The rising price of food caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increased energy costs could push a quarter of a billion more people into extreme poverty, Oxfam has warned.
The charity said these new challenges had piled on to the economic crises created by Covid, and called for urgent international action, including cancelling debt repayments for poorer countries.
“Without immediate radical action, we could be witnessing the most profound collapse of humanity into extreme poverty and suffering in memory,” said Oxfam’s international executive director, Gabriela Bucher.
Oxfam’s briefing, released on Tuesday ahead of World Bank and IMF spring meetings next week, said indebted governments could be forced to cut public spending to meet the rising cost of importing fuel and food.
Oxfam said cancelling debt repayments for this year and next could free up $30bn (£23bn) for dozens of the countries facing the biggest debts.
Read more at:
Quarter of a billion people now face extreme poverty, warns Oxfam | Global development | The Guardian
Showing posts with label Hunger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hunger. Show all posts
4/13/22
11/7/13
Agriculture and Food Industry: More Food Doesn’t Guarantee Less Hunger
Every October, world leaders and corporate executives gather in Iowa to present the World Food Prize. Intended to celebrate those who make the largest contributions to increasing the world’s food supply, the recipients are announced each year by the U.S. Secretary of State.
On the same day that award is bestowed each year, so is another one. It’s less well-known but, in my view, far more important.
This alternative accolade is called the Food Sovereignty Prize. Like the World Food Prize, it deals with food and hunger, but in a very different way.
The corporations that fund the World Food Prize may not entirely drive its agenda, but they certainly influence it. By focusing on the sheer volume of food in the world, they aim to reduce global hunger to a simple matter of science. Then they sell us on the idea that we need their products to increase the amount of food farmers harvest from each acre.
But producing more food doesn’t always mean feeding more hungry mouths. The Food Sovereignty Prize recognizes that ending hunger is not a simple matter of growing more food. It involves social science as well as physical science.
When a farmer produces an extra ten bushels of crops from each acre of land, perhaps more people will eat — or maybe not. Americans don’t have to travel around the world to see this, we must only ask our grandparents. During the Great Depression, farmers grew a great surplus of food, and food prices crashed.
Both farmers and consumers suffered, as farmers went into bankruptcy while the urban poor starved.
Today, the US and EU grow more food than we need — and then throw 40 percent of it away. Meanwhile, many Americans can afford to eat enough calories but only by buying cheap junk food that will ultimately make them sick. And that’s just in America, a wealthy nation. What about poor countries?
Smallholder farmers from around the world came together in 2007 and dreamed of “a world where all peoples, nations and states are able to determine their own food producing systems and policies that provide every one of us with good quality, adequate, affordable, healthy, and culturally appropriate food.” They called this idea “food sovereignty.”
Read the complete report: More Food Doesn’t Guarantee Less Hunger
On the same day that award is bestowed each year, so is another one. It’s less well-known but, in my view, far more important.
This alternative accolade is called the Food Sovereignty Prize. Like the World Food Prize, it deals with food and hunger, but in a very different way.
The corporations that fund the World Food Prize may not entirely drive its agenda, but they certainly influence it. By focusing on the sheer volume of food in the world, they aim to reduce global hunger to a simple matter of science. Then they sell us on the idea that we need their products to increase the amount of food farmers harvest from each acre.
But producing more food doesn’t always mean feeding more hungry mouths. The Food Sovereignty Prize recognizes that ending hunger is not a simple matter of growing more food. It involves social science as well as physical science.
When a farmer produces an extra ten bushels of crops from each acre of land, perhaps more people will eat — or maybe not. Americans don’t have to travel around the world to see this, we must only ask our grandparents. During the Great Depression, farmers grew a great surplus of food, and food prices crashed.
Both farmers and consumers suffered, as farmers went into bankruptcy while the urban poor starved.
Today, the US and EU grow more food than we need — and then throw 40 percent of it away. Meanwhile, many Americans can afford to eat enough calories but only by buying cheap junk food that will ultimately make them sick. And that’s just in America, a wealthy nation. What about poor countries?
Smallholder farmers from around the world came together in 2007 and dreamed of “a world where all peoples, nations and states are able to determine their own food producing systems and policies that provide every one of us with good quality, adequate, affordable, healthy, and culturally appropriate food.” They called this idea “food sovereignty.”
Read the complete report: More Food Doesn’t Guarantee Less Hunger
11/3/11
Hunger is a political problem
A world without hunger, where all seven billion people are well fed, can indeed be achieved. The planet produces enough food. Hunger is not a problem simply caused by natural crises. It is tolerated because other things are deemed more important. The voices of European consumers and farmers, for example, carry more political weight. If we took all our fine words about solidarity seriously, then subsidies would have to be abolished, trade relationships revolutionized and the price of food in the industrial states would rise.
The voices of the hungry carry little weight - they have no lobby. Perversely, people go hungry - of all places - where food is produced, among small farmers in rural regions. These people have nobody to represent their interests in multilateral economic institutions. When free trade treaties and global trade flows are negotiated, they have no voice, despite the fact that there are very many of them: Just under half of all people worldwide live either directly or indirectly from agriculture. The large, unheard majority in the developing world pays the price for our economic system: One billion people are hungry or undernourished.
European politicians always behave as if they were helpless and ask how they should convince voters to restructure taxes to the benefit of the world's poorest people. That wouldn't be so difficult. Elected officials simply need to convince their constituencies that fighting hunger is in the interest of their own well being. How will Europe cope with 150 million potential refugees fleeing hunger in sub-Saharan Africa for our continent by the year 2020?
For more: Hunger is a political problem | Environment & Development | Deutsche Welle | 31.10.2011
The voices of the hungry carry little weight - they have no lobby. Perversely, people go hungry - of all places - where food is produced, among small farmers in rural regions. These people have nobody to represent their interests in multilateral economic institutions. When free trade treaties and global trade flows are negotiated, they have no voice, despite the fact that there are very many of them: Just under half of all people worldwide live either directly or indirectly from agriculture. The large, unheard majority in the developing world pays the price for our economic system: One billion people are hungry or undernourished.
European politicians always behave as if they were helpless and ask how they should convince voters to restructure taxes to the benefit of the world's poorest people. That wouldn't be so difficult. Elected officials simply need to convince their constituencies that fighting hunger is in the interest of their own well being. How will Europe cope with 150 million potential refugees fleeing hunger in sub-Saharan Africa for our continent by the year 2020?
For more: Hunger is a political problem | Environment & Development | Deutsche Welle | 31.10.2011
10/15/09
The Observer: How will the world feed itself in 40 years' time? - by Alex Renton
For the complete report from the Guardian click on this link
How will the world feed itself in 40 years' time? - by Alex Renton
The world is going to get hungrier this century, and on a scale that will make the famines of the 1980s look paltry. The maths are simple and devastating: in 40 years' time the global population will be 9.2 billion people – a third larger than it is now. But to feed us all, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says, we will need to produce twice as much food. That's because, despite the threats of this century, most developing countries will get richer. At present 350m households in the world live on euro 10,000 (US$14,000) or more. That figure is projected to increase to 2.1bn by 2030. And the richer they are, the more wastefully people eat. Generally the poor eat vegetables, while the rich eat food that eats vegetables. Lots of it. To produce 1kg of beef takes 10kg of grass or soya-based feed. A farmed fish will have eaten three times its weight in wild fish. And the rate at which the richest consume these things is amazing: Americans consume 120kg of meat each per year; in the developing world they eat 28kg.
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