"Every five seconds a child under ten dies from hunger, 57 000 people every day, a billion are severely malnourished, and this is happening on a planet that is overflowing with wealth and that could actually feed twelve billion people...Productive forces have increased enormously. Today the problem is not production, but people's access to corn, vegetables, rice ... Many do not have the money." - Jean Ziegler in an interview.
He was United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2000 to 2008, and as a member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council from 2008 to 2012.
Q. Your accusation is often quoted: "Every child who dies of hunger is murdered." Who are the killers?
A. All of us, if we remain silent. In any case the perpetrators include the bandits in the banks and hedge funds who speculate on the commodity exchanges with agricultural commodities and push up prices. Therefore, 1.25 billion people in the slums, living on less than 1.50 dollars a day, can no more buy enough food. These speculators are mass murderers.
Q. There was starving before the banks seized the commodity exchanges.
A. But these robber lowlifes have plunged the financial system into chaos, and the Western governments had to provide more than $ 1 trillion [to save the banking system]. At the same time, the contributions to the UN World Food Program have been lowered, a program designed to help people in acute crises. The result is that, just as in northern Kenya, every day the volunteers have to reject hundreds of families because they do not get enough money from the rich governments in the North to buy the expensive cereal. And in addition to this there is the madness of biofuels. Americans burn 40 percent of its annual corn harvest in car engines. And in Europe tens of million tons of grain are processed into biodiesel, bioethanol and biogas. It does nothing to protect the climate, but is instead a crime against humanity, as long as so many people are starving. Only the agricultural and energy companies make money from biofuel.
Q. Concerning the global agricultural trading companies such as Cargill or Glencore, you even claim that their bosses decide how many must starve. You can not prove it.
A. I certainly can. There is food only for those who can pay for it. And these companies control 85 percent of the trade in basic foodstuffs and that way they dominate the price setting.
Q. That would work only as a cartel.
A. Of course they come to an agreement [about price fixing]! In a market where so few actors trade such large quantities, there is sure to exist, in the backroom and without any conspiracy, subtle, oligopolistic arrangements.
Q. The vast majority of the world harvest is marketed in the harvest countries themselves. So your evil corporations are not involved in it.
A. Indirectly they are, because they fix the world prices on which all national markets are aligned. I have myself noticed how the wheat producers in Kazakhstan or the rice traders in Nigeria base their prices entirely on it.
Q. The former head of the food giant Nestlé, Peter Brabeck-Letmate throws against you [the accusation of] "ideologically driven polemic". The fact is that "we have two people more to feed every second and we have 0.2 hectares less agricultural land available." So food would always get more expensive.
A. Alas, Brabeck. He feels attacked and says he is the wrong enemy. He's a smart man, but on the wrong side. Of course, the demographic pressure is undeniable. And yet there is an abundance of food. There are structures, structural violence, that deny access [to food] to the poor. And the institutions of the rich countries make it continually worse.
Full interview at link
He was United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2000 to 2008, and as a member of the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council from 2008 to 2012.
Q. Your accusation is often quoted: "Every child who dies of hunger is murdered." Who are the killers?
A. All of us, if we remain silent. In any case the perpetrators include the bandits in the banks and hedge funds who speculate on the commodity exchanges with agricultural commodities and push up prices. Therefore, 1.25 billion people in the slums, living on less than 1.50 dollars a day, can no more buy enough food. These speculators are mass murderers.
Q. There was starving before the banks seized the commodity exchanges.
A. But these robber lowlifes have plunged the financial system into chaos, and the Western governments had to provide more than $ 1 trillion [to save the banking system]. At the same time, the contributions to the UN World Food Program have been lowered, a program designed to help people in acute crises. The result is that, just as in northern Kenya, every day the volunteers have to reject hundreds of families because they do not get enough money from the rich governments in the North to buy the expensive cereal. And in addition to this there is the madness of biofuels. Americans burn 40 percent of its annual corn harvest in car engines. And in Europe tens of million tons of grain are processed into biodiesel, bioethanol and biogas. It does nothing to protect the climate, but is instead a crime against humanity, as long as so many people are starving. Only the agricultural and energy companies make money from biofuel.
Q. Concerning the global agricultural trading companies such as Cargill or Glencore, you even claim that their bosses decide how many must starve. You can not prove it.
A. I certainly can. There is food only for those who can pay for it. And these companies control 85 percent of the trade in basic foodstuffs and that way they dominate the price setting.
Q. That would work only as a cartel.
A. Of course they come to an agreement [about price fixing]! In a market where so few actors trade such large quantities, there is sure to exist, in the backroom and without any conspiracy, subtle, oligopolistic arrangements.
Q. The vast majority of the world harvest is marketed in the harvest countries themselves. So your evil corporations are not involved in it.
A. Indirectly they are, because they fix the world prices on which all national markets are aligned. I have myself noticed how the wheat producers in Kazakhstan or the rice traders in Nigeria base their prices entirely on it.
Q. The former head of the food giant Nestlé, Peter Brabeck-Letmate throws against you [the accusation of] "ideologically driven polemic". The fact is that "we have two people more to feed every second and we have 0.2 hectares less agricultural land available." So food would always get more expensive.
A. Alas, Brabeck. He feels attacked and says he is the wrong enemy. He's a smart man, but on the wrong side. Of course, the demographic pressure is undeniable. And yet there is an abundance of food. There are structures, structural violence, that deny access [to food] to the poor. And the institutions of the rich countries make it continually worse.
Full interview at link
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