Sep 11
25
More than 900 million people worldwide suffer from chronic hunger in the world and fifteen percent of the world’s population will lie with hungry every night, a phenomenon that is has been exacerbated by speculation on foodstuffs and the consequent increase in prices, according to Red Cross disaster 2011 world report reveals.
In contrast, 1.5 billion people worldwide suffer from overweight, even in emerging countries of South Asia and North Africa, where claims more lives than the own hunger. This phenomenon of ‘malnutrition’ is due in large part to the rise of the importation of food processed at the expense of the direct production of raw materials for food use in the countries themselves.
Another aspect highlighted by the report is that hunger and malnutrition also affect the “prosperous West”. In United States, the Government spent nearly $ 68,000 million to feed more than 40 million people in 2010. Also, the Red Cross has been forced to reactivate its programmes of food aid in Spain several years abandoned, and distributes food to 700,000 people in our country.
“925 million people suffering hunger in the world in 2010″, according to data from the Organization for food and Agriculture (FAO) of the UN, said Thursday the general coordinator of Spanish Red Cross (CRE), Antoni Bruel i races, during the press conference for the presentation of the report at the headquarters of the organization in Madrid. “We are not talking about a bit of hunger, talking about lack of food, not eat simply,” he said.
According to data from the report, three million children under the age of five die every year from malnutrition and 178 million suffer from growth retardation for the same reason. In addition, 60 per cent of persons suffering from hunger in the world are women, which, according to Bruel, generates the “multiplier effect” also affect fetuses, at the time of pregnancy, and babies, at the time of lactation.
Among the factors that contribute to the “perfect storm” in the global food system, drought and other natural disasters such as floods, the Coordinator of the CRE highlighted the speculative increase in prices. “The speculation costs lives”, he asserted. The problem is not the availability of food, that “there is more than the needed”, but their access, warned.
“After 18 months of relative stability, the FAO food price indices have increased more than 30 percent in the second half of 2010″, a percentage which is 57 percent in the case of cereals, he said.
Among the causes of this increase in prices, Bruel stressed the “paradox” of the futures markets, which were created in the 1960s “in order to avoid long-term price deviations” and foods that have become, precisely, “an instrument for quite the opposite,” to “speculate with the prices of necessities”.
To put an end to this situation, according to Bruel, States should assume the regulation of agricultural prices. “Not be you can speculate with basic commodities”, he asserted. “It should regulate prices, as indeed is done at the national level;” “in Spain, for example, a loaf of bread not it can sell to eight euros”, it continued. “What you don’t want your home, you must not wanting it for the world,” said.
Speculation and business interests, he said, are key factors to understand why increased agricultural yields in recent years has been due more to the increase in the cultivation of biofuels to food production and about 60 percent of the arable land not cultivated in the world are in Africa.
On the African continent, explained Bruel, most men are engaged cultivation of commercial interest, while the cultivation of the holdings that contribute more directly to family food, especially to women. Lack of aid in the form of subsidies and supplies to smallholder women, warned, generates a “major gap in the feeding of families”, who are forced to attend a more expensive market to feed themselves, rather than do it themselves.
OBSESIDAD AND “PROSPEROUS WEST”
In these circumstances, and as a counterpoint to the overall situation, the increase in imports of food processed at the expense of the indigenous production of food raw materials is contributing, “even in emerging economies”, to an increase in obesity around the world.
“The excess of nutrition claims currently more lives in some countries of South Asia and North Africa, some 2.4 million per year, than hunger, which makes it clear that ‘malnutrition’ is a much more widespread than the hunger phenomenon”, warned CRE.
One aspect highlighted in the report is that the increase in hunger and malnutrition also affect the “prosperous West”. In United States, Department of agriculture in 2010 spent nearly 68 billion dollars in food coupons for more than 40 million people “hungry”.
In the European Union, one in every six people in the 27 Member States living below the poverty line. In Spain, in the context of the current economic crisis, the CRE was forced three years ago to reactivate its programmes of food distribution “of necessity”, a few programs that were virtually abandoned. In these circumstances, Red Cross provides food aid to some 700,000 people in Spain, 70 per cent of whom are unemployed.
HORN OF AFRICA
During the press conference of presentation of the report, the representative of the Spanish Red Cross in Kenya, Pablo Díez la Lastra, warned that the current food crisis in the Horn of Africa “it is not new,” but it has attracted international attention and “comes out more in the media” because of the situation of Somali refugees and the conflict in Somalia”which is partially a consequence of the extreme and permanent need for afflicting the Horn of Africa”.
According to the delegate of CRE, thirteen million people are affected by hunger and between 20 and 25 per cent of children suffer from malnutrition in the Horn of Africa. “It’s the worst drought of the past 60 years” and affects not only crops but livestock populations largely pastoral.
According to Pablo Díez, the international response has been “delayed”, despite being a “announced crisis”. Despite this, he pointed out, Red Cross has the “firm hope” that, in addition to humanitarian interventions in the short term, “saving”, Governments, international agencies, humanitarian agencies and civil society implement “permanent mechanisms” that strengthen the capacities of communities, improve its resistance to shocks and prevent the recurrence of such situations to repeat.
Spanish Red Cross has raised around four million euros to alleviate food crisis in the Horn of Africa, far fewer than the 45 million received by the earthquake in Haiti, said Antoni Bruel.
