Global food crisis result of destruction of food democracy
April 20th, 2008 by Jim JustSunday’s New York Times has an article about how rising food prices and food shortages are causing unrest and even riots around the globe, threatening the stability of governments.
According to the World Bank, world food prices have risen 80% over the last three years and that at least thirty-three countries face social unrest as a result. In recent weeks, food riots have erupted in Haiti, Niger, Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso. Protests have erupted in Morocco, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Mexico and Yemen. In most of West Africa, the price of food has risen by 50% – in Sierra Leone, 300%.
Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, has an interview with Raj Patel, a writer and activist who has worked for the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the interview he says there are two kinds of causes of the food crisis. One is economic – a perfect storm of poor harvests and a demand for meat in developing countries, which is diverting grain; the high price of oil, which is driving up farm inputs; and at the same time the biofuels boom, growing food to burn rather than eat.
But there are political causes as well. Organizations like the World Bank, the WTO, and the IMF – which have pretty much iron control over the economies of most of the poorest countries in the world – have coerced them into an international food economy. These countries have been forced to abandon their support for farmers, to abandon things like grain supplies and grain stores. As a consequence, when the price of food goes up, these economies have very little recourse and very little possibility of defending themselves economically.
The global, corporate industrial food system has systematically driving local farmers out of business, around the world. It used to be that the people who were overweight were rich and the people who were hungry were poor. Today, hunger and obesity are both signs that people are unable to control their diets. Poor people are unable to access fresh fruits and vegetables, access food that is healthy – all they can get are highly processed industrial foods. And more and more, they are unable to access food at all.