time to change the system

For the third time in seven years, the Sahel region of west Africa is facing a toxic combination of drought, poor harvests and soaring food prices. In Niger, 6m people are now significantly at risk, together with 2.9m in Mali and 700,000 in Mauritania.

Drought and famine are not extreme events. They are not anomalies. They are merely the sharp end of a global food system that is built on inequality, imbalances and – ultimately – fragility.

An immediate response is needed in order to avert a devastating food and nutrition crisis. In responding, however, we must also redefine the vocabulary of food crisis. It is our global food system that is in crisis. Last year's famine in the Horn of Africa, and the current woes in the Sahel, are the surface cracks of a broken system. These regional outbreaks of hunger are not, as such, extreme events.

The problem is not just about governance shortcomings in Africa, and it is not just about the modalities of delivering food aid. It is also a problem of principle. For decades, we have taken the wrong approach to feeding the world. In many poor countries, investment in agriculture has focused on a limited range of export crops. Too little has been done to support smallholders, who produce food for their local communities. Yet, by supporting these poor farmers, we could enable them to move out of poverty, and enable local food production to meet local needs.

Diverse farming systems, agroforestry and reservoirs to capture rainfall are sorely needed in drought-prone areas such as the Sahel. This requires a real commitment to local food systems, and an acknowledgement that trade and aid cannot provide all the answers, especially when international grain prices are so high.

We must plan adequately for the food crises that emerge within our broken food system, and we must finally acknowledge how broken it is. Only when we are honest about hunger will the world's most vulnerable populations receive the short-term aid and long-term support that they need.

So wrote Olivier De Schutter

But is his solution going to be socialism, the abolition of the market and its drive for profit? Socialist Banner sadly does not think so. No more eternal tinkering with the system . It is time to tackle the root cause of poverty and hunger which is the capitalism.

Land Guidelnes Delay

The adoption of international guidelines to regulate so-called land grabs has been pushed to next year after negotiators failed to agree on conditions for large-scale land investments and enforcement. Once in place, the United Nations’s Committee on World Food Security guidelines are meant to protect people, mainly in poor countries such as Sierra Leone, from “land grabbing”. Olivier De Schutter, the U. N. special rapporteur on the right to food, said in an email following the meetings that details of conditions for large-scale investments remained an unresolved sticking point.

”In general, the development of plantations increases inequality, instead of decreasing it,” said De Schutter. ”The majority will not benefit.” The guidelines on the security of tenure of land, fisheries and forests “could be a significant advance,” said De Schutter. “It can make it more difficult for governments to ignore the demands of the local community.”

http://www.newstimeafrica.com/archives/23067

Socialist Banner views the success of regulation as unlikely.

looted

In Madagascar, one in two inhabitants is food insecure. This proportion rises to 68% in the South of the country.

It is currently importing annually 100,000 to 150,000 tons of rice. Yet the system of intensive rice cultivation, a pure Malagasy invention, allows to double, triple or even quadruple yields.

Fishing agreements that Madagascar has entered into with the European Union or with Asian companies are reminiscent of the treaties that colonial empires signed with their colonies in the 19th century.

"Legally or not, the seas are looted while fishing could be an engine of development for the island. The fact that industrial fleets come to fish without quotas, in the context of depleting marine resources, should be impermissible in the 21st century." said United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter.

More on Land Grabbing

Investment by big agribusinesses and foreign governments in the farmland of developing world countries is not the answer to increasing food production and reducing poverty in poor nations, a global conference on land grabbing heard.

Olivier de Schutter, the UN’s special rapporteur on the Right to Food, rejected arguments that collaboration and investment with big businesses is the only way food production can rise sufficiently to feed the world’s growing population. The private sector is driving a change towards large scale industrial agriculture in areas such as Africa. This is pushing out small scale farmers who can’t compete on price, deepening local poverty and driving deforestation and environmental degradation, he said. A key problem is that most developing world governments, particularly in Africa, lack laws to regulate market competition and control abuses of power by dominant multi-nationals, says de Schutter. In addition, many companies and governments looking to buy up foreign land target countries with weak governance, which often have food security problems of their own.

Ian Scoones, joint convenor of the Future Agricultures Consortium, a collaboration of African and UK scientists based at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex University, explained that the international community should be “very concerned” about the increased rush for land in Africa. The impact of international land deals on farmers and poor communities often “remains hidden”, he said.