“Enough food for everyone” campaign by Britain’s aid agencies
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The Guardian reports
"When there is enough food to feed everyone, why are 870 million people going hungry? We must learn to share what we have; no one race or nation has a greater right to life than another.
Of course the causes of hunger are vast and complex, from climate change to the activities of major food corporations. That's why nearly 100 organisations, including Cafod, Christian Aid, ActionAid, Oxfam, Save the Children and Unicef, have come together for this hugely ambitious new campaign: Enough Food for Everyone If. When the G8 comes to Northern Ireland in June we need them to take action on these issues, not just providing aid to those who are hungry, but tackling the root causes of that hunger and finding lasting solutions.
And for me, based on the evidence I have seen, that starts with something quite simple: helping the small farmers I met not just to survive and provide for themselves, but to grow their businesses and provide food at reasonable prices for the whole community. Small farms account for 90% of agricultural production in Africa, but aid is not reaching them, and – ranged against the big corporations – they struggle to get access to fertile land or a fair price for their food."
and from the Guardian in 1999
"The lobbying firm acting for Monsanto, the company behind genetically modified crops, is paying thousands of pounds to the MP in charge of the influential House of Commons committee policing Government food policy. Peter Luff, the Tory chairman of the Agriculture Select Committee, has been earning up to pounds 10,000 a year from Bell Pottinger – the company run by controversial lobbyist Sir Tim Bell – which states in a letter obtained by The Observer that it works for 'Monsanto and genetic engineering of food'."
For my response see the blog post at Socialist Courierhttp://socialist-courier.blogspot.com/2013/01/there-is-enough-food.htmland the reply to David Attenborough on SOYMBhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/01/david-attenborough-is-wrong.html
Food is produced not primarily to be eaten but to be sold — and that is why such plans fail.:
Quote:The new food security law could more than double the government’s outlays to 2 trillion rupees a year, according to some estimates.Much of the extra money would go to buy more grain, even though the government already has a tremendous stockpile of wheat and rice — 71 million tons as of early May, up 20 percent from a year earlier.“India is paying the price of an unexpected success — our production of rice and wheat has surged and procurement has been better than ever,” said Kaushik Basu, the chief economic adviser to India’s Finance Ministry and a professor at Cornell University. “This success is showing up some of the gaps in our policy.”New York Times 7 June 2012Sacks of rice stored in the open and rotting in Ranwan, India.
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