Insurrection of the Famished – Causes and Possible Remedies of the World Hunger Crisis

What forces countries to agree to these dictates? They are all prisoners of enormous debts to the banks in the North and in order to have those loans refinanced they need to export what those financial masters demand. In order just to pay the interest on those loans, they are rendered powerless vis-à-vis the financial behemoths in the North. The external debt, the murderous consequence of decades of dependence on the rich countries, renders impossible the freeing of these countries to enable the people to become self-sufficient without interference from the international financial institutions. They were in need of help, they got disaster.

Farmers in those countries can not support their families, the costs of fertilizers and herbicides are rising, they cannot afford to buy food and they have to leave their farms and move to the shantytowns of the big cities. The needs of the native people for a decent livelihood are of no importance. Instead they are being robbed. This decline in the lives of the indigenous people has been going on since the first colonial era.

The plans for 'structural adjustments' are ratified by our ministers of finance, by our governments, under constant pressure from the big international corporations who are making enormous profits. In order to rid the world of these crimes to humanity, we need to mobilize public opinion. In a country as profoundly democratic as France or the U.S. it should be possible for the government to raise the relatively small amount of money it would take to render these countries self-sufficient, to be able to afford pesticides, fertilizers, transportation for a subsistence agriculture.

Certainly there are also natural causes. Six years of severe drought in Australia, probably linked to global warming, have taken a severe toll on Australian agriculture. There are also natural reasons such as the growing middle classes in India and China being able to afford to eat better and especially to eat more meat. Increased demand, increased prices.

However, there are two major criminals that have not been given sufficient attention and which must be dealt with.

Speculation in commodities – the first culprit

The immediate cause for the rise in food prices is the speculation in commodities mainly at the Chicago stock exchange. According to Jean Ziegler, one thousand billion dollars of the world money supply have been lost between October and January through market speculation on the world's stock exchanges. The big speculators, the hedge funds – that's not the Red Cross, says Jean Ziegler – now speculate in soya, rice, millet, wheat and corn. They are looking for maximum profit in agricultural raw materials and are thus pushing the prices up to an explosive level. They can buy up Brazil's entire soya harvest with only 5 % of real capital. This way they risk very little if the harvest turns out to be less than expected but they stand a good chance of making astronomical profits.

The cause is the speculation in commodities, the hedge funds that create money with money. It doesn't make money from production, from an industry, from creating something of value. It is a way of making gold with air ("Ils font de l'or avec du vent"). The speculators are not bothered with food security in the world; they go where they have to go to make maximum profits.

One thousand billion dollars of inherited property have been lost since October in the world's money markets which are no more profitable. The financial markets have collapsed. The margin of profit is negative. So where do they go? They go where the speculation is worthwhile and that is in agricultural raw materials.

Those speculators are criminals because we are dealing with crimes against humanity.

Since the bi-polar world system that existed before 1991 and the fall of the Soviet Union, there have been no obstacles to the savage capitalism that has now conquered the world.

UNCTAD – United Nations Conference on Trade and Development – is trying to rein in the WTO, which is the neoliberal institution that above all supports deregulation and privatization. UNCTAD is making efforts to exert a stabilizing influence on speculation in the commodities markets. However, capitalist market forces are too strong to be subdued by the well-intentioned efforts of a UN organization.

The World Food Program is in danger

The world’s largest humanitarian organization, the World Food Program (WFP), attempts to aid the people of the most afflicted countries. The survival of over 75 million people depends entirely on trucks that bring them food. People in Darfur for instance receive bags of powdered milk, bags of rice, water, just to cover the most basic needs of the refugees. They are on the edge of starvation and without food and water an emaciated person can only live for three days. After three days, he dies.

In Bangladesh, in Madhya Pradesh (India), in Da Kao (Vietnam), very often the only meal the children get is the biscuit with added vitamins, the glass of milk from the food program that is now running the risk of coming to an end. The WFP has lost 40 % of its funds. Today they need $500 million just to be able to continue their program of supplying food to starving children. In a few days they will have to stop supplying school lunches, which 3.2 million children profit from. They are lacking, among other things, money to buy gasoline for their delivery trucks, but generally they need today – not tomorrow – millions of dollars for the continuation of their programs. The executive director of WFP said on April 17 in an email to Jean Ziegler: "In a few days, at the very latest next week, we are going to stop school lunches."

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