that often end up ruining them
because their traditional food crops have been valued so low. Even in
the rich world farming, propped up by subsidies, has lost its dignity.
Farmers are typically portrayed as whingers when they complain about
the ‘freemarket' situation that leaves a few food monopolies in
control, driving their own profit margins ever lower. The only model of
agriculture that will ever get corporate approval is a completely
supine one, beset by ever-increasing gigantism in order to carry out
the industrial agriculture we are all pushed towards believing is the
only way of feeding the world.
In the rich world our connection to food has gone seriously weird. We
routinely buy to excess and throw out food that has perished without
our using it. We'll eat tasteless, additive-laden junk as long as it is
‘convenient'. To harp on about the effort needed to grow food is
decidedly boring.
In countries like India, consumers may have a different, more essential
relationship with food, but government policy has neglected agriculture
for the money values and prestige of the country's burgeoning service
sector. Rural India has been in steady decline, more so with market
liberalization.
There is little doubt that the current crisis will need urgent international effort. British PM Gordon Brown has urged the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the UN to work towards a solution, one that will no doubt involve food aid. The irony of some of the chief architects of this current situation being called upon to bail out those they've driven to hunger is a bitter one.
Any longer term and more lasting solution has got to involve
recognizing food for the good it is, not just seeing its monetary
value. It's the only fuel we have, it's as basic as that. If one thinks
logically from that perspective, it all comes down to supporting those
who produce food not throwing them to the wolves of industry, it comes
down to encouraging sustainability, local food self-sufficiency as far
as possible, so global market winds don't blow food grains out of
reach. And it means ensuring that food has a value above cash and
acting accordingly. Hunger can be tackled by the right kinds of
national policies, with international support; the interests of global
food corporations must not be part of the equation. We call food a
basic right; it's time we backed policy-making that believed such a
claim.
Catch up with how the international peasants' movement Via Campesina views the crisis.
Erwin Wagenhofer's film We Feed The World
reveals the way the food industry works and much more by just letting
the people involved speak for themselves. Mainly centred around
European issues, I found completely compelling.
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