Most Americans take food for granted.

Even the poorest fifth of households in the United

States spend only 16 percent of their budget on food. In many other countries, it is less of
a given. Nigerian families spend 73 percent of their budgets to eat, Vietnamese 65
percent, Indonesians half. They are in trouble.

Last year, the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 percent as food
prices rose to levels not seen in a generation. Corn doubled in price over the last two
years. Wheat reached its highest price in 28 years. The increases are already sparking
unrest from Haiti to Egypt. Many countries have imposed price controls on food or taxes
on agricultural exports.

Last week, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, warned that 33 nations are
at risk of social unrest because of the rising prices of food. “For countries where food
comprises from half to three-quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival,” he
said.

Prices are unlikely to drop soon. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
says world cereal stocks this year will be the lowest since 1982.

The United States and other developed countries need to step up to the plate. The rise in
food prices is partly because of uncontrollable forces — including rising energy costs and
the growth of the middle class in China and India. This has increased demand for animal
protein, which requires large amounts of grain.

But the rich world is exacerbating these effects by supporting the production of biofuels.
The International Monetary Fund estimates that corn ethanol production in the United
States accounted for at least half the rise in world corn demand in each of the past three
years. This elevated corn prices. Feed prices rose. So did prices of other crops — mainly
soybeans — as farmers switched their fields to corn, according to the Agriculture
Department.

Washington provides a subsidy of 51 cents a gallon to ethanol blenders and slaps a tariff
of 54 cents a gallon on imports. In the European Union, most countries exempt biofuels
from some gas taxes and slap an average tariff equal to more than 70 cents a gallon of
imported ethanol. There are several reasons to put an end to these interventions. At best,
corn ethanol delivers only a small reduction in greenhouse gases compared with gasoline.
And it could make things far worse if it leads to more farming in forests and grasslands.
Rising food prices provide an urgent argument to nix ethanol’s supports.

Over the long term, agricultural productivity must increase in the developing world. Mr.
Zoellick suggested rich countries could help finance a “green revolution” to increase farm
productivity and raise crop yields in Africa. But the rise in food prices calls for developed
nations to provide more immediate assistance. Last month, the World Food Program said
rising grain costs blew a hole of more than $500 million in its budget for helping millions
of victims of hunger around the world.
Industrial nations are not generous, unfortunately. Overseas aid by rich countries fell 8.4
percent last year from 2006. Developed nations would have to increase their aid budgets
by 35 percent over the next three years just to meet the commitments they made in 2005.

They must not let this target slip. Continued growth of the middle class in China and
India, the push for renewable fuels and anticipated damage to agricultural production
caused by global warming mean that food prices are likely to stay high. Millions of
people, mainly in developing countries, could need aid to avoid malnutrition. Rich
countries’ energy policies helped create the problem. Now those countries should help
solve it.

Food crisis can create law, order situation’

* Expert recommends announcement of support price of wheat crop on cultivation time

By Manzoor Ali Shah

PESHAWAR: Experts here on Thursday voiced concern over the increasing prices of
food items and said that food crisis might lead to law and order situation if not controlled
in time.

Experts and researchers at the NWFP Agricultural University Peshawar told Daily Times
that the food crisis reflects the lack of planning on the part of the government and
growing prices of wheat flour and other food items in an agricultural country need to be
worried about.

Professor Dr Said Wahab at the Food Science and Technology Department of the
University said that easy access of the population to food was necessary and the
government should prepare a plan for future to ensure the same. “If food crisis was not
controlled, it might create a security situation and increase street crimes,” he said. He said
that inflation in prices of food items is hitting the consumers hard, adding that dissolution
of magistracy system which used to keep a check on food prices, had also contributed to
the rise in prices.
s
Support price: “The government should announce the support price of a crop at the time
of its cultivation which will encourage the farmers to sow it, but the recent increase in
support price of wheat gave a chance to those people who have a monopoly over the
market to steer it where they want,” he said.

Dr Mohamad Tahir at the Department of Soil and Environmental Sciences said that
agriculture mainly depends on nature and policy makers should be aware of this fact and
plan accordingly.

“Recently the prices of rice have also recorded a surge and this is very strange given the
facts that rice is not a staple item in Pakistani food and secondly Pakistan was among top
five rice exporters,” he said. He said that the Frontier province is facing a dilemma as in
the first place it has small cultivable land and if it sows more wheat, the production of
sugarcane and tobacco would decline, which are cash crops.

“The Charsadda Road, Faqir Abad and other areas of Peshawar which were open lands
and provided the city with vegetables in 1980s have now been turned into commercial
areas and housing societies and fragmentation of the land is also hitting the agricultural
production,” he said.

He said that there were provisions in law under President General Ayub’s government
against the commercialisation of agricultural land and the government should invoke
them.

He said that land in most of the southern districts of NWFP is barren due to shortage of
water and if proper irrigation system is developed for these lands, Frontier province
would be made self-sufficient in food. Chairman, Food Science and Technology
Department, Prof Dr Javedullah said that proper planning is a key to solution of the
problem and trained people should be inducted in the food department.

“Our policy makers do not consider Afghanistan while formulating their policies but
Afghanistan directly influences our policies and this factor should be kept in mind while
making policies,” he added.

As the flour and other edibles’ prices are on the rise in the country for the past several
months, international organisation are cautioning against rising prices, poverty and food
riots. This week World Bank head Robert Zoellick warned that around 100 million
people in poor countries could be pushed deeper into poverty by spiralling prices, while
the International Monetary Fund last week said hundreds of thousands of people were at
risk of starvation because of food shortage.

United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Agency (FAO) report put Pakistan among the 37
countries where the food crisis looms. FAO Chief Jacques Diouf warned last week that
food riots in developing countries will spread unless world leaders take major steps to
reduce prices for the poor.
The World Food Crisis
By John Nichols

This article appeared in the May 12, 2008 edition of The Nation.

April 24, 2008

The only surprising thing about the global food crisis to Jim Goodman is the notion that
anyone finds it surprising. "So," says the Wisconsin dairy farmer, "they finally figured
out, after all these years of pushing globalization and genetically modified [GM] seeds,
that instead of feeding the world we've created a food system that leaves more people
hungry. If they'd listened to farmers instead of corporations, they would've known this
was going to happen." Goodman has traveled the world to speak, organize and rally with
groups such as La Via Campesina, the global movement of peasant and farm
organizations that has been warning for years that "solutions" promoted by agribusiness
conglomerates were designed to maximize corporate profits, not help farmers or feed
people. The food shortages, suddenly front-page news, are not new. Hundreds of millions
of people were starving and malnourished last year; the only change is that as the scope
of the crisis has grown, it has become more difficult to "manage" the hunger that a failed
food system accepts rather than feeds.

Iron City in the Shadow of G-20

Globalization

VideoNation : G-20 protesters and Pittsburgh locals take a stand against the
summit and the corporate globalization they feel it supports.

Fortress Pittsburgh

Globalization

Robert S. Eshelman: In heavily fortified Pittsburgh, protesters are kept isolated

from local residents and from conference attendees.

Climate Change: Off the G-20 Agenda?

Globalization

Robert S. Eshelman: Climate change groups occupy a central place among G-20
protests in Pittsburgh.
» More

The World and Pittsburgh

Corporate Responsibility & Accountability

John Nichols: At the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, activists will push the United
States to back proposals to regulate CEO compensation and require corporate
responsibility.

For Competitive Primaries

Electoral Politics

John Nichols: Yes, primaries can be divisive and expensive. But the Democratic
Party is usually at its best when it trusts grassroots activists and voters to make
choices.

Food Without Fear

Food & Nutrition

John Nichols: Bad peanuts and killer spinach: that's the food story of 2009. But in
the coming months we may see a huge turning point in the fight for safety.

The current global food system, which was designed by US-based agribusiness
conglomerates like Cargill, Monsanto and ADM and forced into place by the US
government and its allies at the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the
World Trade Organization, has planted the seeds of disaster by pressuring farmers here
and abroad to produce cash crops for export and alternative fuels rather than grow healthy
food for local consumption and regional stability. The only smart short-term response is
to throw money at the problem. George W. Bush's release of $200 million in emergency
aid to the UN's World Food Program was appropriate, but Washington must do more.
Rising food prices may not be causing riots in the United States, but food banks here are
struggling to meet demand as joblessness grows. Congress should answer Senator
Sherrod Brown's call to allocate $100 million more to domestic food programs and make
sure, as Representative Jim McGovern urges, that an overdue farm bill expands programs
for getting fresh food from local farms to local consumers.

Beyond humanitarian responses, the cure for what ails the global food system--and an
unsteady US farm economy--is not more of the same globalization and genetic
gimmickry. That way has left thirty-seven nations with food crises while global grain
giant Cargill harvests an 86 percent rise in profits and Monsanto reaps record sales from
its herbicides and seeds. For years, corporations have promised farmers that problems
would be solved by trade deals and technology--especially GM seeds, which University
of Kansas research now suggests reduce food production and the International
Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development says won't end
global hunger. The "market," at least as defined by agribusiness, isn't working. We "have
a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits who have turned wild and
constructed a world of inequality and horror," says Jean Ziegler, the UN's right-to-food
advocate. But try telling that to the Bush Administration or to World Bank president (and
former White House trade rep) Robert Zoellick, who's busy exploiting tragedy to promote
trade liberalization. "If ever there is a time to cut distorting agricultural subsidies and
open markets for food imports, it must be now," says Zoellick. "Wait a second," replies
Dani Rodrik, a Harvard political economist who tracks trade policy. "Wouldn't the
removal of these distorting policies raise world prices in agriculture even further?" Yes.
World Bank studies confirm that wheat and rice prices will rise if Zoellick gets his way.

Instead of listening to the White House or the World Bank, Congress should recognize--
as a handful of visionary members like Ohio Representative Marcy Kaptur have--that
current trends confirm the wisdom of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's call
for "an urgent rethink of the respective roles of markets and governments." That's far
more useful than blaming Midwestern farmers for embracing inflated promises about the
potential of ethanol--although we should re-examine whether aggressive US support for
biofuels is not only distorting corn prices but harming livestock and dairy producers who
can barely afford feed and fertilizer. Instead of telling farmers they're wrong to seek the
best prices for their crops, Congress should make sure that farmers can count on good
prices for growing the food Americans need. It can do this by providing a strong safety
net to survive weather and market disasters and a strategic grain reserve similar to the
strategic petroleum reserve to guard against food-price inflation.

Congress should also embrace trade and development policies that help developing
countries regulate markets with an eye to feeding the hungry rather than feeding
corporate profits. This principle, known as "food sovereignty," sees struggling farmers
and hungry people and says, as the Oakland Institute's Anuradha Mittal observes, that it
is time to "stop worshiping the golden calf of the so-called free market and embrace,
instead, the principle [that] every country and every people have a right to food that is
affordable." As Mittal says, "When the market deprives them of this, it is the market that
has to give."