Civil society groups call October 16 ‘World Foodless Day’
As the world celebrates World Food Day today, research group IBON join civil society groups worldwide in denouncing globalization polices and corporate profiteering, which have made food a commodity for trade and speculation that worsened global hunger.
Global food prices have risen by 75% since 2000, according to the World Bank, while prices of rice, corn, wheat, and soybean have hit all-time highs. Prices of meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products naturally follow the upward trends of grains prices. Amid the global financial crisis, increased speculation in food and fuel prices is seen as a possible consequence that will further push food prices up and worsen the poor’s access to food.
The world is facing its worst food crisis that has been aggravated by trade liberalization policies imposed by international finance institutions (IFIs) like the International Monetary Fund and trade bodies such as the World Trade Organization. These policies have allowed intensified profiteering by food transnational corporations (TNCs). In fact while more and more people go hungry everyday, TNCs such as Cargill and grain traders such as Archer Daniels Midland reported increased profits as of the first quarter of 2008.
TNCs in its desire for more profits have continued to lobby IFIs and Third World government to implement globalization policies in food and agriculture, including liberalization of trade and investment in agriculture, privatization of public organs in agricultural extension services such as irrigation, trading and the like, and deregulation of government roles in pricing, marketing and even land reforms. These globalization policies compound the deep crisis of agriculture and food production in underdeveloped countries due to decades-old landlessness of farmers, backwardness of their tools and production, monopoly of land, tools and inputs, TNC control in production and trade, and government neglect. Thus, ironically, hunger is at its worst in rural communities in the Third World where most food and agricultural production take place.
Globalization has not only resulted in the increasing bankruptcy and worsening poverty and hunger of farmers and consumers, but also in continuously eroding local production and self-sufficiency of Third World countries.
Civil society, peasant groups, and people’s organizations around the world consider World Food Day an opportune time to send a strong message that farmers and people of the Third World reject globalization, trade liberalization, and TNC profiteering of agriculture. It is also a time to recognize the successful efforts of broad alliances of farmers and people’s organizations for strengthened protests against globalization, struggle against genuine agrarian reform, and relentlessly demand for social accountability. (end)
World Foodless Day events are being held in more than fourteen countries across Asia and being supported by civil society groups around the globe. For more details on the events of World Foodless Day, visit http://www.panap.net/wfd
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