Food crisis: causes, consequences and alternatives

Esther Vivas     

The current food model is from top to bottom subject to a high company concentration, being monopolized by a series of transnational agribusiness interests that place their own economic interests above the good of the public and the community.

Today, the food system no longer responds to the nutritional needs of people, nor to sustainable production based on respect for the environment, but is based on a model rooted in a capitalist logic of seeking the maximum profit, optimization of costs and exploitation of the labour force in each of its productive sectors. Common goods such as water, seeds, land, which for centuries have belonged to communities, have been privatized, robbed from the people and converted into exchange currency at the mercy of the highest bidder.

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Millions Face Starvation in West Africa, Warn Aid Agencies

Agencies launch emergency appeals for drought-stricken region as up to 10 million face conditions of 1984 Ethiopia famine

Henry Foy

Published on Monday, June 21, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

Starving people in drought-stricken west Africa are being forced to eat leaves and collect grain from ant hills, say aid agencies, warning that 10 million people face starvation across the region. With food prices soaring and malnourished livestock dying, villagers were turning to any sources of food to stay alive, said Charles Bambara, Oxfam officer for the west African region.

“People are eating wild fruit and leaves, and building ant hills just to capture the tiny amount of grain that the ants collect inside. “The situation here in Chad is desperate. There is not enough food in the country, over 2 million people here are not getting enough,” said Bambara.

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“El hambre y la obesidad son dos caras de una misma moneda”

Entrevista a Esther Vivas en The Ecologist

Esther Vivas es una vieja conocida de The Ecologist. Ahora, junto a Josep Maria Antentas, acaba de publicar el libro Resistencias globales. De Seattle a la crisis de Wall Street. En su punto de mira, desde hace tiempo, está el sistema agroalimentario global. Obesidad y hambre son consecuencias de un modelo criminal a gran escala.

Aumentan la desnutrición y la obesidad al mismo tiempo. Estas dos historias, ¿tienen un mismo origen?
-El hambre y la obesidad son dos caras de una misma moneda, de un sistema agroalimentario privatizado y mercantil.

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“A alimentação deve ser considerada um direito humano” – entrevista com Chico Menezes

Elaine Ramos, da Agência Ibase

No Brasil, Josette Sheeran, diretora executiva do Programa Mundial de Alimentação da Organização das Nações Unidas (PMA/ONU), afirmou que metade da população mundial que passa fome é formada por pequenos agricultores que não conseguem produzir para alimentar a própria família. Ela participou do “Diálogo Brasil-África sobre Segurança Alimentar, Combate à Fome e Desenvolvimento Rural”. Qual a situação do Brasil? O que tem feito para contornar essa realidade? Confira entrevista com Francisco Menezes, diretor do Ibase.

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Who Decides What We Eat?

Esther Vivas
 
The increasing conversion of agriculture into a commodity industry is an undeniable reality today. The privatisation of natural resources, the policies of structural adjustment, the gradual disappearance of the peasantry and the industrialisation of the food systems have driven us to the current food crisis situation.
In this context, who is deciding what we eat? The answer is clear: a handful of multinationals of the agro-food industry, with the blessing of governments and international institutions, end up imposing its private interest above the collective needs. Due to this situation, our food security is seriously threatened.

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Biotechnology: A False Sense of Food Security

In his Foreign Policy essay “Attention Whole Foods Shoppers,” Robert Paarlberg paints the movement for sustainable food production and security as a Western elite preoccupation. He writes, “From Whole Foods recyclable cloth bags to Michelle Obama’s organic White House garden, modern eco-foodies are full of good intentions… Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.”

In the same breath that he criticizes these “Western elites” who support sustainable food production, Paarlberg espouses the very Western, elitist argument that the only definition of “good,” “modern,” or “improved” agricultural inputs are the ones created, patented and sold by big Western biotech companies such as Monsanto, where Paarlberg serves on the Biotechnology Advisory Council (PDF).

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