A world food crisis; empty rice bowls and fat rats
http://libcom.org/news/a-world-food-crisis-empty-rice-bowls-fat-rats-16042008
by Ret Marut
In the Chittagong hill tracts of rural south-eastern Bangladesh the
bamboo is in bloom - and the local poor are hungry and facing famine.
Bamboo blooms and seeds itself roughly once every 50 years; the rats
love the seeds, and their high protein content causes them to breed
four times faster than normal. After fini****ng off the bamboo seeds,
the massively enlarged rat population moves on to other crops. Rice,
ginger, turmeric and chillies fields have all suffered from the plague
of rats. Rat trappers are working constantly, and the cooked rat
itself has now become an im****tant part of some diets, as crops are
devastated and even wild food sources are depleted. Food aid from
government and NGOs has been slow to reach the area.
The immediate effect is increased desperation for the poor - in Asia
many spend 50-70% of income on food. But this is only a local
manifestation of a serious global food supply problem that will affect
us all to varying degrees. Food inflation of over 20% in the past year
in the UK is only an early symptom.
Dhaka; collective bargaining as riot
Last Saturday thousands of striking garment workers rioted in Dhaka,
Bangladesh's capital, demanding increased wages to compensate for
spiralling food inflation. After rejecting an insufficient wage offer
from factory bosses, they demonstrated and then began to attack
garment factories. A massive police contingent arrived and fierce
clashes occurred; some police were beaten and then chased out of the
area by furious workers. Cops were seen to throw away their uniforms
and hide in local houses and shops. The cops eventually restored order
with clubs, tear gas and rubber bullets. At least 50 people, including
27 cops, were injured.
The whole world in a grain of rice
Rice is the staple food of poor Banglade****s, along with billions of
others - half the world's population - and now the world faces a
global grain shortage and soaring prices. Last December's Sidr Cyclone
in Bangladesh destroyed $600 million worth of the country's rice crop,
and prices have doubled in the past year. A kilo of rice now costs 30p
($0.60).The government has tried to im****t rice stocks, but now the
major ex****ting countries, such as neighbouring India, have severely
restricted their ex****ts to try and limit price rises for their
domestic consumers. Long queues form daily outside shops where
soldiers sell government-subsidised rice at three quarters of the
market price. It used to be only the poorest queueing, but now they
are joined by the lower middle cl***** - teachers, government workers
etc.
But this is far from a local problem... there have been food riots
recently in Egypt, Argentina, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, the
Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere - while in Haiti last week
protesters blocked roads, shot at UN peacekeeping troops and then
tried to storm the Presidential Palace.
Several factors have combined to create the present shortages.
Hoarding by suppliers to further push up prices is a factor. There are
the consequences of global warming; abnormal weather conditions have
led to severe crop damage and drought, while increased planting of bio-
fuel crops has taken land out of food production. In the rapidly
developing ecomomies of Asia greater consumer spending power has
changed diets, particularly among the emerging affluent middle
cl*****; a growing demand for more meat means cattle and poultry feed
crops take over agricultural lands, feeding far fewer mouths from the
same acreage. As the economies industrialise, migration to the cities
causes a labour shortage in the countryside; rice is a labour-
intensive crop. Industrialisation also eats up farmland and government
policies try to push small farmers off the land into urban wage labour
and proletarianisation.
Rising oil prices mean rising trans****tation costs that are passed on
to consumers in food prices, which in turn makes bio-fuels more
economically feasible - which then takes more land out of food
production. (So, ironically, so-called ecological measures are
contributing to the 'food crisis'. And recent research has just found
that bio-fuels increase air pollution by discharging more harmful
particles than normal fuel.) The price of oil-derived agricultural
fertilisers is also rising. As farmers have been encouraged to move
away from traditional farming practices, they have become dependent on
chemical fertiliser; the International Rice Research Institute says
that the sustainability of rice farming in Asia is threatened by
overuse of fertilisers and and its damage to soil health.
It is possible that the rising price of dimini****ng oil reserves and
unpredictable weather conditions as a consequence of global warming
may eventually force governments to begin planning for greater 'food
security' and a degree of self-sufficiency. Policies moving away from
domestic food production may be reversed. A UN re****t has recently
called for a more ecological and locally sourced approach to food
production. Yet, just as the immediates demands of market competition
mean global capitalism is unable/unwilling to bring any any co-
ordinated response to trying to deal with global warming - so the
dictates of market forces may prevent any concerted planning to deal
with what is likely to be a long-term problem. Unless, of course, the
hungry millions become so threatening that Capital is forced into
giving concessions.
The rice harvest in Bangladesh (known as the 'Boro') is due at the end
of April and a bumper crop is predicted - but that will only provide a
tem****ary relief. Bangladesh cannot feed its population without rice
im****ts and it's the same story in many other countries.
Land and liberty
The law is hard on man or woman
That steals the goose from off the common
But leaves the greater felon loose
That steals the common from the goose
- Old English rhyme
The 'Green Revolution' in agriculture introduced to 3rd World farmers
in the 1960s made them dependent on supplies of fertilisers,
pesticides and artificial irrigation. Monoculture cash crops became
the norm; yield was doubled, but at the expense of using 3 times as
much water by accessing groundwater using electric pumps. This and
fertiliser pollution has caused widespread damage to soil and water.
In recent years farmers are being pressured to use 'hybrid seeds';
this is a commodified seed - engineered so it cannot reproduce itself
and can only grow with the aid of chemical fertilisers. So farmers are
locked into dependency on the multi-national companies selling them
this seed.
In indigenous agriculture, a cropping system includes a symbiotic
relation****p between soil, water, farm animals and plants.
Hybrid agriculture replaces this integration at farm level with
the integration of inputs such as seeds and chemicals. The indigenous
cropping systems are based only on internal organic inputs.
Seeds come from the farm, soil fertility comes from the farm, and
pest control is built into the crop mixtures. In the hybrid package,
yields are intimately tied to the purchased inputs of seeds, chemical
fertilisers, pesticides and petroleum, and intensive irrigation."
...For 10,000 years, farmers and peasants had been producing their
own seeds on their lands, selecting the best seeds, storing them,
replanting them, and letting nature take its course in the renewal and
enrichment of life. With the introduction of hybrid seeds, farmers
will no longer be their custodians." (Op.cit.)(Nazrul Islam - New Age,
6 Apr 08)
If farmers become dependent on hybrid seed, this biological diversity
and local adaptation will be lost. Such commercialisation of
traditional farming techniques often puts tremendous economic pressure
on farmers - in India, 10,000 farmers have committed suicide in the
past year, mainly due to debt worries.
The substitution of chemical fertilisers for organic methods of
returning nutrients to the soil, such as composting, crop rotation and
manure creates lifeless dusty soils prone to soil erosion. An
estimated 24 billion tonnes of soil are eroded from the world's
agricultural land each year. Dust levels in the lower atmosphere have
tripled in the last 60 years.
Modern hybrid seeds require large amounts of water often
necessitating the construction of irrigation systems and dams. The
experience in poor countries is that dams serve the rich minority and
disrupt the natural watersheds essential to poorer farmers. To build
these dams millions of people have been forcibly moved from their
homes and fertile soils in river valleys have been flooded. (Primal
Seeds).
The world faces numerous environmental and agricultural problems
caused by the capitalist mode of production; but, for the moment,
access to the necessities of life are still determined by capitalist
laws;
Food availability depends on a number of factors. The first one is
the purchasing capacity of the people. We should not forget that,
during the 1974 famine, Bangladesh's per capita food availability was
the highest to date. Even then, over 30,000 people died of starvation
and millions suffered from malnutrition at that time, as the poor
didn't have access to food grains for lack of purchasing capacity.
(Op. cit., New Age)
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