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Food Insecurity in Pakistan Outline
1. Preambulary remarks
2. Overview
3. Causes
i. Land degradation and desertification
ii. Waterlogging problems
iii. Inefficient and insufficient use of irrigation of water
iv. Global wheat crisis
v. Use of low quality seed
vi. Adulteration
vii. Improper use of fertilizers
viii. Income inequity
ix. Black marketing
x. Hoarding and price hike
xi. Financial limitations
xii. Decline in agricultural investment
xiii. Lethargic role of Agricultural Development Bank
xiv. Inter-regional inequality
xv. Poor rural infrastructure
xvi. Overpopulation and food inflation
xvii. Poor disaster management
xviii. Conflicts
xix. Global food prices
xx. Droughts
xxi. Climatic changes
xxii. Low grain reserves
xxiii. High oil prices
xxiv. Diversion of cereals to agro fuels
xxv. Food sovereignty
xxvi.
4. Impacts
i. Growing militancy
ii. Security threat
iii. Socio-political instability
iv. Indifference to the progress of the country
v. Rebellious attitude of people
vi. Extraordinary behavior
vii. Poverty
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viii. Child labor
ix. Illiteracy
x. Malnutrition
xi.
5. Mitigation measures
i. Prioritization with futuristic approach
ii. Development of national food security strategy
iii. Periodical food security analysis
iv. Good governance
v. Reduced regional disparity
vi. Check on price hike
vii. Agricultural investment
viii. Efficient disaster management
ix. Food security as the peace building strategy
x.
6. Recapitulation
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Words Meanings
Hoarding coupled with hike in prices
Aggravate
Playing havoc
Dietary needs
Panic is being created.
Casting a shadow
Reliable gauge
Production and distribution systems are inequitable.
Low income coupled with a higher rate of unemployment.
Chronic problem of payment deficit
Plight
Unprecedented
Toil all the day round
Distortionary policy
Spikes in the price of necessary food items
Compounding
Most of the land is under cultivation and more could be
cultivated.
depleting soil fertility, soil erosion, water logging and
salinity
Financial constraints
Pose a grave threat
Commensurate
Compelling
Exasperate
Owing to short supply of electricity, many industries have been
and are being closed, rendering thousands of poor people
unemployed.
Food security anywhere, threatens peace everywhere.
Heinous (Atrocious, Flagitious) crimes
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Allegiance
Prevalence
Intensify
Desperation, Frustration
Food inflation
Grim
They send them to work to keep the stove of their family
lit.
Swamp of crime
Illiteracy begets social evils.
Alleviate
This is a time to move from talk to action.
Paradigm
Chalked out
The impact of increased food prices should be passed on to
growers, by controlling the prices of inputs and ensuring that
important inputs are available in time.
Procurement
Vision without action is daydream and action without vision is
pastime.
War footing the condition of being prepared to undertake or
maintain war
Unmet
Fostering
The food crisis appeared to explode overnight, reinforcing fears
that there are just too many people in the world.
World Hunger Programs executive director Josette Sheeran, There
is food on the shelves but people are priced out of the market.
Malthusian concerns about population sizes outstripping resource
availability.
Proximate causes of food price inflation
Worsening environments
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Food dumping selling goods abroad at a price below that charged
in the domestic market
Falling commodity prices
Terminator technology
As professor Richard Robbins notes, food is a commodity.
If you dont have the money to buy food, no one is going to grow
it for you.
Agro-alimentary multinationals
Staple food
Transnational corporations have become accomplices.
Broad strata of the population
Conjuncture reasons
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FOOD CRISIS
OUTLINE:
Introduction
Definition Of Food Crisis
Food Security Status In Pakistan
Unavailability Of Food
Instability Of Food Supplies
Low Access To Food
Incidence Of Food Poverty
Income Inequality
Inequity Of Food Distribution
Causes Of Food Crisis
Devastating floods In Pakistan
Global Wheat Crisis
Land Related Problems
Inefficient And Ineffective Use Of Irrigation Water
Use Of Low Quality Seed
Improper Use Of Fertilizers
CreditFinancial Limitations
Inter-regional Inequity
Poor Rural Infrastructure
Overpopulation And Food Inflation
Impacts of Food Crisis On Society
Growing Militancy
Security Threat
Socio-political Instability
Extraordinary BehaviourSelling Of Kidneys, Suicides etc.
Poverty
Child Labour
Illiteracy
Suggestions
Conclusion
ESSAY:
Food is the basic need and right of all the human beings. It is
the responsibility of a state to
provide the masses with food and other basic needs. Pakistan is
an agricultural country.
Agricultural sector, being the second biggest sector and
employing almost 45% labour
force, is an asset for our country. This sector has been
instrumental not only in feeding the
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local people but also exporting the food commodities to the
other countries. When the basic
necessities and needs are met people divert all their energies
towards the betterment of the
country. But, the people entangled in the crises of basic
commodities of life are indifferent
of the progress of the country. Along with other crises,
Pakistan also suffers from food crisis
which is quite unfortunate and shocking. People have to stand in
queues for hours for
getting a bag of flour. Sugar is getting out of their reach. It
is quite unacceptable for an
agriculture country like ours to face the shortages in food
commodities like wheat, rice,
sugar, vegetables etc. Hoarding coupled with hike in the prices
in global as well as local
markets are depriving poor people of food. Recent floods also
gave a serious blow to our
agriculture sector which further aggravated the situation.
Nevertheless the mismanagement
in this sector matters a lot in terms of shortage of food. Land
related problems, water
mismanagement, use of low quality seed are playing havoc with
our precious sector of
agriculture and causing food crisis.
Food crisis can be defined as When all the people at all times
do not have physical and
economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet
the dietary needs and food
for performance of an active and healthy life.
Food availability is the first and foremost important factor for
food security. But it is
declining in Pakistan. It is the responsibility of the Food
Department to ensure food
availability. Unfortunately, it has failed in controlling
prices, black-marketing and hoarding
of essential commodities. Owing to mishandling of essential food
commodities by food
department and hoarding by big dealers, panic is being created.
It is also casting a shadow
and negative effect on the access of food by the population.
Per capita availability of food items alone is not a reliable
gauge of the food security
situation. Available food if not in the socio-economic access of
the general masses, cannot
make a society food secure. There are a number of factors that
restrict the access to food
for millions of poor people in Pakistan. First, production and
distribution systems are
inequitable, second, low income coupled with a higher rate of
unemployment and third an
important factor affecting access to food is poor
governance.
Agriculture sector plays a very vital role for ensuring
stability of food supplies. Any shortfall
in the production of food crops causes problem. Such problem is
met through imports. But
the country is facing a chronic problem of payment deficit and
foreign exchange problem.
So such steps cannot assure supplies of food all the year and
all over the
country. Incidences of unstable food supplies are very frequent
in our country. The
short availability of supply of some basic food items (i.e.
Atta) is very common in Pakistan
which affects stability of food supplies.
More than half of the population of Pakistan lives below poverty
line. Government, instead
of supplying free food grains, keeps on raising food prices
irrespective of the plight of the
poor masses. Due to unprecedented hikes in the prices, the food
is getting out of the reach
of the masses. This is culminating in the food poverty in
Pakistan.
In Pakistan income inequality is not only high but is also
increasing. Such inequality in
land holding and income is reducing the purchasing power of the
people. The people who
toil all the day round do not earn enough to have a safe and
secure food. There is great
income gap between the rich and the poor. The poor who work hard
all the day long hardly
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afford two times meal while the people who are unaware what the
hard work is possess all
the luxuries of life. Inequity in food distribution is another
major issue of concern related to
food security in Pakistan.
Many factors contribute to the dramatic increase in food prices.
At the international
level, it is because of the expansion in biofuel and the record
increase in oil prices. In
Pakistan, it is due to distortionary policy responses leading to
a long decline in agricultural
investment resulting in limited capacity to produce more
food.
The devastating floods in Pakistan, which have killed around
1,500 and displaced nearly
20 million, have also adversely impacted the food supply chains.
Nearly 17 million acres of
cultivated cropland has been lost to floods while the loss of
livestock could also be in
millions. The loss of crops from floods alone can cause huge
spikes in the price of necessary
food items because of uncertainty in the supply of grains,
livestock, etc. At the same time,
almost 75 per cent of those affected by floods are the ones who
relied on agriculture for
sustenance.
Another reason behind high food prices, especially wheat, is the
global wheat crisis which
has caused the wheat prices to increase by 90 per cent since
June 2010.The drought in
Russia has contributed to severe wheat shortages leading Russia
to ban all wheat exports.
Compounding this even further is the loss of wheat crop in China
and India due to monsoon
rains.
Pakistan has a very productive land and has a great potential
for the production of food
crops. Most of the land is under cultivation and more could be
cultivated. But unfortunately,
theland related problems like depleting soil fertility, soil
erosion, water logging and
salinity are badly reducing our food crops production
capacity.
Out of the total cultivated land about 80% is irrigate through
canal water, while the
remaining is rain fed. Due to ineffective and inefficient use of
irrigation water has
created problems. Along with it, mismanagement of available
water resources has deprived
provinces of their legitimate share and has adversely affected
agriculture yield.
Use of improved seed is one of the important factors in crop
productivity enhancement. But
sadly, the use of low quality seed by illiterate and
inexperienced farmers reduces the
productions. It is a great hurdle in the way of attaining the
targeted food crop productions.
Hence it further adds to the shortage of food.
Proper use of organic and inorganic fertilizers is also critical
for maintaining soil fertility to
enhance agriculture productivity. The current use of plant
nutrients is not only
imbalanced and inadequate but also inefficient as well.
Due to financial limitations, the small farmers are largely
dependent on credit to procure
agriculture inputs. Financial constraints limit the farmers
capacity to fully utilize the
cultivable land. Limited utilization of cultivable land is
aggravating the availability of food
situation.
There are severe inequalities between the districts of the same
provinces. In spite of
adequate food production at the national level severe food
shortages have been
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experienced. These shortages pose a grave threat to food
security in the country.
Rural infrastructure and human resources development are
necessary for public goods and
ensuring food security. Lack of rural roads, electricity,
drinking water and
educational and health facilities add to food insecurity.
Growing population is also aggravating the status of food
insecurity in Pakistan. Due to
various hurdles the production of food crops does not
commensurate with the growing
number of people in the country. This imbalance is compelling
people especially the poor to
reduce their intake of food. Population increase coupled with
low investment has
exasperated the food insecurity situation.
Last but not least, energy crisis is further contributing in
food insecurity. Owing to short
supply of electricity, many industries have been and are being
closed, rendering thousands
of poor people unemployed. Unemployment reduces earning and in
turn purchasing power
of the people. Low purchasing power coupled with increasing food
prices are making even a
one-time meal hard to afford for the poor.
It is often said, Food insecurity anywhere, threatens peace
everywhere. Food insecurity
may cause unrest or even political instability. Persistent food
insecurity may cause conflicts,
civil wars and can threaten the overall peace of community,
society, nation or world
depending on the extent and spectrum of hunger and poverty.
Food insecurity is the major cause of militancy and violence. In
Pakistan some
extremist forces are exploiting the feelings of lower and lower
middle class food insecure
people. They are motivating their unemployed youth to commit
heinous crimes such as
suicide attacks against innocent people.
Compromised security at individual level compromises the
security at nation, regional and
global level. Food insecurity heightens the potential for
conflicts, which translate into
a security threat. Individual cases of relative hunger,
marginalization and poverty can turn
into collective deprivation. This deprivation when gets an
identity crisis, be it creed,
genders, class or nationality, always leads to class conflict
and ultimately to violence.
Hunger is such a force which provokes people to rebel against
the state. When the basic
needs of the masses are not met they turn against the state and
tend to destabilize the
socio-political fabric of the country. A county which fails to
deliver its masses is bound
to face instability. Allegiance from the masses towards the
country becomes a daydream.
Such circumstances affect regional as well as global
security.
High prevalence of food insecurity leads to intensified
extraordinary behaviour of
individuals. This extraordinary behaviour includes selling of
kidneys, selling of children and
suicides. This situation results in large numbers of individuals
who might get to any lengths
in sheer desperation and frustration. Many of them commit
suicide to end their misery.
Others kill their dependents, to whom they cannot even afford to
prove a square meal.
Another impact of food inflation and food crisis is that the
poor people have to spend more
than 80% of their meagre income on food items. It leaves behind
not much for them to
have other amenities of life. They even cannot afford education
and health
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facilities. Increasing poverty is directly linked with food
inflation which makes it hard for
the poor masses to make their both ends meet.
In the grim situation poor people send their children at work in
an early age. Instead of
equipping their young ones with education, they send them to
work to keep the stove of
their family lit. Child labour is not only wasting our precious
talent but also dragging the
young children into the swamp of crime. It is further resulting
in other social problems.
As mentioned earlier that after spending on food, there leaves
nothing for the poor people
spend on the education of their children. This adds to
illiteracy. Illiteracy begets social evils.
Education means to alleviate poverty and cause social change.
Low standard of education in
our country is casting a shadow on the prospects of our country.
People entangled in
financial woes do not consider education important.
The food price increases have led to an alarming situation that
the world is reaching a
danger point where soaring food prices could lead to political
instability. This is a time to
move from talk to action. This is a time to make the right
policy choices that may ensure
food is accessible to the most vulnerable in Pakistan and
simultaneously helping producers
to raise their output and increase their income. Here are some
suggestions:
The situation requires a paradigm change where individual hunger
be perceived as a
national security threat. Such a paradigm shift would result in
greater resources being
channelled to improve food security.
National Food Security Strategy (NFSS) should be chalked out to
address the issues of
food insecurity in Pakistan.
Productivity levels should be improved through investment in
research, extension, and
communication and irrigation infrastructure.
Climate change is a certain phenomenon affecting the global
temperature and rainfall
pattern. Sustained investments in agricultural research to
develop new varieties that are
better adapted to the changing climate are need of the day.
The impact of increased food prices should be passed on to
growers, by controlling the
prices of inputs and ensuring that important inputs are
available in time.
Districts classified as extremely food insecure or food insecure
should be targeted with
special production programmes in order to bring them at par with
other districts.
The agriculture sector is heavily dependent on canal irrigation
in Pakistan. There is a need
to make sustainable plans for the conservation and efficient use
of water.
A food security analysis should be undertaken on a regular
basis, at least after every two
years.
Strengthening the social safety nets, the process of
identification of food insecure people,
and process of delivery of social safety benefits is a must to
ensure access to food for an
extremely food insecure population.
In order to reduce regional disparity among provinces regarding
prices of food
commodities, the Federal Government should play a vital role. A
revolving fund for food
deficit provinces, especially for wheat procurement by
provinces, should be established.
Good governance is essential to ensure that food is accessible
to the people.
It is observed that the conflict-hit areas throughout the world
including the FATA region
are the most food insecure regions. It is strongly suggested
that assuring food security
should be adapted as a peace building strategy in these
areas.
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It can be concluded that the vision without action is daydream
and action without vision is
pastime. The government of Pakistan must deal with this issue on
war footing. Unless this
basic need food is left unmet, the people cannot divert their
energies and loyalties
towards the country. People uncertain of how and where their
next meal will come from can
never be patriotic. It is time that the government of Pakistan
and its international partners
step up activities that not only strengthen livelihood, assets
and activities but also address
domestic governance issue. Without addressing the governance
problems issue of socio-
economic justice that leads both to food insecurity as well as
militancy cannot be addressed.
The international community should start investing in developing
the social and human
capital of the chronically food insecure people of the Federally
Administered Tribal Area
(FATA), Baluchistan as well as Khaibar Pakhtunkhwas conflict hit
people. This would not
only directly aid those harmed because of the ongoing military
operation, but go some way
towards fostering a more stable environment.
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Food Insecurity in Pakistan Outline
1. Preambulary remarks
2. Overview
3. Causes
i. Land degradation and desertification
ii. Waterlogging problems
iii. Inefficient and insufficient use of irrigation of water
iv. Global wheat crisis
v. Use of low quality seed
vi. Adulteration
vii. Improper use of fertilizers
viii. Income inequity
ix. Black marketing
x. Hoarding and price hike
xi. Financial limitations
xii. Decline in agricultural investment
xiii. Lethargic role of Agricultural Development Bank
xiv. Inter-regional inequality
xv. Poor rural infrastructure
xvi. Overpopulation and food inflation
xvii. Poor disaster management
xviii. Conflicts
xix. Global food prices
xx. Droughts
xxi. Climatic changes
xxii. Low grain reserves
xxiii. High oil prices
xxiv. Diversion of cereals to agro fuels
xxv. Food sovereignty
xxvi.
4. Impacts
i. Growing militancy
ii. Security threat
iii. Socio-political instability
iv. Indifference to the progress of the country
v. Rebellious attitude of people
vi. Extraordinary behavior
vii. Poverty
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viii. Child labor
ix. Illiteracy
x. Malnutrition
xi.
5. Mitigation measures
i. Prioritization with futuristic approach
ii. Development of national food security strategy
iii. Periodical food security analysis
iv. Good governance
v. Reduced regional disparity
vi. Check on price hike
vii. Agricultural investment
viii. Efficient disaster management
ix. Food security as the peace building strategy
x.
6. Recapitulation
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Preambulary Remarks
Population explosion occurs if the number of people in a group
exceeds the carrying
capacity of the region occupied by that group. It demonstrates a
relationship between population
and the environment. It is possible for very sparsely populated
areas to be overpopulated if the
area has a meager or nonexistent capability to sustain life.
Population is considered as an asset for a country. But it turns
to be a burden when
increases uncontrollably especially for developing
countries.
Malthus stated that in the race between increasing population
and increasing production,
population must eventually win.
Population growth is a complex issue that directly or indirectly
impacts all aspects of our
lives and the conditions under which we live from the
environment and global stability to
women's health and empowerment. Population control or population
welfare, if you want to
be genteel is the buzzword today.
Overview
Since the end of Black Death, around the year 1350, population
is growing continuously.
But in the last 50 year, an exponential increase can be
observed. It is due to the medical
advancements and increase in agricultural productivity. As of
May 19, 2015 the worlds human
population is estimated to be 7.245 billion by the United States
Census Bureau and over 7 billion
by the United Nations. Most contemporary estimates for the
carrying capacity of the Earth under
existing conditions are between 4 billion and 6 billion.
The problem of over-population becomes even more serious in
context of the developing
countries like Pakistan. The population boom has not only
resulted in an economic upheaval in
developing countries rather it is also the primary cause of
environmental degradation. The
biological threat of ever increasing population has ushered in
an era of shortage of safe drinking
water, diminishing forest resources, climate change due to
depletion of ozone layer among other
things.
Causes
The root causes for overpopulation are multifaceted and complex.
From a historical
perspective, technological revolutions have coincided with
population explosions. There have
been three major technological revolutions: the tool making
revolution, the agricultural
revolution and the industrial revolution. All of these allowed
humans more access to food.
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Significant increases in human population occur whenever the
birth rate exceeds the
death rate for extended periods of time. Increase in births is
observed due to improved
sanitation, child immunization and advancements in medicine.
Illiteracy is the major cause of overpopulation. Those lacking
education fail to understand
the need to prevent excessive growth of population. They are
unable to understand the harmful
effects that overpopulation has. Lack of family planning is
commonly seen in the illiterate lot of
the world. In Pakistans rural areas, there is a trend of large
families and due to the lack of
awareness and proper knowledge people go on producing more and
more children.
Thanks to science for its contribution, on one hand it is saving
the lives of people but if
we look it on other hand it is playing a negative role to
population growth.
Along with it, the rapid growth in population can be attributes
to the custom of early
marriages in our society. More than half of the population of
Pakistan lives in rural areas. In rural
areas, due to ignorance, people have a conservative approach.
They prefer early age marriages
for their children. They do so to prevent them from indulging in
immoral activities. Child marriage
not only affects the health of the couple but also the child
they give birth to.
The trend of polygamy is also responsible for this problem.
Polygamy is the most common
in our rural areas. In rural areas people prefer to have more
than one wife at a time. This
inclination of people further aggravates the situation of
population in the country. Likewise,
improper usage of contraceptive method has contributed
negatively.
Preference of male child over female infant has deteriorated the
existing situation of
backward countries. Again the religious zeal, inculcated into
the minds of illiterate class at the
hands of pseudo orthodox contributes very harmful effects on
ever increasing population. The
one of the reason described by these orthodox not to interfere
in the work of creator.
The failure of proper implementation of governments Population
Planning Policies is the
major cause of population growth. Many policies have been
formulated up till now. But none of
them has produced the desired results.
There are many challenges to population planning implementation
in Pakistan. In
Pakistan, the cultural and religious institutions consider
family planning a very wrong deed. This
misinterpretation by religious scholars is the primary reason
why many areas of Pakistan are still
devoid of family planning centers. Misconception, rumors and
false propaganda about family
planning practices are also among the common reasons.
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Impacts
Inadequate fresh water for drinking as well as sewage treatment
and effluent discharge
which causes the usage of energy expensive desalination to solve
the problem of water
shortages.
It results in the depletion of natural resources especially
fossil fuels. The ever increased
pollution is the outcome of population explosion which also
creates hazardous health issues.
Deforestation and loss of ecosystems that valuably contribute to
the global atmospheric
oxygen are the impacts of population explosion. It is estimated
that about eight million hectares
of forest are lost each year. Deforestation becomes a cause in
atmospheric composition and
consequent global warming.
One of the major cause of population explosion is the loss of
arable land and an increase
in desertification. People having smaller farms have no other
choice but to mitigate in hope for
better life. This leads to urbanization, which itself is a major
social problem.
In tropical forests, shifting cultivators use the slash-and-burn
techniques which reduces
the habitat and results in the mass species extinction. It is a
sort of swidden-fallow agriculture.
Mass species extinctions from reduced habitat in tropical
forests due to slash-and-burn
techniques that sometimes are practiced by shifting cultivators,
especially in countries with
rapidly expanding rural populations.
High rates of infant mortality are associated with poverty. Rich
countries with high
population densities have low rates of infant mortality.
Intensive factory farming is adopted to support large
populations. But it results in human
threats including the evolution and spread of antibiotic
resistant bacteria diseases, excessive air
and water pollution, and new viruses that infect humans.
There is an increased chance of the emergence of new epidemics
and pandemics. The
poor are more likely to be exposed to infectious diseases.
Starvation, malnutrition are the afflictions of population
growth with ill health and diet-
deficiency diseases.
Overpopulation has contributed towards an increase in a number
of social evils, like
lawlessness, crime and corruption. The fight over resources has
divided the society into groups
i.e. one who possess all and the other who fight for its mere
survival. Elevated crime rates are
observed due to drug cartels and increased theft by people
stealing resources to survive
Overpopulation has also contributed to the unhygienic living
conditions for many based
upon water resource depletion, discharge of raw sewage and solid
waste disposal.
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Conflict over scarce resources and crowding, leading to
increased levels of warfare. Laws
regulate interactions between humans. It was even speculated by
Aldous Huxley in 1958 that
democracy is threatened due to overpopulation, and could give
rise to totalitarian style
governments.
Mitigation Measures
Despite the adverse effects of rapidly growing population, the
government of Pakistan
can mitigate these effects and can achieve control on
population.
Family planning facilities be made a part of health facilities.
There should be a greater role
for local and provincial governments. Role of NGOs and doctors
in disbursement of Aid received
for family planning should be increased. Males should be urged
to cooperate more. Status of
women be raised in society as done by present government by
giving more seats in assemblies.
A combination of government regulation and technological
innovation causes pollution
to decline substantially, even as the population continues to
grow. Deforestation and
desertification can be reversed by adopting property rights, and
this policy is successful.
Unhygienic living conditions can be reduced by the adoption of
sewers. Better health and
educational facilities be provided for women. Issue to be taken
as a nation crisis.
Overpopulation is an insidious, chronic, long term situation
that has been in the making
for generations. Like hypertension, it doesn't kill you
directly; instead, it raises all other risk
factors and lowers the quality of life.
The Modernization of agriculture through farm mechanization,
proper management of
land and water resources, improved varieties of seeds, taking
plant protection measures and use
of fertilizers can increase the agricultural productivity
manifold. The rise in the income of the
farmers will raise their standard of living and help in reducing
the birth rate indirectly.
The government should help and encourage the people living in
rural and urban areas to
set up small, medium and large scale industries. The setting up
of industrial states, the provision
of fiscal incentives etc. create conditions for rapid
industrialization in the country The
engagement of surplus labor force in industries and other
gainful employments raises their
standard of living and motivates the workers to restrict the
size of the family.
More than 70% of the people are living in rural areas. The
government should provide
credit and know-how to the dating up these and other industries
will discourage the migration
of farmers from countryside to cities, provide them employment
at home, raise their income
level and will help in the reduction of birth rate
indirectly.
The family planning programmer all over the world is considered
an effective measure in
controlling population explosion. The public information
programmers arousing consciousness
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and explaining the usefulness of family planning among people
have helped in restricting the rate
of growth of population. The establishment of family planning
centers, the research ventures
have played an effective role in limiting the size of family.
Role of media be encouraged especially
in rural areas. Government programs should involve Ulemas and
NGOs.
In the 1970s, Gerard O'Neill suggested building space habitats
that could support 30,000
times the carrying capacity of Earth using just the asteroid
belt and that the Solar System as a
whole could sustain current population growth rates for a
thousand years. Freeman Dyson, in
1999, favors the Kuiper belt as the future home of humanity,
suggesting this could happen within
a few centuries. Although it is a futuristic approach yet it is
the need of the hour.
Population Welfare Program
In 1953, the Family Planning Association of Pakistan
(Non-Government Organization)
initiated few clinics to provide family planning services.
During the second plan period (1960-65)
the Population Welfare Programme was started by the Ministry of
Health but the programme did
not show adequate progress.
Finally an autonomous Family Planning Council was created in
1965 to run the
programme independently. At that time the annual crude birth
rate was around 45 per thousand
and death rate was around 18 per thousand whereas the net growth
rate was 2.7 per cent per
annum. The overall execution and entire funding of this Program
is the responsibility of the
Federal Government.
The Ministry of Population Welfare is the main executing agency
of the national program
while implementation of field activities is the responsibility
of the Population Welfare
Departments in each of the four Provinces of Pakistan.
Overpopulation is a blessing in disguise
Despite all odds, overpopulation is maintaining a healthy growth
rate and this is mainly
because of strong export and remittance earning. This huge
earning has not only fattened our
foreign reserves but also helped us to have a favorable balance
of payment. The architects of this
achievement are our people, who went abroad as unskilled and
semi-skilled workers.
At present, unskilled and semi-skilled people are working
abroad. If these people were all skilled
like nurses, electricians, drivers, medical assistants or
professionals like doctors, engineers,
lawyers, IT specialists, etc. just imagine what impact it would
have had on our foreign exchange
earnings.
This overpopulation, all of a sudden, will appear to be a
blessing in disguise if we can take
a right action. Many developed countries have a negative
population growth rate and
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overpopulated countries like Bangladesh can fill that gap. They
are already filling this gap by
recruiting people from other countries but not many from our
country.
Overpopulation is a blessing in disguise because there are many
young people that can
contribute their fresh and brilliant ideas besides energy to the
country. Their contributions might
help the thriving country to develop. If their body and mind's
strength are fully utilized, it is
inevitably sure that poverty issue is able to curb as the
country's economy grew rapidly.
To sum up, overpopulation might gave many advantages yet I
believed the negative
impacts cannot be counterbalanced by its benefits in the future.
Overpopulation needs to be
addressed to people so that wise steps can be taken before its
too late.
Recapitulation
Pakistan today is standing at the crossroads. What is need of
the hour is vision and sincere
leadership that could transform dreams into reality. The problem
of population has started to
haunt us and unless we tackle it pragmatically our dream of
bright and glorious future will just
remain a pious wish. It needs a multi-pronged attack with
overpopulation. A strong Pakistan
should be our first priority. If we have to make certain hard
decisions for its accomplishment no
one should hesitate to lead and pull the trigger. Indeed,
Pakistan comes first even before our
personal vested interests.
But
With the commencement of the new millennium the population
welfare programme has
also taken a new turn. This turn in policy is a shift from the
focus on fertility towards a more
comprehensive approach of integrating family planning with
reproductive health and also
addressing wider range of concerns, especially economic status,
education and gender equality.
One of the major achievements of the Cairo Conference has been
the recognition of the need to
empower women, both as being highly important in itself and as a
key to improving the quality
of life for everyone. It also emphasizes that men have a key
role to play in bringing about gender
equality, in fostering women's full participation in development
and in improving women's
reproductive health.
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Global Food Crisis 2008 Food prices have been rising for a
while. In some countries this has resulted in food riots and in the
case of Haiti where food prices increased by 50-100%, the Prime
Minister was forced out of office. Elsewhere people have been
killed, and many more injured. While media reports have been
concentrating on the immediate causes, the deeper issues and causes
have not been discussed as much.
Rising Food Prices
Reporting for the Institute for Food and Development Policy
(also known as Food First), Eric Holt-
Gimnez and Loren Peabody summarized the rises:
The World Bank reports that global food prices rose 83% over the
last three years and the FAO cites a 45%
increase in their world food price index during just the past
nine months. The Economists comparable index
stands at its highest point since it was originally formulated
in 1845. As of March 2008, average world wheat
prices were 130% above their level a year earlier, soy prices
were 87% higher, rice had climbed 74%, and
maize was up 31%.
Eric Holt-Gimnez and Loren Peabody, From Food Rebellions to Food
Sovereignty: Urgent call to fix a
broken food system, Institute for Food and Development Policy,
May 16, 2008
Food Prices Or Overpopulation?
Holt-Gimnez and Peabody summarize the issue quite well:
The food crisis appeared to explode overnight, reinforcing fears
that there are just too many people in the
world. But according to the FAO, with record grain harvests in
2007, there is more than enough food in the
world to feed everyoneat least 1.5 times current demand. In
fact, over the last 20 years, food production has
risen steadily at over 2.0% a year, while the rate of population
growth has dropped to 1.14% a year. Population
is not outstripping food supply. Were seeing more people hungry
and at greater numbers than before, says
World Hunger Programs executive director Josette Sheeran, There
is food on the shelves but people are
priced out of the market.
Eric Holt-Gimnez and Loren Peabody, From Food Rebellions to Food
Sovereignty: Urgent call to fix a
broken food system, Institute for Food and Development Policy,
May 16, 2008
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The overpopulation argument seems like an obvious one, but when
considering who consumes what,
in what quantities and whether much use of resources are
actually productive or not suggests that
there may be other issues, though overpopulation concerns could
become real at some point.
For example,
A lot of land goes into producing products that could be
considered unnecessary or excessive in their
production (e.g. tobacco, sugar, beef, biofuels, urbanization,
etc).
Some 80% of the worlds production is consumed by the wealthiest
20% of the world suggesting an
inequality in resource use due to social, economic and political
reasons, and perhaps less because of
Malthusian concerns about population sizes outstripping resource
availability in most cases.
Furthermore, while many go hungry an equally large number are
considered obese.
These aspects are discussed in more depth on this sites sections
on consumption, hunger and
population and poverty and hunger.
Causes: Short Term Issues And Long Term Fundamental Problems
How has this recent crisis reached this point? As Holt-Gimnez
and Peabody note, there have been
angry demonstrations against high food prices in countries that
formerly had food surpluses.
Immediate Factors For The Food Crisis
A number of immediate factors include the following:
Droughts in major wheat-producing countries in 2005-06
Low grain reserves (according to Holt-Gimnez and Peabody, we
have less than 54 days worth,
globally)
High oil prices
A doubling of per-capita meat consumption in some developing
countries
Diversion of 5% of the worlds cereals to agrofuels.
The above range of issues have been the subject of much
mainstream media attention. For example, there has
been some debate as to how much of an impact the recent rise in
biofuels has actually contributed to the rising
prices.
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Rich Countries Wrongly Play Down Impact Of Biofuels
The US and some European countries have often insisted that the
impact of biofuels on the food crisis has been
small. It seems that this claim has been self-serving, because
of interests in the biofuel industry. Yet, based on
the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far,
Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%far more than
previously estimatedaccording to a
confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.
The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims
that plant-derived fuels contribute less than
3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments
in Washington and across Europe, which have
turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse
gases and reduce their dependence on imported
oil.
Senior development sources believe the report, completed in
April, has not been published to avoid
embarrassing President George Bush.
Aditya Chakrabortty, Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis;
Internal World Bank study delivers blow to
plant energy drive, The Guardian, July 4, 2008
Rich countries have attempted instead to blame demand from
rising poorer countries as a bigger cause.
President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand
from India and China, but the leaked World
Bank study disputes that: Rapid income growth in developing
countries has not led to large increases in
global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible
for the large price increases.
Aditya Chakrabortty, Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis;
Internal World Bank study delivers blow to
plant energy drive, The Guardian, July 4, 2008
The report mentions the following ways in which biofuels have
distorted food markets:
Grain has been diverted away from food, to fuel; (Over a third
of US corn is now used to produce
ethanol; about half of vegetable oils in the EU goes towards the
production of biodiesel);
Farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel
production;
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The rise in biofuels has sparked financial speculation in
grains, driving prices up higher.
The World Bank has also estimated that an additional 100 million
more people have been driven into hunger
because of the rising food prices. Another institute, the
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
estimates that 30% of the increase in the prices of the major
grains is due to biofuels. In other words, biofuels
may be responsible for some 30-75 million additional people
being driven into hunger.
With such large numbers of destruction, it is understandable why
politically the US and EU may wish to
publicly minimize the impact of biofuels.
Deeper, Long Term Causes Of The Food Crisis
However, as Holt-Gimnez and Peabody importantly add, all these
causes are only the proximate causes of
food price inflation. These factors do not explain whyin an
increasingly productive and affluent global food
systemnext year up to one billion people will likely go hungry.
To solve the problem of hunger, we need to
address the root cause of the food crisis: the corporate
monopolization of the worlds food systems.
What the authors are alluding to is the following:
The dominance of the richer nations and companies in the
international arena has had a tremendous impact on
agriculture, which, for many poor countries forms one of the
main sources of income. A combination of unfair
trade agreements, concentrated ownership of major food
production, dominance (through control and influence
in institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and the World Trade
Organisation) has meant that poor countries
have seen their ability to determine their own food security
policies severely undermined.
Policies such as structural adjustment demanded by these
institutions meant most developing countries had to
not only cut back on health and education, but food stamps and
other support for the very poor. Trade barriers
and other support mechanisms for local industry were also often
required to be removed, allowing foreign
companies to more easily compete, often being at an advantage as
they would typically be larger
multinationals with more resources and experiences.
By comparison, richer countries have hardly reduced their
barriers in return. In addition, most poor
countries were strongly encouraged to concentrate more on
exporting cash crops to earn foreign
exchange in order to pay of debts. This resulting reduction in
biodiversity of crops and related
ecosystems meant worsening environments and clearing more land
or increasing fertilizer use to try
and make up for this.
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Increasing poverty and inequality thus fueled corruption making
the problem even worse.Food
dumping (while calling it aid) by wealthy nations onto poor
countries, falling commodity prices (when
many poor countries had to compete against each other to sell
primarily to the rich), vast agricultural
subsidies in North America and Europe (outdoing the foreign aid
they sent, many time over) have all
combined to have various effects such as forcing farmers out of
business and into city slums.
Meanwhile, crop biodiversity dwindled during the promise of the
Green Revolution, which also
increased chemical input, environmental degradation and felling
of forests to bring more land into
production.
Food security has reduced as a result and many countries are
less able to do things if they want to.
Holt-Gimnez and Peabody are worth quoting again, this time on
the impacts of concentrated
ownership:
The expansion of industrial agri-foods crippled food production
in the Global South and emptied the
countryside of valuable human resources. But as long as cheap,
subsidized grain from the industrial north kept
flowing, the agri-foods complex grew, consolidating control of
the worlds food systems in the hands of fewer
and fewer grain, seed, chemical and petroleum companies. Today
three companies, Archer Daniels Midland,
Cargill, and Bunge control the worlds grain trade. Chemical
giant Monsanto controls three-fifths of seed
production. Unsurprisingly, in the last quarter of 2007, even as
the world food crisis was breaking, Archer
Daniels Midlands profits jumped 20%, Monsanto 45%, and Cargill
60%. Recent speculation with food
commodities has created another dangerous boom. After buying up
grains and grain futures, traders are
hoarding, withholding stocks and further inflating prices.
Eric Holt-Gimnez and Loren Peabody, From Food Rebellions to Food
Sovereignty: Urgent call to fix a
broken food system, Institute for Food and Development Policy,
May 16, 2008
Genetically modified foods also increasingly came to be seen as
a technical savior. If it worked, food
could be grown with higher yields and in places where natural
conditions are usually unfavorable.
With increasing threats of climate change, it would seem this
technology is potentially more
important.
Yet, environmentalists from rich countries have raised concerns
about the effect on nature if some
GM varieties cross-breed with natural varieties, the effect on
other aspects of biodversity etc.
Technically, some have found that promised high yields are not
always the case.
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From developing countries the concern has been the ownership of
this technology, typically private
companies from rich countries. They have attempted to patent
resources that developing countries
have long used freely and tried to use techniques such as
preventing farmers from keeping seeds for
future years (which they naturally do) through terminator
technology (which would appear to go
against the claim of addressing world hunger).
These concerns go to the heart of food security and
accountability to their own citizenry. In addition,
what such technologies will not address, however, are the
political, economic, social and
environmental root causes and choices that govern what is grown,
why, how it is priced, and why
even when there is enough food, so many cannot afford it.
As professor Richard Robbins notes, food is a commodity:
To understand why people go hungry you must stop thinking about
food as something farmers grow for others
to eat, and begin thinking about it as something companies
produce for other people to buy.
Food is a commodity.
Much of the best agricultural land in the world is used to grow
commodities such as cotton, sisal,
tea, tobacco, sugar cane, and cocoa, items which are non-food
products or are marginally
nutritious, but for which there is a large market.
Millions of acres of potentially productive farmland is used to
pasture cattle, an extremely
inefficient use of land, water and energy, but one for which
there is a market in wealthy countries.
More than half the grain grown in the United States (requiring
half the water used in the U.S.) is
fed to livestock, grain that would feed far more people than
would the livestock to which it is
fed.
The problem, of course, is that people who dont have enough
money to buy food (and more than one billion
people earn less than $1.00 a day), simply dont count in the
food equation.
In other words, if you dont have the money to buy food, no one
is going to grow it for you.
Put yet another way, you would not expect The Gap to manufacture
clothes, Adidas to manufacture
sneakers, or IBM to provide computers for those people earning
$1.00 a day or less; likewise, you
would not expect ADM (Supermarket to the World) to produce food
for them.
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What this means is that ending hunger requires doing away with
poverty, or, at the very least, ensuring that
people have enough money or the means to acquire it, to buy, and
hence create a market demand for food.
Richard H. Robbins, Readings on Poverty, Hunger, and Economic
Development
More Information
The above is a gross oversimplification and these deeper issues
and causes have been discussed on
this web site for a long time. Rather than attempting to explain
those all again here, as well as the
above links, refer to this sites Food and Agriculture Issues
section for a series of articles covering these
aspects.
Eric Holt-Gimnez and Loren Peabody, mentioned above, also
provide a useful summary at From
Food Rebellions to Food Sovereignty: Urgent call to fix a broken
food system, Institute for Food and
Development Policy, May 16, 2008
For their July 20 broadcast, Radio Adelaide interviewed me about
the food crisis and world hunger. The
previous link includes a 20 minute recording of that interview
(though it is listed under the August 10, 2008
broadcast).
Image credits: Cornfield in the Evening, courtesy of Michel
Mayerle
http://www.globalissues.org/article/758/global-food-crisis-2008
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Causes, consequences and alternatives
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.
Faced with this scenario, governments and international
institutions have bent to the designs of
the transnational corporations and have become accomplices, when
not co- profiteers, in a
productivist, unsustainable and privatized food system. The
alleged "concern" of these
governments and institutions (G8, World Trade Organization,
World Bank and so on) at the
increase in the price of the staple foods and its impact on the
most disadvantaged populations
of the Southern countries [1] only reveals their deep hypocrisy
with respect to an agricultural and
food model that brings them important economic benefits. A model
which is in turn used as an
imperialist instrument of political, economic and social control
by the major economic powers of
the North, the United States and the European Union (as well as
their agro-alimentary
multinationals) with respect to the countries of the global
South.
Food crisis
The food crisis situation seen in 2007 and 2008, with a sharp
increase in basic food prices
highlights the extreme vulnerability of the current agricultural
and food model.
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A food crisis which has left after another 925 million hungry,
according to the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). As its director-general
Jacques Diouf puts it: "the
number of people suffering from malnutrition before the rise in
the price of food in 2007 was
850 million. In that year alone it increased by 75 million to
reach 925 million" [2] A figure that
will rise to 1.2 billion hungry in 2017, according to the US
Department of Agriculture (ETC Group
2008). But in fact, the current food crisis is already affecting
directly or indirectly half of the
population worldwide, more than three billion people
(Holt-Gimnez, 2008).
And the price of food hasnt stopped going up. According to the
FAO food price index there was
an increase of 12% from 2005 to 2006, 24% in 2007, and a rise of
about 50% in January and July
2008. Figures from the World Bank point in the same direction:
prices have increased 83 % in the
last three years. Grains and other staples which are eaten by
broad strata of the population
especially in the countries of the global South (wheat, soy,
vegetable oils, rice and so on) have
undergone the most significant increases. The cost of wheat has
gone up by 130%, soya by 87%,
rice 74% and maize 31% (Holt-Gimnez and Peabody, 2008) [3]. . In
spite of the good estimates
for cereal production, the FAO estimates that prices will remain
high in the coming years, and as
a result, the poor countries in the main will continue to suffer
the effects of the food crisis [4] .
Taking this data into account, it is not surprising that there
have been hunger riots in the
countries of the South, as it is precisely the basic commodities
that feed the poor which have
experienced the biggest price rises. In such countries as Haiti,
Pakistan, Mozambique, Bolivia,
Morocco, Mexico, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh and Niger
people have gone onto the street
to say: "Enough" in riots that have left dozens of people dead
and wounded. These uprisings
remind us of what happened in the 1980s and 1990s in the
countries of the South in reaction to
structural adjustment policies imposed by the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund. The
causes, once again, are rising prices for food, transportation
and public services, that worsen the
living conditions of the majority of the peoples of these
countries and make their struggle for
daily survival more difficult. History repeats itself and
neo-liberal policies still leave millions
hungry.
But the problem today is not the lack of food, but the inability
to gain access to it. In fact,
throughout the world cereal production has tripled since the
1960s, while the population on a
global scale has only doubled (GRAIN, 2008a). Never in history
has there been so much food as
today. But for millions of people in the countries of the global
South who spend 50-60% of their
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income to purchase food, a figure that can rise to 80% in the
poorest countries, the increase in
the price of food has made it impossible to gain access to it
[5].
Short term causes
There are conjunctural reasons which have been given and which
partially explain this dramatic
increase of prices in recent years: droughts and other
meteorological phenomena linked to
climate change in producer countries like China, Bangladesh and
Australia, that have affected
crops and will continue impacting on food production; the
increased consumption of meat,
especially in the countries of Latin America and Asia, due to a
change in eating habits (following
the model of Western consumption) and a resulting multiplication
of facilities for the fattening of
livestock; imports of cereals by countries which were until now
self-sufficient like India, Vietnam
and China, due to the loss of cultivated land; the fall in grain
reserves in national systems that
were dismantled in the late 1990s all mean that today countries
depend fully on volatile world
grain markets (Hernandez Navarro, 2008; Holt-Gimnez, 2008). All
this helps explain in part the
causes that have led us to the situation of food crisis but
these are partial arguments, which have
sometimes been used to divert attention from the underlying
causes. Authors such as Jacques
Berthelot (2008), Eric Toussaint (2008a) and Alejandro Nadal
(2008), among others, have
challenged some of these arguments.
From my point of view, there are two short-term causes which
have been determinant in rising
food prices and should be highlighted: the increase in the price
of oil, which would have had an
effect directly or indirectly, and growing speculative
investment in raw materials. Both factors
have finally unbalanced an agri-food system which was extremely
fragile. Lets go into detail.
The increase in the price of oil, which doubled in 2007 and 2008
and caused a big rise in the
price of fertilizers and transport related to the food system,
has resulted in increasing investment
in the production of alternative fuels such as those of plant
origin. Governments in the United
States, the European Union, Brazil and others have subsidized
production of agro-fuels in
response to the scarcity of oil and global warming. But this
green fuel production comes into
direct competition with the production of food. To give just one
example, in 2007 in the United
States 20% of the total cereal harvest was used to produce
ethanol and it is calculated in the next
decade that this figure will reach 33%. We can imagine the
situation in the countries of the South.
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In April 2008, the FAO recognized that in the short term, it is
highly likely that the rapid
expansion of green fuels worldwide will have a significant
impact on Latin American agriculture
(Reuters, 15/04/08)." And the diversion of 5% of world cereal
production to the production of
agro-fuels leads directly to the increase in the price of
grains. To the extent that cereals such as
maize, wheat, soy or beet have been diverted to agro-fuels, the
supply of cereals on the market
has fallen and consequently prices have increased. According to
various sources, the impact has
been greater or lesser, but always key: the US Department of
Agriculture believes that agro-fuels
have generated an increase in the price of grains of between 5
and 20%; the International Food
Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) considers that the figure is
around 30% while a World Bank report
says that the production of agro-fuels would have led to an
increase of 75% in the price of grains
(Holt-Gimnez, 2008).
Another conjunctural cause to be taken very much into account as
a generator of this rise in
prices has been the growing speculative investment in raw
materials since the crash in the dotcom
and real estate markets. After the collapse of the high risk
mortgage market in the United States,
institutional investors (banks, insurance companies, investment
funds and so on) and others have
sought safer and more cost-effective places to invest their
money. To the extent that food prices
have risen, they will direct their capital to the futures market
pushing the price of grains upwards
and further worsening food price inflation (Holt-Gimnez,
2008).
Today it is estimated that a significant part of financial
investment in the agricultural sector has
a speculative character. According to the most conservative
data, this figure would be 55% of the
total, a volume which increases as the liberalization of
agricultural production deepens. Note,
also, the study by Lehman Brothers indicating that from the year
2003 the index of speculation
in raw materials (integrated at 30% for agricultural materials)
increased by 1,900% (Garca, 2008a).
Structural causes
Beyond these short-term elements, there are underlying reasons
that explain the current deep
food crisis. The neoliberal policies applied indiscriminately in
the course of the last thirty years
on a planetary scale (trade liberalisation at all costs, payment
of the foreign debt for the countries
of the South, privatization of public services and goods and so
on) as well as a model of
agriculture and food at the service of a capitalist logic bear
the primary responsibility for this
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situation. In fact, we have a deeper systemic problem with a
global food model which is extremely
vulnerable to economic, ecological and social shocks.
As Eric Holt-Gimnez (2008) puts it, the economic development
policies driven by the countries
of the North from the 1960s onwards (the Green Revolution,
structural adjustment programmes,
regional free trade treaties, the World Trade Organization and
agricultural subsidies in the North)
have led to the destruction of food systems.
Between the 1960s and 90s, the so-called "green revolution",
promoted by various international
institutions and agricultural research centres, took place, with
the "theoretical" objective of
modernizing agriculture in non-industrialized countries. Early
results in Mexico and,
subsequently, in south-east Asia were spectacular from the point
of view of production per
hectare, but this increase in land yield did not have a direct
impact on the reduction of hunger in
the world. Thus, although world agricultural production
increased by 11 %, the number of hungry
people in the world also rose by 11 per cent, from 536 million
to 597 (Reichmann, 2003) [6].
As Rosset, Collins and Moore Lapp (2000) put it: "the increase
in production which was at the
centre of the green revolution was not enough to relieve hunger
because it does not alter the
concentration of economic power, access to land or purchasing
power... the number of people
who are hungry can be reduced only by redistributing purchasing
power and resources among
those who are malnourished... if the poor have no money to buy
food, increased production will
solve nothing".
The Green Revolution had negative collateral consequences for
many poor and medium peasants
and for long-term food security. Specifically, the process
increased the power of agribusiness
corporations in the market chain, caused the loss of 90% of agro
and bio diversity, massively
reduced water levels, increased salinisation and soil erosion,
and displaced millions of peasants
from the countryside to the slums of the city, while .
dismantling traditional agricultural and food
systems which guaranteed food security.
In the 1980 and 90s, the systematic application of structural
adjustment programmes [7] in the
countries of the South by the World Bank and International
Monetary Fund, so that they could pay
the foreign debt, aggravated further the already difficult
living conditions of the greater part of
the population in these countries. The programmes had as their
main focus the subordination of
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the economy of the country to the payment of debt by applying
the maxim "export more and
spend less".
The shock measures imposed by these programmes consisted of
forcing the governments of the
South to withdraw subsidies to commodities such as bread, rice,
milk and sugar and a drastic
reduction in public spending on education, health, housing and
infrastructure. Devaluation of the
national currency was forced, making products cheaper to export,
but reducing the purchasing
power of the domestic population while interest rates were
increased in order to attract foreign
capital with high rates of remuneration, generating a
speculative spiral. Ultimately, a series of
measures which led to the most extreme poverty for the peoples
of these countries (Vivas,
2008a).
At the trade level, the programmes promoted exports to boost
foreign currency reserves,
increasing monocultures for export and reducing agriculture for
local consumption with a
consequent negative impact on food security and dependence on
international markets. Thus
customs barriers were dismantled, facilitating the entry of
highly subsidized products from the
United States and Europe which sold below their cost price, at a
price lower than local products,
destroying local production and agriculture, while economies
were fully opened to the
investments, products and services of the multinationals. The
massive privatization of public
enterprises, mostly to the benefit of Northern multinationals,
was widespread. Such policies had
a direct impact on local agricultural production and food
security, leaving these countries at the
mercy of the market, the interests of transnational corporations
and the international institutions
promoting these policies.
The World Trade Organization (WTO), established in 1995,
consolidated the policies of structural
adjustment programmes by means of international treaties,
subjecting national laws to its
designs. Trade agreements administered by the WTO like the
General Agreement on Trade and
Tariffs (GATT), the General Agreement on Trade in Services
(GATS) and the Agreement on Trade-
Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) further
consolidated the control of the
countries of the North over the economies of the South.
The WTO policies forced developing countries to eliminate
tariffs on imports, end protection for
and subsidies to small producers and open their borders to the
products of transnational
corporations while the markets of the North remained highly
protected. In the same way, regional
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treaties like the and North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) Central America Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA) deepened trade liberalization, leading to
bankruptcy for the farmers of the
South and making them dependent on food imports from the
countries of the North.
US and European agricultural subsidies, directed mainly towards
the agri-food industry, obliterate
the small local producer. This support to agribusiness accounts
for a quarter of the value of
agricultural production in the US and 40% in the European Union
(Holt-Gimnez, 2008). In the
Spanish state, the main recipients of this aid are the larger
holdings: seven producers, including
the Duchess of Alba, are the biggest beneficiaries of the
European Unions common agricultural
policy. It is estimated that 3.2% of major producers in Spain
receive 40% of this direct aid
(Intermn Oxfam, 2005), while family holdings, supporting rural
areas in Europe and millions of
farmers in South, have virtually no support and suffer from the
unfair competition of these highly
subsidized products.
From exporting countries to importers
These "development" policies driven by international
institutions with the blessing of the
respective governments and at the service of the transnational
corporations have ended up with
a local and sustainable production system being replaced by a
model of intensive industrial food
production subject to capitalist interests that have led to
current situation of crisis and food
insecurity.
The countries of the South that until forty years ago were
self-sufficient and even had agricultural
surpluses amounting to billions of dollars today have become
fully dependent on the international
market and import an average of $11,000 million in food annually
[8]. . As noted by Eric Holt-
Gimnez (2008): The increased food deficit in the South reflects
the increase in food surpluses
and expansion of the market in the industrial North as well as
its agro-industrial complex. In
the 1960s, for example, Africa exported $1,300 million in food,
today the continent imports 25%
of its food.
The cases of Haiti and Mexico
The case of Haiti is revealing. As Bill Quigley (2008) puts it,
up until thirty years ago this country
produced all the rice needed to feed its population, but in the
middle of the 1980s, faced with a
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situation of acute economic crisis (when the Haitian dictator
Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier left
the country, emptying its coffers), it began lending from the
International Monetary Fund. A spiral
of "domination" began that took the country deeper into
political and economic dependency on
the international financial institutions and, in particular in
relation to the United States.
For these loans, Haiti is was forced to apply a series of
structural adjustment policies and trade
liberalization with the reduction of tariffs protecting the
production of crops, including rice. This
opening allowed the indiscriminate entry of subsidized US rice
sold far below the price at which
local farmers could produce it. As explained by Bill Quigley
(2008) quoting the Haitian priest
Gerard Jean-Juste: "during the 1980s, imported rice entered the
country at a price much lower
than that at which our farmers could produce it. They lost their
jobs and fled to the cities. After
a few years of cheap imported rice, local production dropped
miserably". A fact which led to the
most absolute misery for Haitian peasants who, unable to compete
with this rice, abandoned their
crops. Today, Haiti has become one of the main importers of US
rice.
Accordingly, when in April 2008, the price of rice, beans, and
fruit rose by more than 50% in Haiti;
this made access to them impossible for most of the population.
Several days of riots in the
poorest country in Latin America, where the adult diet is 1,640
calories (640 less than the required
average according to the UN World Food Programme), highlighted
the extent of the tragedy. Faced
with the impossibility of buying food, they eat tortillas made
of mud with salt.
What interest could the US have in the Haitian rice market when
it is the poorest country in Latin
America? In Haiti, 78 per cent of the population lives on less
than two dollars a day, and more
than half on less than a dollar a day, while life expectancy is
59 years. But, according to the US
Agriculture Department, in 2008, Haiti was the third largest
importer of US rice, highly subsidized
by the US Government by billions of dollars per year. And who
are the beneficiaries? Between
1995 and 2006, for example, a single producer, Riceland Foods
Inc., received $500 million in
grants. According to the Washington Post in 2006, the US
government paid at least 1.3 billion
dollars in grants since 2000 to individuals who had never grown
anything including 490,000
dollars to a Houston surgeon who had purchased a field near a
locality that once had cultivated
rice (Quigley 2008). With regard to tariffs, the United States
sets a direct tariff barrier from 3% to
24% of rice imports, exactly the same protection it demanded
that Haiti abandon in the 1980s
and 90s.
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Mexico, the cradle of maize, is another textbook example of the
wrenching away of food
sovereignty. The tortilla crisis at the beginning of 2007, with
the abrupt increase in prices by
60%, due to the rise in the cost of maize, the basic component
of the tortilla, placed Mexico on
the edge of economic crisis and led to global alarm. The US
government subsidies to the
production of agro-fuels meant that producing maize for ethanol
was more profitable than food
production and consequently pushed its price up.
But the tortilla crisis, like the food crisis today, has deeper
roots and cannot be understood
without analyzing the impact of free market policies imposed by
the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and Washington in recent years that
converted Mexico into an importing
economy dependent on the United States for maize.
In August 1982, the Mexican government declared itself bankrupt
to repay its foreign debt, but
the situation of social and economic crisis forced the
government to indebt itself with commercial
banks and international institutions. In exchange for the funds
provided to service its debt, the
IMF and World Bank imposed on Mexico a series of conditions
under a structural adjustment
programme: opening of markets, elimination of tariffs and state
regulations, contraction of public
spending, dismantling of the state credit system, subsidies to
agricultural inputs and guaranteed
prices, and an end to state services in collection, marketing,
warehousing and insurance of
harvests, among other things (Vivas, 2008a; Bello, 2008)
[9].
This coup, as noted by Walden Bello (2008), followed another
which was even more significant:
the entry into force on January 1, 1994 of the North American
Free Trade Treaty (NAFTA) that
resulted in a massive influx of highly subsidized US maize,
flooding markets, undercutting local
maize prices and plunging the sector into a deep crisis.
With the closure of the state agency for marketing maize, the
distribution of maize in Mexico,
both US and indigenous, was in the hands of a few transnationals
like Cargill and Maseca, who
had an immense power to speculate with commercial trends. This
monopoly sector allows means,
for example, that a substantial rise in international maize
prices is not translated into significantly
higher prices for small local producers (Bello, 2008; Patel,
2008). This situation has generated
the massive abandonment of the Mexican countryside by small
producers of maize and rice and
stock breeders who cannot compete with the subsidized US
products and flee to the "planet of
slums" (Davis 2008). It is estimated that a total of 1.3 million
peasants had abandoned the
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countryside eight years after the entry into force of NAFTA, a
significant number of them
emigrating to the United States (Polaski, 2004).
But the cases of Haiti and Mexico are extrapolated to many other
countries of the South, where
the systematic application of neoliberal policies in recent
years has not only finished off a system
agricultural production, farming and indigenous food production
but also any type of protection
and support to communities, industries and public services.
Following these same mantras in Sri
Lanka, for example, the World Bank proposed ending the
production of rice, a traditional crop for
more than two thousand years and the basis of local food
production, because it was cheaper to
import it from Vietnam or Thailand (2006 Houtart). In the
Philippines, the neoliberal economic
restructuring of the state in the 1990s transformed a net
exporter of food into the largest
importer of rice in the world, buying annually on the
international market between one and two
million of tons of rice to supply domestic demand (Bello 2008).
The logic of the free market has
condemned these countries into a spiral of domination and
misery.
Impact in the North
The consequences of the global food crisis have their echo in
the countries of the North. In the
course of 2008 farmers, fishers, hauliers, livestock breeders
and others took to the streets due
to the increase in the cost of fuel and raw materials and to
demand fair remuneration for their
produce, while the prices of foodstuffs grew incessantly.
In January 2008, thousands of stock breeders demonstrated in
Madrid, at the initiative of the
Coordination of Organizations of Farmers and Stockbreeders
(COAG) to demand concrete
solutions to the crisis in the sector. COAG pointed out that the
main problem was the rise in the
price of feed and the trend to lower prices at source. A
situation that endangered the viability of
400,000 small and medium-sized farms unable to translate the
increase in production costs into
sale prices (EFE, Jan 24, 2008).
At the beginning of May 2008, some 9,000 farmers and ranchers
demonstrated in Madrid to
demand that the government introduce a new law on trade margins
that limited the difference
between the price paid at origin and the price of sale to the
public, today averaging up to 400%.
Mass distributors through supermarkets, hypermarkets, and
discount chains are those who
benefit most at the expense of the producer and the
consumer.
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At the end of that May, about 7,000 fishers gathered before the
Environment Ministry building in
Madrid to protest against higher fuel prices and lack of aid
(petrol prices had risen by more than
320% in five years while the price of fish was constant). During
the protest, the fishers, who had
come from all over the state, gave away twenty thousand fish
kilos of fresh fish. The current
situation in the sector makes continuing to fish virtually
unsustainable (Reuters, 30/05/08).
Hauliers also joined the protests, blocking motorways and roads,
due to the rise in the price of
diesel fuel, which had already added 50% to their costs (El
Mundo, 10/06/08). Examples could
continue.
At the same time, in recent years the prices of the products
that are part of our food basket have
not stopped rising. In 2007, the price of milk increased by 26%,
onions by 20%, sunflower oil by
34%, chicken by 16%., and this has been the trend for most
foods, according to data provided by
the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce at the end of
2007, while the consumer price
index only reflects an increase of 4.1% in that same year.
It is obvious is that the effects of food crisis at both ends of
the planet are hardly comparable. In
the North, we are only spending one 10 and 20% of our income to
purchase food, while in the
South this figure rises to 50-60% and can even reach 80%. But
this does not remove the
importance of noting the impact that this rise in prices has
here, while the profits of the
multinationals continue to rise and the governments advocate
greater economic liberalisation.
The situation gets worse every day. In the last ten years in the
Spanish state almost ten farms a
day have disappeared and the active rural population has been
reduced to 5.6% of the total, with
mostly older people remaining. With these figures, in the next
fifteen years, Spain will have to
import 80% of the food needed to feed its population (Terra
Foundation, 2006). Agricultural
incomes have fallen incessantly and today amount to 65% of
average income. Not surprising
when, for example, the consumer price index rose by 4.2% in
2005, while the sale price of
agricultural products declined. A trend repeated year after year
(2007 DOE). Source prices of
agricultural products have multiplied by up to eleven times and
it is estimated that more than
60% of the final profit from the price of the product is focused
on the last part of the chain