Organic farmers are also reporting an increase in their input costs organic fertilizer, seeds, and plastics used for irrigation, and general costs such as electricity and water. Many organic milk producers can no longer find organic feed grains. But what happens if we have a devastating drought or other natural or man-made disaster which results in a food crisis in the United States?
There are no food reserves! The United States has a Federal Reserve Bank for money, and a Strategic Petroleum Reserve for oil, but absolutely no federal reserve for grain and other emergency foodstuffs.
The federal government is investing billions of dollars in taxpayer money to bail out Wall Street. Both the food crisis and the financial crisis are rooted in similar polices that have fed on each other for years. Free market reforms worldwide, championed by the United States, eroded support for local agriculture and led to massive consolidation in the agriculture industry.
Large banks quickly swallowed up small banks. Some financial services companies, like Goldman Sachs, even became importers of physical goods, while traditional agribusinesses, like Cargill, now have investment banking arms that deal in everything from real estate and corporate securities to IT technology. Deregulation and consolidation both make markets extremely vulnerable to shock. When the sub-prime mortgage crisis hit in , investors began to scramble for safe places to put their investments.
At least some of the rampant food price inflation that began at the beginning of was caused by exactly that scramble—a combination of investing in agricultural commodities and oil, which drove up the price of food and farm inputs. Looking for safer investments, traders that may or may not be in businesses related to food at all, put their money into commodities futures.
This system of deregulation has caught our economy and our food system in a negative feedback loop. Less regulation breeds more consolidation and less stability in both agricultural and financial markets.
The Wall Street bailouts may or may not stabilize financial markets in the short run, but will do nothing to address the root causes of the current crisis, nor will they stave off the next one. A real solution must include measures to stabilize both food and financial markets. We need strong oversight on large traders and financial services, and increased support to local economies, small farmers, local banks, and small borrowers.
Most of all, we need a dramatic departure from the free-market fundamentalism that brought us here in the first place. The official prescriptions for solving the world food crisis call for more of the same policies that caused the crisis in the first place: e.
Expecting the institutions that built the current food system to solve the food crisis is like asking an arsonist to put out a forest fire. To solve the food crisis we need to fix the food system. That entails re-regulating the market, reducing the oligopolistic power of the agri-foods corporations, and building agro-ecologically resilient family agriculture.
We need to make food affordable by turning the food system into an engine for local economic development in both rural and urban areas. In fact, the three need to work in concert, complementing each other. In the United States, food policy councils can localize and rationalize local food systems. Safety nets for low-income people should be improved to ensure adequate access to fresh, healthy food. Food banks should be supported to source fresh, healthy food from local farmers and through state-level commodities programs.
Support independent community-based food businesses at home and abroad. A prudent reserves policy that stabilizes commodities prices would reduce controversial farm subsidy payments by ensuring prices do not collapse … [this will] benefit consumers and farmers instead of leaving our fates to the whims and dictates of unstable, global markets.
Suspend international agrofuels trade and investment. Halt any expansion of government-supported biofuels programs and immediately revise all renewable fuels mandates, tax incentives, and other subsidies. A coalition of progressive environmental and social justice groups in the United States recently launched a global call for a U.
Institutional investors have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the commodities futures markets, driving up food and energy prices to historic levels. Even though prices have dropped in recent weeks, regulatory loopholes still remain ready to introduce extreme market volatility, political instability, and much human suffering. To lower international food prices and protect our social interests, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission must use its authority to curb excessive speculation in commodities futures and r e-establish strict position limits on speculators which were successful until removed by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of We must r egulate and bring transparency to all trading.
We can also removing damaging speculative influence on commodities prices by prohibiting participation in commodities markets by those who do not produce, manufacture, or take physical delivery of the commodities. We must create a solidarity economy that puts compassion and care for one another ahead of short-term profits, in the United States and around the world. On a pound-per-acre basis, extensive research shows that small family farms are more productive than large-scale industrial farms.
And they use less oil, especially if food is traded locally or sub-regionally. According to Henry Saragih, coordinator of the international farmer and peasant federation Via Campesina:. Rebuilding national food economies will require immediate and long-term political commitments from governments. An absolute priority has to be given to domestic food production in order to decrease dependency on the international market. Peasants and small farmers should be encouraged through better prices for their farm products and stable markets to produce food for themselves and their communities.
Landless families from rural and urban areas have to get access to land, seeds, and water to produce their own food. This means increased investment in peasant and farmer-based food production for domestic markets. The IAASTD calls for an overhaul of agriculture dominated by multinational companies and governed by unfair trade rules. Contrary to conventional wisdom, agro-ecological farms, growing throughout the world, are highly productive and—according to a path-breaking study from the University of Michigan—can easily provide us with all the food we need.
As industrialized farming and free trade regimes fail us, these approaches will be the keys for building resilience back into a dysfunctional global food system. Perspectives deepen. Partnerships multiply. Non-governmental organizations consolidate their role in humanitarian and development assistance. WFP espouses this dynamic, increasingly forging alliances in an all-round effort to beat hunger.
The year brings the Millennium Development Goals, the first global blueprint for a world free from poverty, hunger and related ills. Under pressure to deliver measurable achievement, energies coalesce further. Many countries see governance standards improve, even as others grapple with conflict and insecurity. Extreme poverty recedes. The decade is not without its big humanitarian crises the Asian tsunami of and the Haiti earthquake of both demand massive intervention , but WFP finds the space to pursue innovation.
The provision of cash and vouchers emerges as an empowering complement to in-kind food distributions. New, integrated monitoring systems allow WFP to assess food security landscapes with unprecedented accuracy. Digital platforms are developed that greatly improve operational efficiency and — as seen in the Nepali earthquake of — offer those in need the ability to receive food within hours.
This includes buying their produce for WFP programmes, introducing them to formal markets, and enabling access to skills, knowledge and infrastructure to develop their livelihoods and make them more resilient to risks. National governments are increasingly taking the lead in the fight against hunger. WFP offers a wide range of capacity development and technical assistance services to facilitate the design and delivery of sustainable national solutions to combat hunger and malnutrition.
WFP facilitates the transfer of knowledge, skills, resources and technical know-how, including through its Centres of Excellence in Brazil, China and Ivory Coast. In , WFP assisted 97 million people - the largest number since - in 90 countries. The designations employed and the presentation of material in the map s do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever of WFP concerning the legal or constitutional status of any country, territory or sea area, or concerning the delimitation of frontiers.
Afghanistan: The unveiling of a modern tragedy Read more Donate. Podcast: Better Food. Better World. Listen here. Billionaires A one-time appeal Page 25 November Year in review Stories you may have missed on wfp.
Saving lives in emergencies 1 2 3 4 5 6. Games, Puzzles, and Crossword. Privacy and Terms. Public Safety Driver hits big rig then flees, leaving car and injured passenger. Environment The past seven years have been the hottest in recorded history, new data shows. Weather Surf will stay big, clouds will grow thicker, Santa Ana winds will return.
Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options. More in this section. Nation-World Baltimore prosecutor charged with lying in home purchases.
Nation-World Michigan professor on leave after bizarre video about grades.
0コメント