World Food Day: A Global Crisis Further Sidelined by Campaign Frenzy, Financial Woes
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As the financial crisis dominates the attention of the news media and the presidential campaign, a global food crisis continues to affect millions of people around the world. Last night, a group of farmers and food policy experts gathered in New York for an event to mark World Food Day. We speak to Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, and Ben Burkett, president of the National Family Farm Coalition.
AMY GOODMAN: Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan is urging wealthy nations to do more to tackle the problem. He said, “My position is that the financial crisis is a serious one, and deserves urgent attention and focus, but so is the question of hunger, and millions (are) likely to die.”
Last night, a group of farmers and food policy experts gathered here in New York for an event to mark World Food Day. Two of the speakers join us here today.
Raj Patel, writer and activist, author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, formerly worked for the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations. He is currently a fellow at Food First.
Ben Burkett is president of the National Family Farm Coalition. He’s been farming vegetables in Mississippi since 1973, also the director of the Mississippi Association of Cooperatives.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s start with Raj Patel. What should we know right now about the food crisis? I mean, I haven’t heard it mentioned in any of the debates, for example.
RAJ PATEL: Right. And, I mean, as usual in the debates, poverty is the issue that people never talk about. But it’s worse than actually we just heard in the introduction, I mean, nearly a billion people going hungry. Well, those figures were calculated before the financial crisis. And now we’re kind of in the worst of all possible worlds, because we have these sort of commodity price fluctuations.
You know, earlier on this year, we had the sort of skyrocketing prices for basic grains. Well, those prices have come down now, but at the same time—so, the result of that is that farmers are not getting as much money for their product. But us, in the supermarkets, the world of consumers, haven’t seen those kinds of price drops. We haven’t seen prices return to what they were in 2007, for example.
So, at the same time as there are high consumer prices, low prices for farmers, and now we’re moving into recession, which means that the poorest people in this country, but also around the world, are going to find it much, much harder to eat. And that crisis is a sort of a long chronic one. It always happens with a recession, but it happens—this recession is poised to be one of the most deepest and most biting recessions, particularly for working people, wherever they are.
As the enconmic crisis continues world hunger here and overseas will only get worse.
You can listen or watch here....World Food Day a Reminder of a Global Crisis Further Sidelined by Campaign Frenzy, Financial Woes
Peace
*We CAN bomb the World to pieces, but we CAN'T bomb it into PEACE*...Michael Franti
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
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its hard to believe in this world that while 1% of this world controls 40% of its resources, that while 30,000 children starve or die from easily curable diseases every DAY, that we can spend almost a billion dollars on a fucking pr contest.
Now ain't that just some shit, there has to be some other way to harness all that money to help others in this world. I gather that's why I'm NOT getting too bent out of shape over this election.
One has to look deeper into the big picture. Nader will get my vote.
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
fuck, its such a veil. We have the illusion of control. I don't think politicians even know how to effect change. its "how much money will it cost," not "how much effect will it have?"
they pretend to care, the rhetoric is very convincing. nothing changes. we need a global movement, a world revolution. thing is, I believe its possible.
So I guess that means happy world food day to all. (edit : thanks for talking about it)