Vandana Shiva: A peace plan for the food war

A Peace Plan for the Food War April 2011 For Immediate Release The year began with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reporting record high food prices and warning of “food riots,” leading many observers to predict the eruption of food wars similar to those in 2008, when the high price of food led to protests in over 30 countries. Global food prices continued to spike, finally dropping in March after eight consecutive months of price increases. However, prices are still 37% higher than last year and FAO economists say it is "premature to conclude that this is a reversal of the upward trend.” Such concerns are well founded. Rising food prices were an important catalyst for the people’s movements springing up all over North Africa and the Middle East, including the uprising in Egypt that drove President Mubarak from power, and in Tunisia, where President Ben Ali was forced to flee. Furthermore, bread and rice wars have sprung up in Senegal, Jordan, Libya, Mozambique, Morocco, and Chile. Philippe Chalmin, an economic adviser to the French government, warns that France “could start to see food riots” as soon as this month. In the US, grain inventories are “at a record low,” and 40 million people depend on food stamps for daily survival. Meanwhile, the UN just reported that “a gender gap in agriculture leaves female farmers with harvests that are 20 to 30 percent less than male counterparts” and places hundreds of millions of people at risk for undernourishment. More Despite reports to the contrary, none of this signals a new global crisis. As award-winning scientist and environmentalist Vandana Shiva observes, “Food wars are taking place everywhere, even where there are no riots, [and …] have now become so pervasive that we [don’t] see the conflicts at a daily level that are triggered by the way food is produced, processed, and distributed.” It is not for a lack of food that the world goes hungry, but the absence of justice. It was not surprising that the question of how to achieve food security was at the top of French President Sarkozy’s agenda at his recent meeting with US President Obama, and his top goal for the G20. Interestingly enough, both Sarkozy and Shiva view food speculation as one cause of food insecurity. But the solutions proposed by World Bank President Zoellick raise questions about whose security would, in fact, be protected: "We are going to be facing a broader trend of increasing commodity prices, including food commodity prices," says Zoellick, who wants “the G20 to recognize a larger role for development banks, such as the World Bank, in changes dealing not only with the immediate needs of poor countries faced with higher food prices, but in improving agricultural productivity.” But such a strategy, warns Shiva, would only increase food insecurity: “When food becomes a commodity, profits become the essence, and people’s right to food is extinguished in the ruthless search for maximizing profit.” This appeal for “further development” obscures the crucial role played by development itself in originating and maintaining, even accelerating, our food crisis. With a compelling analysis of the connection between the violent marginalization of women—who grow most of the world’s food—and the global food wars, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (South End Press) proposes real solutions for genuine food security based on the principles of “sustainability, justice, and peace.” Shiva explores the history of western-style “development,” revealing how over the past 500 years “the unbridled pursuit of progress, guided by science and development, began to destroy life without any assessment of how fast and how much of the diversity of life on this planet is disappearing.” Critical of corporate agriculture’s limitations and dangerous excesses, Shiva champions the strength and resilience of diverse crops adapted to diverse environments, and the deep significance of women's knowledge, labor, and power in ensuring food justice before it’s too late. As she predicted over 20 years ago, “Cultivating and conserving diversity is no luxury in our times: it is a survival imperative.” # # # Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development by Vandana Shiva South End Press, $16 paperback ISBN: 978-0-89608-793-4