We read in the Independent, Asda (Walmart) will be donating its surplus food to charity who will re-distribute it to the needy.These donations would equate to more than three million free meals each year, according to a statement. That amount of food would provide a saving of £4.7m to British charities, it was claimed.
Asda has committed to diverting all its surplus stock including bread, milk, meat and vegetables, to FareShare. Unlike traditional food-banks, where food is handed-out to people in need to take away with them, the food redistributed by FareShare is used by various charities to cook meals for people in need to their services. The organisation currently provides 42,000 meals a week to 910 charities. In the past year, it has seen a 26 per cent increase in the number of charities turning to them for donations. Asda’s contributions should increase the quantity of chilled food sent to FareShare depots across the UK by 1,500 tonnes this year, a 41 per cent increase in the total amount of all food currently redistributed.
Despite the supposed good intentions (which we don't expect to impact upon the company's enormous profits) , this leaves the root cause of hunger and shortages of food untouched. It solves very little.
At least 1 in 8 people go hungry in a world that produces more than enough food for all to eat well. Even in the US, the UK and across Western Europe there has been a huge surge in food bank usage that reveals a growing and documented hunger in the most affluent countries of the world. If we accept that food is one of the most basic human needs we cannot treat food as a “commodity” which is any marketable item that is produced and traded for profit. Many charities and campaigners highlight how stock market speculation on basic foodstuffs is a scandal when millions of people are starving in the world, because betting on food prices in financial markets causes drastic price swings in staple foods, with catastrophic consequences for the world's poor. Indeed the entire edifice of the global food economy is based on the belief that food should be grown for profit, not human need.
As a result of commoditising farming itself has been reduced to a small component in a larger system dominated by global agribusiness. Just a handful of corporations now control the production, distribution and sale of food, with some of the largest corporate players reaping colossal profits from the global trade in agricultural commodities. Small producers and family farmers are uniformly subjected to the vagaries of market forces and either compete with large (and highly subsidised) corporations, or get pushed out of farming. In both rich and poor countries, the flight of farmers from the land is massive and still continuing (particularly in India), with devastating social consequences in terms of poverty and farmer suicides. Agricultural policy because of the dictates of capitalist accumulation has so lost touch with the basic goal of feeding people that the majority of hungry people in the world are those who struggle to remain on the land as subsistence farmers.
The world's broken food system that results in the needless deaths of men women and children should act as a catalyst for change to a society where common ownership of the worlds’ resources will ensure a re-ordering of global priorities to guarantee that everyone has free access to safe and nutritious food and no-one will die of hunger.
Asda has committed to diverting all its surplus stock including bread, milk, meat and vegetables, to FareShare. Unlike traditional food-banks, where food is handed-out to people in need to take away with them, the food redistributed by FareShare is used by various charities to cook meals for people in need to their services. The organisation currently provides 42,000 meals a week to 910 charities. In the past year, it has seen a 26 per cent increase in the number of charities turning to them for donations. Asda’s contributions should increase the quantity of chilled food sent to FareShare depots across the UK by 1,500 tonnes this year, a 41 per cent increase in the total amount of all food currently redistributed.
Despite the supposed good intentions (which we don't expect to impact upon the company's enormous profits) , this leaves the root cause of hunger and shortages of food untouched. It solves very little.
At least 1 in 8 people go hungry in a world that produces more than enough food for all to eat well. Even in the US, the UK and across Western Europe there has been a huge surge in food bank usage that reveals a growing and documented hunger in the most affluent countries of the world. If we accept that food is one of the most basic human needs we cannot treat food as a “commodity” which is any marketable item that is produced and traded for profit. Many charities and campaigners highlight how stock market speculation on basic foodstuffs is a scandal when millions of people are starving in the world, because betting on food prices in financial markets causes drastic price swings in staple foods, with catastrophic consequences for the world's poor. Indeed the entire edifice of the global food economy is based on the belief that food should be grown for profit, not human need.
As a result of commoditising farming itself has been reduced to a small component in a larger system dominated by global agribusiness. Just a handful of corporations now control the production, distribution and sale of food, with some of the largest corporate players reaping colossal profits from the global trade in agricultural commodities. Small producers and family farmers are uniformly subjected to the vagaries of market forces and either compete with large (and highly subsidised) corporations, or get pushed out of farming. In both rich and poor countries, the flight of farmers from the land is massive and still continuing (particularly in India), with devastating social consequences in terms of poverty and farmer suicides. Agricultural policy because of the dictates of capitalist accumulation has so lost touch with the basic goal of feeding people that the majority of hungry people in the world are those who struggle to remain on the land as subsistence farmers.
The world's broken food system that results in the needless deaths of men women and children should act as a catalyst for change to a society where common ownership of the worlds’ resources will ensure a re-ordering of global priorities to guarantee that everyone has free access to safe and nutritious food and no-one will die of hunger.
1 comment:
Not true
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0064879
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