World's food system broken, Oxfam warns

World's food system broken, Oxfam warns

1 June, 2011 | By Cahal Milmo, Chief Reporter (Independent)
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Millions more people

across the world will be

locked into a cycle of

hunger and food crisis

unless governments tackle a

"broken" production system

which is being exploited by

speculators and will cause a

doubling in basic foodstuff

prices in the next 20 years,

a leading aid agency has

warned.

Research by Oxfam has highlighted a combination of factors,
ranging from climate change and population growth to subsidies for
biofuels and the actions of commodities traders, which will throw
development in poor countries into reverse unless radical reform of
the global food system is undertaken.

The charity found that the world currently produces enough food to
sustain the population, but still 925 million people go hungry every
year. This situation will dramatically worsen as the population
reaches 9 billion by 2050, meaning demand for food will increase
by 70 per cent at a time when capacity to increase yields is running
at less than 1 per cent a year.

Barbara Stocking, Oxfam's chief executive, said: "The food system
is pretty well bust. All the signs are that the number of people going
hungry is going up. One in seven people on the planet go hungry
every day despite the fact that the world is capable of feeding
everyone. 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."

In a 74-page report drawn up for the launch of a four-year
campaign to pressure governments and corporations to increase the
affordability of basic staples, Oxfam apportioned some of the blame
for the drastic increase in food costs, which has already seen prices
double since 1990, to commodities traders and speculation in the
global foodstuffs market.

With the world's poorest people now spending up to 80 per cent of
their income on food, the aid agency said they were particularly
vulnerable to the volatility in prices from which large agricultural
trading companies profited. It said that up to 90 per cent of global
grain trading happened between just three companies, each of
which had made substantial profits from fluctuations in prices since
the 2008 food crisis.

One of the companies, the American conglomerate Cargill, saw its
profits increase by 86 per cent in the first quarter of 2008 and is
heading for its most profitable year yet following further disruption
to global supplies, according to the study. Cargill said it welcomed
the report, saying that there was a "significant challenge" in meeting
demand for food in 2050.

Oxfam is calling for regulators to place limits on trading in
agricultural futures – contracts designed to reduce uncertainty in
prices, which however, critics say are perversely driving prices
higher. The aid agency said global food production was further
skewed by subsides for biofuels, large-scale landowners in poor
countries and the disproportionate influence of seed manufacturers
at a time when increased investment in 500 million small farms in the
developing world would yield dramatic benefits for rural and urban
populations.

Jeremy Hobbs, Oxfam's executive director, said: "For too long,
governments have put the interests of big business and powerful
elites above the interests of the seven billion of us who produce and
consume food."

The charity said the effects of many of the issues it was highlighting
were already being seen in food insecurity "hot spots" around the
world, in particular the Horn of Africa, where eight million people
across Somalia, Ethiopia and northern Kenya are facing chronic
food shortages due to drought.

Courtesy