The escalating crisis of volatile food prices and food insecurity is the result of an industrial development model based on large-scale, export-orientated agriculture tied to international competition, self interest and stock market speculation. With over a billion people going hungry each day despite a huge surplus of food production, a reorientation towards more localised, smaller scale and sustainable agriculture is urgently required.
Free-trade policies long advanced by
World Bank President Robert Zoellick and U.S. President George W.
Bush are losing favor as countries in Africa, Asia and Latin
America find they can't buy enough food to feed their people.
The food crisis has decisive implications for the future role of
international financial institutions - and is calling into question the
basis of their approach to development, argues the Bretton Woods
Project.
The World Bank's response to the food crisis is a 'fire-extinguisher' approach that fails to address its root
causes, argues Eurodad - namely the unregulated process of trade
liberalisation, structural adjustment and stringent conditionality
implemented by the World Bank and the IMF in the first place.
The Rome summit of the Food & Agriculture Organisation failed to
address the roots of the current price and hunger crises. These lie in
incoherent and unfair global food policies, says Sue Branford.
The food crisis concerns not only biofuels, says Walden Bello, but the structural adjustment of agriculture that has destroyed the self-sufficiency of developing economies.