The World Food Crisis

Published on April 25, 2008

The World Food Crisis

By John Nichols
The Nation
May 12,  2208

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080512/nichols

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.

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.' John Nichols is a co-founder
of
Free Press and the co- author with Robert W. McChesney of TRAGEDY &
FARCE:
How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy
-
The New Press.

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