Escalating prices move food beyond the reach of the poor

[August]

The Window on Malawi

"I really do not understand why prices keep going up every week. How can one budget when the prices keep changing? Fancy this is only half way into the month but I’m already broke. I have no idea how I’m going to pull through," Mwachande expresses her frustrations, which she shares with a majority of Malawians.

Phil Bloomer, Oxfam’s director of campaigns and policy notes: "Rich world politicians are failing to acknowledge the impact of their own unfair policies. The World Bank estimates that the increases in prices of wheat, rice and maize cost developing countries $324 billion last year alone, which is equivalent to three years of global spending. This is in no ways helping resolve the crisis in Africa. Instead, it is making things more difficult for everyone."

[August]

As the UN prepares to assess the Millennium Development Goals this week, will tension between the consumption of the North and the development of the South doom both to a future of crises and scarcity? Felix Dodds and Michael Strauss argue that allowing the Millennium Goals and their environmental aims to slide would be a false economy.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Sacrificing Millennium Goals would be a real crisis

Calling it the "silent tsunami", Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Programme, described the impact of the food and energy crises like this: "Those people living on less than $2 a day cut out health and education, and kill or sell their livestock.

"Those living on less than $1 a day cut out protein and vegetables from their diet.

"Those living on less than 50 cents a day cut out whole meals, and sometimes go days without meals."

[Peter Bankss]

Its sad to know even in India where they grow begetables and fruits lower class people cannot afford to est them. They just survive by eating grains and children r often depreived of nutrition which leads to various diseases.

Peter Bankss
Save Our Planet

[prashamk]

Originally Posted by Peter Bankss

Its sad to know even in India where they grow begetables and fruits lower class people cannot afford to est them. They just survive by eating grains and children r often depreived of nutrition which leads to various diseases.

Peter Bankss
Save Our Planet

Not only the fruits and vegetables has skyrocketted... Grains and cereals too have followed the pursuit. Everything is damn costly. Mostly the poor, if get money purchase some wheat (why I don't know), onion and if anything to spare, potato.

A friend of mine is suggesting that all the hoopla can be avoided if we go back to our original staple diet sorghum-jowar. Its cheap, easy to grow and needs less water too. Farmers reduced cultivating it as wheat gained popularity prices of sorghum fall like anything.

What do you say?

[August]

Susan George - Transforming the Global Economy: Solutions for a Sustainable World - Transnational Institute

Margaret Thatcher once famously said, “There is no such thing as society”. She thus perfectly embodied the foundations of the neo-liberal ideological programme which should, ideally, prevent us from even thinking about ourselves and others in our natural and social context. We must be taught to believe that we are not citizens or members of a social body but discrete, individual consumers. We are entirely responsible for our own destinies and if we fall by the wayside for whatever reason—illness, job loss, accident, failure, whatever—it’s our own fault. We should have foreseen the case and planned for it. We have no responsibility for other people either. Solidarity is a banished word. Nor are we accountable for the state of the planet—homo sapiens is the only important species and humans are isolated if not immune from natural, physical laws. That’s the essence of the neo-liberal spirit: “You’re on your own” as Barack Obama has been saying to Americans to encapsulate the philosophy of his opponents.

Each of these crises—social, financial, environmental--is negatively linked to the others, they intensify each other with negative feedback; they lead to worst-case scenarios. Let us take just a few examples of these perverse interactions.

The poverty-inequality crisis is a good place to start. This crisis is well documented; no one seriously denies the numbers. The World Bank recently recognised that it had grossly underestimated—by about 400 million—the numbers of the very poor, and even then its figures stop at the year 2005 and don’t include recent upheavals in food and energy costs that have swelled the ranks of the impoverished. Even more important, however, is the fact that for the first time in human history, there is no excuse for mass poverty and deprivation. Taking this assertion seriously already helps to point us towards a solution.

- -- Good grief!!

[August]

Financial crisis threatens efforts towards global anti-poverty targets, says Migiro=

6 October 2008 – Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro has warned countries that the current financial crisis, which is impacting all economies and exacerbating the suffering of millions, is also threatening the efforts to slash poverty, hunger, disease and other socio-economic ills by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

“The financial crisis only exacerbates the hardship already being caused by higher prices of food and energy, especially in low-income countries, fomenting social and political unease,” Ms. Migiro told the General Assembly’s Second Committee, which deals with economic and financial matters.

“Despite the recent announcement by the World Bank that considerable progress has been made in reducing poverty and hunger, our work to achieve the Millennium Development Goals is clearly at risk,” she cautioned.

Ms. Migiro told delegates that they were meeting at a time of financial turmoil, and that urgent action was needed to avert a recession, including through stimulus packages and measures to stabilize financial and foreign exchange markets.

In the midst of the current financial woes, “achieving the MDGs by 2015 continues to be our major development challenge,” the Deputy Secretary-General stated. Although the progress made so far towards the Goals has been uneven, it is still possible to achieve them by the target date, she added.

Noting that Africa remains the region with the greatest challenges ahead, particularly against the backdrop of much higher food and energy prices and climate change, she called for increasing and better coordinating aid, reducing agricultural subsidies in developed countries, and investing more in infrastructure.

“Let’s make sure the financial crisis does not divert our efforts,” she appealed to Member States. “If we are to take away any lesson from the multiple crises we face, it is that delaying action only makes matters worse.”