Reflections on the Madrid Food Summit

The upcoming food summit in Madrid http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/136697.php has huge implications for the prospects of young people for generations to come.

According to the aid agency Oxfam, about two-thirds of the billion people living in hunger currently live in the Asia-Pacific region, ‘including some 200 million people in India. Sub-Saharan Africa is also a region causing serious concern, as the number of hungry people has increased by 43 million over the last fifteen years to 212 million.

What was missing from the recent United Nations summit for food security in Madrid was meaningful discussion on how heavily subsidised agri-businesses in the industrialised north are flooding third world markets with cheap food that drives farming families into penury, to the point that they cannot afford to buy food, even as cheap as it may be.

In predominantly agrarian economies like Bangladesh, small farmers have found it increasingly difficult to compete with imported food. While Bangladesh has almost always been a net importer of food, there has also always been a portion of total food production that did not enter the formal economy and was set aside by small or tenant farmers as a source of food for their families. It is the absence of this food that is forcing marginalised and tenant farmers to buy food for most of the year, often forcing them also to sell off farming implements or their small landholdings to finance day-to-day living.

This uncharted chronic hunger is like a double-edged sword which is also taking its toll on health and education that families at the margin are able to afford. As food prices are rising, families have less and less left over to spend on their children’s education and their healthcare, thus being mired deeper in poverty despite national development efforts.

Solutions? (a) Family farmers benefit from credit, insurance schemes, technical assistance, and a food procurement programme that buys food from them for redistribution to the poor and destitute. (b) Support to agriculture needs to be combined with social protection measures that include universal access to the Rural Social Security System, the Bolsa Família (family grants) programme, school meals, and minimum wages.

In my opinion, a comprehensive approach like this to combating hunger lies at the heart of a meaningful solution. I would be pleased to hear the opinions of others.

Khalid Bahauddin (khalid_mbuddin@yahoo.com)