Editorial

A.N.M. Nurul Haque, 18 May 2008, The Daily Star

 

THE United Nations has warned that 82 countries, including China and India, face food emergencies this year as cereal stocks are at an all-time low. Stockpiles of grains such as rice and wheat have dropped to their lowest levels, sufficient to feed the world for only 54 days, after which millions may face starvation.

The World Bank and IMF have sounded a bigger alarm. The WB president, Robert Zoellick, said that 100 million people in low-income countries could be pushed deeper into poverty because of surging food prices caused directly by the imbalance between demand and supply. IMF chief Dominque Strauss-Kahn says: “As we know, learning from the past, these kinds of situations sometimes end in war.”

Food riots have already erupted in many countries, including Egypt, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Senegal, Mozambique Yemen, Mexico, Mauritania, Indonesia, Bolivia, the Philippines, India, Ethiopia, Burkino Faso, and Uzbekistan.

From the rice of Asia to the wheat of Australia, the surging prices of foods are breaking the budget of the poor and raising the spectres of hunger and unrest. Ironically, affluent countries of the world, including US, UK, Canada and Brazil, are bringing into force measures to increase the use of bio-fuels, when soaring food prices are threatening famine in at least 37 countries in Asia and Africa.

The industrialised countries have started the bio-fuel boom by fixing ambitious targets for its use. The European Union has set a goal for its member states, who should use at least 5.75 percent bio-fuel as fuel by 2010, and 10 percent by 2020. The US wants 35 billion gallons of bio-fuel a year.

President George W. Bush has blamed the changing food habits of the people of India and China for the crisis, and said that increasing demands for meat in these two countries was behind the crisis. In fact, Mr. Bush has refused to accept the harsh truth that his own doings have played a significant role in fuelling the crisis.

The use of US corn for ethanol is forecasted to increase to 114 million tons in the next year, which is almost a third of the total projected US crops. Cars in the US now burn corn equal to the total import needs of 82 food-deficit countries. The entire corn and soybean harvest of the US would need to be processed into ethanol and bio-diesel.

Hundreds of thousands have already been displaced by the soybean plantations on 50 million hectares of land in southern Brazil, northern Argentina, eastern Bolivia and Paraguay. Farmers are being forced to give up their land to grow fuel crops for export. Converting most of the earth’s arable land for growing fuel crops threatens to divert the world’s grain supply from food to fuel.

UK farmers each year produce 3.5 million tons of grains, which is more than they need. If these surplus grains are sold to bio-fuel industries instead of the hungry world, it would certainly lead to mass starvation in the poor countries. Any foodstuff used for fuel is taken out of the world’s food chain, when millions of people are starving.

The recent UN report on biofuel has raised issues regarding food security and bio-fuel production. Jean Ziegler, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, has described the transforming of wheat and maize crops into biofuel as an absolute catastrophe, and termed the diversion of arable land away from food crops a crime against humanity. Ziegler has called for a five-year moratorium on bio-fuel production.

Bio-fuel champions assure us that because fuel crops are renewable, they are environment friendly, can reduce global warming and will foster rural development. But environmental scientists differ with this statement. According to them, every ton of palm oil, which is used for making bio-fuel, generates 33 tons of carbon dioxide emission — 10 times more than petroleum.

The 2007 study by scientists from Britain, US, Germany and Switzerland, including Professor Paul Crutzen who won a Nobel Prize for his work on ozone, have reported that emissions from the burning of bio-fuels derived from rapeseed and corn have been found to produce more greenhouse gases than they save. Tropical forests cleared for sugarcane ethanol emit 50 percent more greenhouse gases than the production and use of the same amount of gasoline.

According to a UN report, 25,000 people die of hunger or hunger-related causes every day across the world. Even when the price of foodstuff was low, 850 million people had to go hungry only because they could not afford to buy any. Millions of people are now pushed below the breadline with the rapid rise in food prices because of low global food reserves and the soaring demand for bio-fuel.

A study by the European Union shows that the 100 litres of ethanol, which are needed to fill the oil tank of a sports utility car, require some 240 kilograms of corn, enough to feed a person for a year. In fact, bio-fuel industries are snatching food from the mouths of the hungry people to run the cars of the rich.

A bio-fuel frenzy and other misguided policies have led to the global food crisis in which prices have soared and rice consumption has out-paced production, threatening a billion people with starvation. The IMF has taken a stand against bio-fuels, which pose a moral problem, and has also called for a moratorium on the use of foodgrain-powered vehicles.

A bio-fuel backlash has erupted in the major ethanol producer, the US, as lawmakers and experts debate the merits of converting food to fuel to support America’s age-old love for cars.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has formed a top-level task force to tackle the global food crisis. The first meeting of the task force was held on May 13, with an urging to the global leaders for help in tackling the food crisis. The task force has also planned to hold a high level meeting of FAO in Rome from June 3 to 5 to tackle the crisis.

It is almost sure that the affluent countries will brush-off the demands and protests of the poor nations, and continue to pollute the environment and divert corn for bio-fuel. The time is ripe for the leaders of the Third World countries to unite and resist this existential threat.

The World Food Summit in November 1996 reaffirmed the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger. One of FAO’s main objectives is ensuring humanity’s freedom from hunger, and its Right to Food unit is committed to the realisation of the right to food for the hungry millions across the world. The forthcoming meeting of FAO should also promote the human right to food.

A. N. M. Nurul Haque is a columnist of The Daily Star.