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World food crisis: Production must rise by 50%, says UN chief
Lee Glendinning and agencies, Guardian
World food production must rise by 50% by 2030 to meet increasing demand, the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, told the UN food summit today.
He urged a quick resolution of world trade talks and said nations must minimise export restrictions and import tariffs to alleviate the food crisis.
“The world needs to produce more food,” Ban said. “Food production needs to rise by 50% by the year 2030 to meet rising demand.”
He said a UN task force set up to deal with the crisis was recommending that nations “improve vulnerable people’s access to food and take immediate steps to increase food availability in their communities”.
(3 June 2008)
Challenges for the food summit – analysis
Roger Harrabin , BBC
Politicians struggling to solve the current world food crisis need to find long-term solutions that feed the poorest without reproducing the ills of the recent “cheap food era”.
In the late 1990s, the wheat price was at a record low – driven down by inexpensive fuel and taxpayers’ farm subsidies in the EU and America.
Cheap food encouraged an epidemic of obesity in which the number of people overweight (one billion) globally exceeded the number of malnourished (0.8 billion).
It sparked an orgy of food waste, with people in some countries throwing away a third of what they buy.
It benefited consumers throughout rich nations, and in cities of the developing world.
But farm surpluses dumped on developing countries drove poor farmers out of business and helped persuade politicians in Africa that supporting domestic agriculture was a low priority.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warns that food prices will not return to their previous low level for the foreseeable future. But many analysts doubt that they will ever sink that low again – and regard this as a benefit rather than a curse.
(3 June 2008)
Food prices are rocketing all over Europe
David Blair, UK Telegraph
It’s not just us. All over Europe, the rocketing cost of food and fuel is straining family budgets, stirring unrest and shaking governments. David Blair examines the roots and the impact of a widening crisis.
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…Anyone outraged by the cost of a trip to Tesco or Sainsbury’s – or the price of filling their car – should know that they are not alone: the same bewilderment and anxiety is sweeping the Continent.
Bulgarian bus drivers are going on strike. Italian fishermen will soon down tools. Lorry drivers have sealed off oil refineries across France. Even the fishermen of Belgium, hitherto a relatively obscure force in European politics, are due to mass in Brussels.
… A study conducted by the French finance ministry has found that supermarket prices have risen by up to 18 per cent in the past two months alone. Butter, pasta and milk have all gone up by nine per cent since last year. If you buy a baguette on the streets of Paris, the price will have risen by anything from five to eight per cent.
(31 May 2008)
Civil Society Forum Calls for Rethinking of the Food System
“No more failures as usual”
Press release, International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) ??
Rome, June 1, 2008. At the eve of the High Level Conference on World Food Security in Rome, farmer, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples and nongovernmental organizations (NGO) have declared a People’s State of Emergency.
“Governments and intergovernmental organisations must immediately stop any policies, which lead to violations of the human right to food”, says Maryam Rahmanian of CENESTA, Iran. “Free trade policies have seriously damaged the food system over time, leading to the food crisis that we’re facing today”. Parallel to the official conference, civil society organisations are holding a five day Forum to voice their demands on how to overcome the crisis.
In their statement, ’No More Failures as Usual’, 800 organizations around the world call for a radical shift in agricultural policies building on the capacities of small scale farmers to feed themselves and the populations of their countries. “We see the food emergency as a symptom of larger systemic failures – evictions of local communities, unfettered trade, massive climate change, the promotion of large scale agrofuel production, speculation and the corporate control of the food system”, explains Ndougou Fall of the West African farmers organisation ROPPA. “And we see a high risk that the UN agenda is being hijacked by large corporations who want to feed us the same solutions that have been failing for decades, like a so called New Green Revolution in Africa.”
“We reject the call of the World Bank and World Trade Organisation (WTO) for further liberalization of international trade”, Alberto Gomez from Mexico of the international peasant movement La Via Campesina adds. “These very policies have flooded our countries with cheap food, undermined our food sovereignty and devastated our abilities to produce food for ourselves. This has led us to complete dependence on the international markets. Now that prices are soaring, we are not able any more to purchase the food from outside.”
Thomas Kocherry an Indian representative of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) explains that the industrial food production model has also transformed fisheries. “Large scale commercial and aquaculture are dangerously close to wiping out the planet’s fisheries, he says. Small scale fisheries not only put food on our plate, they enhance our fishstocks, protect our ecosystems, which safeguard us against disasters.” “We call on the governments gathering in Rome in the next days, to meet their human rights obligations and to listen to the proposals of the affected people themselves.” Sarojeni Rengam, Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific, concludes. “Farmers themselves are agricultural experts and they must be in the driver seat of agricultural development. Farmers hold our future in their hands.”
(1 June 2008)
Press release – I can’t find a URL for it. Related URLs:
Videos on wsftv.net/
IPC Food Sovereignty
Civil Society statement on the World Food Emergency (petition)
