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	Food Crisis in Mexico by Robert M. Saper Witness for Peace Mexico   July 2008   Worldwide, people are suffering the effects of skyrocketing food prices. Mexico — where over half the population are poor — is part of this global disaster that, according to the World Bank, has already impoverished over 100 million people.   As Frances Moore Lappe of Food First indicates, this is perhaps the largest human rights crisis in decades; however, it is altogether avoidable because it is the product of bad policy. Mexico’s vulnerability and the impacts on its population are easily anticipated as the result of eroding Mexican food security under trade liberalization policies, that grant unfair advantages to large agricultural corporations and prioritize profit over the basic rights of people.   In January 2006, a Mexican consumer needed about $74 to purchase the items in a market basket, a selection of basic products necessary for survival. By April 2008, the same items cost about $117 — a staggering 58-percent increase in only 27 months. While food staples such as beans, rice, condensed milk, and eggs rose in price 79 to 114 percent over the course of 2007, there was only a 4.5-percent increase in wages.   The urgency of the issue is heard in the voice of a poor indigenous shopkeeper in Oaxaca: “I hope to God that prices come back down — there is no hope otherwise.” She then lamented, “Another one from our family will have to emigrate to the U.S.”   This is a crisis, however, that has been in the making for over two decades. Wages for Mexican workers lost 82-percent of their purchasing power since 1982, the year when trade liberalization, privatization, and market deregulation were first imposed on Mexico by the International Monetary Fund. The same IMF structural adjustment programs, in conjunction with the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, plowed under Mexico’s food security by mandating the privatization or dissolution of state-regulated grain reserves and price-support programs, sweeping reductions in farmer credit and subsidies, the deregulation of commodities markets, and the elimination of tariff and quota protections on imported agricultural products.   These radical changes to Mexico’s largely self-governed food system and the precipitous fall in real earning power, compounded by the dumping of U.S. agricultural commodities that were heavily subsidized under previous Farm Bills, made it utterly impossible for almost all Mexican small producers and most medium-size growers to maintain an internal market for their goods.   Mexicans can no longer produce the basic food their country needs, nor can they afford the products sold to them by U.S. agribusiness giants. Twenty years of this “silent food crisis” have resulted in increased undocumented migration, rising crime, unplanned urbanization, and many more people trying to make their way in the informal economy - trends that are likely to amplify given current policy and the mounting issues affecting global food prices.   Moreover, the new law in the US will continue subsidizing corn-based ethanol (now mandated to supplement every gallon of U.S. gasoline), furthering the trend of increased scarcity in corn — the main staple in the Mexican diet — and also raising the cost of other grains by diverting cropland for ethanol production.   The World Bank recently stated in a leaked internal report that biofuel production accounts for 75 percent of the current rise in global food prices, a finding which brings further subsidization of corn-based ethanol into serious moral question.   The potential for windfall profits in the biofuel sector, combined with other factors such as the surge of unregulated investment coming out of the collapsed housing market, has created a bubble in agricultural commodities that is driving up prices. Rising costs of oil, which inflate fertilizer and transportation prices, as well as supply shortages due to overexploitation of groundwater and the devastation of harvests by floods and droughts, also contribute to the sudden, meteoric increases.   Having an integrated global food economy means that these alarming issues and their consequences hit the poor without restraint, and free market policy leaves little room to change local laws to safeguard people’s economic rights.   The food crisis many are confronting is a result of failed trade policies that rob Mexico — and many other impoverished countries — of their sovereignty in feeding their own people, potentially starving millions of people.   *Robert M. Saper, is a member of the Witness for Peace international team based in Oaxaca, Mexico.
	Africa urges G8 to tackle oil, food prices by AFP / New York Times   8 July, 2008   Africa urges G8 to tackle oil, food prices. (AFP)   African leaders have urged the Group of Eight nations to tackle spiking oil and food prices, warning the crisis threatens to aggravate an already desperate plight in the continent.   German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the African leaders -- from Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania -- demanded action as the global food and fuel crisis has hit the continent"s most vulnerable people the hardest.   "The African countries expressed their fears that many of the Millennium Development Goals will be more difficult to reach if commodity prices keep rising like they are at the moment," she told reporters.   Food prices have nearly doubled in three years and set off riots in parts of the developing world, which are also being hit hard by record oil prices -- a joint crisis that is the primary focus of G8 leaders in Japan.   UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who attended the start of the summit, backed the African leaders and called on G8 nations to live up to their promises to double aid for Africa by 2010.   "The world faces three simultaneous crises -- a food crisis, a climate crisis and a development crisis," Ban told reporters. "The three crises are deeply interconnected and need to be addressed as such."   Oxfam said negotiators were deadlocked on the issue of aid pledges to Africa. Oxfam said the draft text of a separate communique on development does not include a reiteration of a promise by G8 leaders three years ago to provide 50 billion dollars extra in aid by 2010, half of it earmarked for Africa.   "We must see the $50 billion aid promise back in the communique," said Max Lawson of Oxfam International.   The UN"s Millennium Development Goals were launched in 2000 and involve an eight-point action plan to reduce poverty and improve healthcare and education in Africa by 2015.   But G8 nations are falling behind on the goals and skyrocketing food and oil prices have aggravated the problem and aid groups fear G8 powers are backtracking on their commitment.   Humanitarian Aid groups have accused some of the G8 nations -- Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States of walking away from earlier commitments.   July 6, 2008   The Group of 8 and man-made hunger. (NYT)   Thirty countries have already seen food riots this year. The ever higher cost of food could push tens of millions of people into abject poverty and starvation.   To a large degree, this crisis is man-made - the result of misguided energy and farm policies. When heads of the Group of 8 leading industrial nations meet in Japan this week, they must accept their full share of responsibility and lay out clearly what they will do to address this crisis.   To start, they must live up to their 2005 commitment to vastly increase aid to the poorest countries. And they must push other wealthy countries, like those in the Middle East, to help too. They must also commit themselves to reduce or do away with their most egregious agricultural and energy subsidies, which contribute to the spread of hunger throughout the world.   In the last year, the price of corn has risen 70 percent; wheat 55 percent; rice 160 percent. The World Bank estimates that for a group of 41 poor countries the combined shock of rising prices of food, oil and other raw materials over the past 18 months will cost them between 3 and 10 percent of their annual economic output.   Some of the causes are out of governments control, including the rising cost of energy and fertilizer, and drought in food exporters like Australia. Higher consumption of animal protein in China and India has also driven demand for feed grains.   Wrongheaded policies among rich and poor nations are also playing a big role. Of those, perhaps the most wrongheaded are the tangle of subsidies, mandates and tariffs to encourage the production of biofuels from crops in the United States and the European Union.   According to the World Bank, almost all of the growth in global corn production from 2004 to 2007 was devoted to American ethanol production, pushing up corn and animal feed prices and prompting farmers to switch from other crops to corn.   Long-standing farm subsidies in the rich world have also contributed to the crisis, ruining farmers in poor countries and depressing agricultural investment.   Rich countries are not the only culprits. At least 30 developing countries have imposed restrictions or bans on the export of foodstuffs. Importing countries are now stockpiling supplies, which takes more food from global markets.   So far there is no sign that the leaders of the developed countries are ready to do what is needed. The United States and Europe have refused to curtail their bio-fuel subsidies or their lavish farm subsidies. They are also falling far short of their aid commitments.   At the 2005 G-8 summit meeting, leaders said that by 2010 wealthier nations would increase annual development aid to poor countries by $50 billion. Yet aid has increased by only $11 billion.
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