Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Solving the food crisis: the causes and the solutions

By Eric Holt-Giménez and Loren Peabody - posted Monday, 2 June 2008


Emergency measures are urgently needed to make food accessible to poor people. But so are profound changes to a globalised food system in dire need of reform.

In the immediate term, the World Food Program (WFP) needs $755 million to close its funding gap and make emergency food available. The WFP should purchase this food as locally as possible from smallholders at premium prices, then distribute or sell at accessible prices to people that are too poor to buy it otherwise. This will reactivate the peasant sector, avoid “dumping” of cheap grains from abroad, and reduce the costs of relief, thus getting more food to hungry people.

If accompanied by a strong rural support system of production credit, transport, marketing and distribution, this will rebuild local food systems as it extends relief.

Advertisement

Another way to rebuild national food economies and to improve food security is to implement regulatory mechanisms that stabilise market prices, such as national grain reserves. We can also stabilise prices by supporting the immediate five-year moratorium on biofuels that former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Hunger, Jean Zeigler, has called for.

Another key remedy to address the global food crisis is to prioritise smallholder farming and agroecology. The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology (IAASTD) recently released its final report in Johannesburg, South Africa. The result of an exhaustive four-year international consultation with 400 experts (similar to that of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), the IAASTD calls for an overhaul of agriculture dominated by multinational companies and governed by unfair trade rules.

The report avoids genetically engineered “fixes” for food production and emphasises the importance of locally-based, agroecological approaches to farming.

The key advantages to this way of farming - aside from its low environmental impact - is that it provides both food and employment to the world’s poor, plus a surplus for the market. On a pound-per-acre basis, these small family farms have proven themselves to be more productive than large-scale industrial farms. And they use less oil, especially if food is traded locally or sub-regionally.

These alternatives, growing throughout the world, are like small islands of sustainability in increasingly perilous economic and environmental seas. As industrialised farming and free trade regimes fail us, these approaches will be key to building resilience back into a dysfunctional global food system.

Expecting solutions from the institutions that created the disaster in the first place is like calling an arsonist to put out the fire. Getting the poor back on the land and providing them the support presently being captured by the world’s agri-foods monopolies would be a truly systemic and durable solution to our current global food crisis.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. Page 3
  5. All


Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

8 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Authors

Eric Holt-Giménez is Executive Director of Food First, Institute for Food and Development Policy. Eric is the author of the latest Food First Book, Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture which chronicles the development of this movement in Mexico and Central America over two and a half decades.

Loren Peabody is an intern at the Food First, Institute for Food and Development Policy.

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Article Tools
Comment 8 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy