the price of rice: tomorrow I wake up hungry
In 2007/2008 world prices for food and grain peaked creating a hunger crisis in over thirty countries that depend on rice as a staple food. Severe desperation led to riots. I became aware of the crisis through media images on the riots. The images haunted me, but I felt the blame was misplaced on the victims and not the root cause.
Eric Holt-Gimnez of the think tank Food First reports that last year there were record amounts of food grown and produced, enough to feed the world one and half times its needs. Instead, there were record levels of starvation. . .and record profit for agribusiness.
How does this happen? Through free trade agreements, the World Trade Order and lending practices of the World Monetary Fund, agribusiness corporations profit from a practice known as “dumping.” Dumping is when one country’s heavily subsidized food product is imported by another country for less than what they can grow it themselves. For example, 30 years ago, Haiti grew all it’s own rice. Because U.S. farmers are so heavily subsidized by government funding, they can grow rice at a fraction of the real cost. After free trade agreements, it became cheaper for Haiti to import rice from the U.S. than to grow it themselves. Until. . . . market manipulations increased the price of rice to what most people could not afford. But a dependency has been established as little or no rice is being farmed in Haiti. What’s most devastating to me beyond the immediate hunger crisis, is that very soon, in a generation or two, no one in Haiti will remember how to grow rice.
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A few resources:
Documentary film: Life and Debt (2001)
Article: The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots, by Bill Quigley (counterpunch.org)
Organization: Food First: The Institute for Food and Development Policy shapes how people think by analyzing the root causes of global hunger, poverty, and ecological degradation and developing solutions in partnership with movements working for social change. (foodfirst.org)
Eric Holt-Gimnez of the think tank Food First reports that last year there were record amounts of food grown and produced, enough to feed the world one and half times its needs. Instead, there were record levels of starvation. . .and record profit for agribusiness.
How does this happen? Through free trade agreements, the World Trade Order and lending practices of the World Monetary Fund, agribusiness corporations profit from a practice known as “dumping.” Dumping is when one country’s heavily subsidized food product is imported by another country for less than what they can grow it themselves. For example, 30 years ago, Haiti grew all it’s own rice. Because U.S. farmers are so heavily subsidized by government funding, they can grow rice at a fraction of the real cost. After free trade agreements, it became cheaper for Haiti to import rice from the U.S. than to grow it themselves. Until. . . . market manipulations increased the price of rice to what most people could not afford. But a dependency has been established as little or no rice is being farmed in Haiti. What’s most devastating to me beyond the immediate hunger crisis, is that very soon, in a generation or two, no one in Haiti will remember how to grow rice.
_______________________________________
A few resources:
Documentary film: Life and Debt (2001)
Article: The U.S. Role in Haiti's Food Riots, by Bill Quigley (counterpunch.org)
Organization: Food First: The Institute for Food and Development Policy shapes how people think by analyzing the root causes of global hunger, poverty, and ecological degradation and developing solutions in partnership with movements working for social change. (foodfirst.org)
