Oxfam America releases new report on food insecurity

"power above all determines who eats and who does not" (Oxfam America 2011)

“Rising food prices are tightening the squeeze on populations already struggling to buy adequate food, demanding radical reform of the global food system, Oxfam has warned.”

Link to BBC article (31 May 2011)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13597657

Key findings of Oxfam report Growing a Better Future:

  • Traders: Four global companies control the movement of most of the world’s food. Three companies – Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge and Cargill – control an estimated 90 percent of the world’s grain trade. Their activities help drive volatile food prices and they profit from them. In the first quarter of 2008, at the height of a global food price crisis, Cargill’s profits were up 86 percent and the company is now heading for its most profitable year yet on the back of further disruptions to global food supplies.
  • India: Despite doubling the size of it economy between 1990 and 2005 the number of hungry people in India increased by 65 million – more than the population of France – because economic development excluded the rural poor and social protection schemes failed to reach them. Today one in four of the world’s hungry people live in India.
  • The world’s poorest people now spend up to 80% of their incomes on food – with those in the Philippines spending proportionately four times more than those in the UK, for instance – and more people will be pushed into hunger as food prices climb.
  • 5-Point Solution:
    1. Investing in Small-Scale Food Producers
    2. Ending Excessive Speculation in Agricultural Commodities
    3. Modernizing Food Aid
    4. Stopping Giveaways to the Corn-Ethanol Industry
    5. Regulating Land and Water Grabs

Speculators Beware!

The United States’ Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) alleges that two firms in 2008 engaged in illegal oil futures speculation. It has taken about three years, but finally some justice will come from this (albeit limited). If only the same charges can be brought against firms that speculated on food commodities will we see retribution for those that were directly affected by the violence that swept the world during the 2007-2008 global food riots.