Growing a Better Future.

The prices of staple foods will more than double in 20 years. By 2030, the average cost of key crops will increase by between 120% and 180% Oxfam has warned. The World Bank has also warned that rising food prices are pushing millions of people into extreme poverty.It said food prices were 36% above levels of a year ago

"The food system must be overhauled if we are to overcome the increasingly pressing challenges of climate change, spiralling food prices and the scarcity of land, water and energy," said Barbara Stocking, Oxfam's chief executive.

In its report, Oxfam highlights four "food insecurity hotspots", areas which are already struggling to feed their citizens.

Guatemala, 865,000 people are at risk of food insecurity, due to a lack of state investment in smallholder farmers, who are highly dependent on imported food
India, people spend more than twice the proportion of their income on food than UK residents - paying the equivalent of £10 for a litre of milk and £6 for a kilo of rice.
Azerbaijan, wheat production fell 33% last year due to poor weather, forcing the country to import grains from Russia and Kazakhstan. Food prices were 20% higher in December 2010 than the same month in 2009.
East Africa, eight million people currently face chronic food shortages due to drought, with women and children among the hardest hit.

"We are sleepwalking towards an avoidable age of crisis," said Ms Stocking. "One in seven people on the planet go hungry every day despite the fact that the world is capable of feeding everyone."

From Stocking's statement it is clear now that, for every death from hunger, there is no genuine technical cause. For every child's life that has been lost through starvation, sufficient food has always been available. This system and its supporters are culpable of mass murder.

SOYMB find the usual disappointing "remedies" being proposed by Oxfam such as new market rules and regulation. But is it not an error in the market: the system is operating as it is meant to. The entire edifice of the capitalist system is not geared to satisfying the needs of the majority for even the simplest means of living, such as food. Instead the objective is nothing more or less than profit, and it is an objective shared by the small minority who own and control the means of producing wealth to the exclusion of the rest of us. This society offers very little security – food or otherwise – except, of course, security for those to make a profit. Some future !!