Business Daily (Nairobi)
Kumi Naidoo
11 May 2008
opinion
Nairobi — Last week saw some big gestures, but small progress in the fight to tackle the soaring costs of food. But in the wash of statistics, finger-pointing, excuse-making and rescue packages, we miss the real stories from people affected.
Protests of hungry Somalis on their capital's streets were met with gunfire and at least five were killed. Thousands more are lining up for free food handouts in Nigeria where bakeries have gone on strike to protest rising flour costs.
In Punjab, a region once known as India's breadbasket, thousands of farmers have committed suicide in the last decade because of a crisis blamed on neglect of the agricultural sector.
If the causes of the food crisis are complex and many, one thing is known. It was predictable, preventable and the result of, as one UN official put it, "20 years of mistakes" from international organisations.
Jay Naidoo (no relation), Head of Southern Africa's Development Bank, spoke out on the crisis at a meeting in Brussels. "These increases in food prices are not the consequence of food shortages, it's the consequence of human greed...."
This is the denouement of decades of inappropriate agricultural policies, protectionism, unjust trade practices and ultimately, yes, greed. This is the preventable outcome of a global economic system that values profit above human life and dignity. What can civil society do now?
Immediate need is to understand the structural causes of the crisis. A combination of under-investment in sustainable agriculture and unfair trade rules has exacerbated the more recent developments such as rising oil prices and the sudden increase in Northern government demand for biofuels.
The latter has caused farmers to divert land and crops previously used for food production to this more lucrative option.
Add the increasing demand for food due to growing populations (the world's population is expected to top nine billion by the middle of the century). Combine this with the distortion of food pricing as a result of years of agricultural subsidies in the North, over-regulation and hoarding plus poor harvests - in part as a result of climate change - and you have a picture of disgraceful neglect.
So, how do we move forward as civil society? There is an urgent and immediate need for food to be delivered to those facing hunger across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
There is no time like the present! Take action, be part of the civil society response and demand that the structural causes of poverty and hunger are addressed now.
Naidoo is the Secretary General of Civicus, an international civil society organisation.
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