Nagpur's hapless farmers

By Ashish Roy, The Times of India, 22 Jan 2011

Even though the Kharif crop had been damaged due to unseasonal rains in October and November, above average rainfall meant plenty of water for the rabi crop. Dilip Kumar Mahalge had sown cotton and tual in his six acre field. On the night of January 6 and 7 the mercury dipped to a 74 year old low in Nagpur. The dew froze in the night, Mahalge as horrified to see frost on his plants. The cotton and tuar plants soon started dying.

The food crisis reflects a breakdown in our global food system that threatens to worsen poverty, hunger, climate change, and insecurity. Global institutions and governments are responding, yet their answers are vastly inadequate. For decades, trade and investment liberalization have undermined human rights and the environment. The food crisis should help us to understand that now it is time for a new vision of global cooperation, one that is democratic and accountable to people and the planet.
The Food Crisis and Global Institutions
by Alexandra Spieldoch, Lok Samved, 01 September, 2008
THE final five kilometres to Ramnagar (Khokla), as the village is officially called, in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh has to be done on foot down a hill thick with shrubs and bushes. As we enter the village, eager eyes scan us for food or some other kind of livelihood support only to droop in disappointment once they learn that the wait has been in vain. The people of the Kol and Mawasi tribes who inhabit this village are a desperate lot: they have neither employment nor food, and their malnourished children are dying. In the past four months at least four children have died and those standing by the side of their elders had protruding stomachs, sunken eyes, wrinkled legs and slightly deformed heads, all symptoms of malnutrition.
Dying of hunger
by Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprastha, Frontline, 07 November, 2008
The global rise in food prices is felt acutely in the Asia-Pacific region, with greater impact on net food importing countries. Food prices have increased sharply since 2005 but have surged dramatically since 2007, led by the dairy sector registering an 80% price hike, followed by oil at 50% and grains 42%. In more recent months the price spikes have been more pronounced in grains and oil. In the Philippines, rice price rose to 72% since January this year, while in Pakistan wheat price rose to 66% since January 2007, and the price of rice basmati rose from Rupees 60/kilo in June 2007 to Rs 110/kilogram in May 2008. In Indonesia, the price of cooking oil doubled from 6,000 to 12,000 rupiah per kilogram and tofu price increased by 50%. In India, the price of milk increased 11 % more than last year and edible oil prices soared to 40% over the same period.
Asian People\'s Decalaration on the Food Crisis: Secure Food and Livelihoods!
by , Lok Samved, 01 September, 2008
The world food crisis, rapidly defined by those in power as a problem of insufficient production, has become a trojan horse to get corporate seeds, fertilisers and, surreptitiously, market systems into poor countries. As past experience shows, what looks like “seed aid” in the short term can mask what is actually “agribusiness aid” in the long term. We look at what is going on.
Seed aid, agribusiness and the food crisis
by , Seedling, 01 October, 2008
It is generally understood that futures trading in agricultural commodities will help in bringing price certainty. The Government of India in 2003-04 had initiated major steps towards introduction of futures trading in commodities, which included removal of prohibition on futures trading in all the commodities by issue of a notification and setting up of the National Level Commodity Exchanges.
Volatility in food prices futures caused the market manipulation
by Krishan Bir Chaudhary, Lok Samvad, 01 September, 2008
In normal economic theories, price movement follow a cyclical phenomenon with peaks and troughs. Under both these turnarounds leave a trace indelible in the lives of people and most often the poor consumers and producers find it increasingly difficult to adjust to these sudden changes. The current spurt in prices is very often referred to as \'Agflation\' created by sharp rise in agricultural commodity including food prices. According to FAQ report, 37 countries have beenidentified requiring external assistance which includes 10 Asian countries and 4 South Asian countries reeling under the food crisis compounded by other political factors. World food price have increased at a very fast pace In the first quarter of 2008 the price indices have scaled up by 23 percentage points and as compared to previous year 2007 it has increased by 78 percentage and from 2005 there has been an increase of over 100 points indicative that prices have almost doubled. At a disaggregated level it can be seen that biggest contributor to this rise in prices are the cereals followed by the oil and fats then dairy,sugar and meat.
Soaring world food prices and volatility
by Linu Mathew Philip, Lok Samvad, 01 September, 2008

Growth curb
By Subodh Verma, Times of India, 22 Jan 2011

The three main factors  of farm suicides are (a) the comprehensive agrarian crisis encompassing income/profitability, employment generation productivity and production. (b) pre-existing, fragile conditions of agriculture characterised by low levels of development of productive forces, persistence of highly exploitative production relations and high levels of inequalities and imbalances. (c) absence of alternate avenues of employment and livelihood options.

Between January 2008 and December 2010, retail prices in 33 cities set a blistering pace of increase. Rice prices rose by 42 per cent, tur dal by 46 percent, wheat by 30 per cent. Onion prices jumped by a jaw dropping 198 percent and potato by 37 per cent.Traders were pocketing profits at the rate of about 135 per cent but as the profit margins show, the bulk of the mark-up is occurring not at the farmers' level  but at the traders' level after the farmer has sold his produce at the wholesale mandi.

India needs at least 280 million tonnes of food grains by 2020 going by current population growth trends. That works out to about 2 per cent growth in production every year. The average growth rate in the past decade has been just 0.48 per cent.

Action Aid's Hungerfree Campaign
10 point Action Plan to End Hunger
  • - Make sure no one goes hungry
  • - Expand Social protection measures
  • - Enhance the status and incomes of women
  • - Invest in small-scale sustainable agriculture to boost production and incomes
  • - Support women farmers and producers
  • - Scale up mitigation, adaptation, financing and technology in response to climate change
  • - Regulate agribusiness
  • - Trade deals must protect rural livelihoods
  • - End targets and subsidies for biofuels
  • - Stop speculation in international commodities future markets
At the same time, investing in women is key to solving the food crisis. Rural women alone produce half of the world’s food and 60% to 80% of the food in most developing countries, but receive less than 10% of credit provided to farmers.[7] Increasing women’s access to the means of agricultural production, such as farming land or fertilizers, farm labor, credit and education, as well as decision-making authority within the household, is crucial to guaranteeing food security and improving the nutritional status of children.[8] In some places, if women had the same access as men to land, seed, and fertilizer, agricultural productivity could increase by up to 20 percent. Further, decades of research and experience have shown that when women have extra income, they reinvest in their children’s health and education, creating a positive cycle of growth for the entire family.
The Effect of the Food Crisis on Women and Their Families
by , Global Policy Forum, 01 May, 2008
The causes of and remedies for the food crisis are hotly contested; how this rupture in the status quo is resolved will have decisive implications for the roles of the IFIs as well as more broadly for global food security and ecological sustainability. The UN estimates that the recent food price increase will add 100 million to the over 850 million people who were already short of food. The IFIs trace 15 per cent of the increase to higher energy and fertilizer costs linked to skyrocketing oil prices, and another 15 - 30 per cent to the impact of biofuels. They have been silent on the role of speculative financial capital, which Peter Rosset, researcher at the Centro de Estudios para el Cambio en el Campo Mexicano, calls \"one of the most important\" short-term causes. Other short-term factors include record-low food stocks and severe weather events such as last year\'s Australian drought.
Agribusiness vs. food security: The food crisis and the IFIs
by , Share The World's Resources, 21 June, 2008
Take a closer look at the growing disparity of wealth, which certainly includes the inequality of food distribution and our faulty public distribution system Each year over eight million people die worldwide because they are simply too poor to stay alive. More than 800 million people go hungry every day. The gross domestic product of the poorest 48 nations is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people. Thirty-thousand children die every day due to hunger and treatable illnesses. Six million children die every year before their fifth birthday, as a result of malnutrition. According to the Human Development Report (HDR) 2002, the richest one per cent of the world’s people receives as much income each year as the poorest 57 per cent. The richest five per cent of the world’s people have incomes 114 times those of the poorest five per cent. In India, the bottom 40 per cent of the population remains at poverty levels with consumption of barely 2,400 calories a day. Take the instance of Mumbai, the country’s super-rich, in which, according to the World Bank, 54 per cent of the city’s 15 million residents live in slums.
Hunger and inequality
by Prasenjit Chowdhury, The Hindu, 14 November, 2008
In the 1960s about 80 million people suffered from hunger worldwide. This was the world into which the Green Revolution was born, with its promise to end hunger The real objective was to introduce a new system of agricultural production based on the intensive use of industrial inputs. Productivity per hectare increased and world production quadrupled. Yet the number of people suffering from hunger grew, from 80 to 800 million.
New geopolitics of world agriculture
by Joao Pedro Stedile, The Deccan Herald, 21 November, 2008
But this year\'s record crops and the recent fall in food prices should not create \"a false sense of security\", because they come against the backdrop of unfolding global economic slowdown, the Rome-based FAO said in its bi-annual Food Outlook. \"If the current price volatility and liquidity conditions prevail in 2008-09, plantings and output could be affected to such an extent that a new price surge might take place in 2009-10,\" said Concepcion Calpe, one of the report\'s authors.
Global cereal output to touch record this year, says UN body
by , Business Standard, 09 November, 2008
  1. Starvation stalks tribals of Jharkhand
  2. The potato seen as an alternative to grain
  3. Towards the ideal of a hunger-free India
  4. India Rising and the hunger index

Subcategories

food-crisis-documents Article Count:  7

food-crisis-news &events Article Count:  27

food-crisis-bckgrder Article Count:  1