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Oxfam calls for global intervention to combat food crisis
Rising food prices have left nearly one billion people hungry, aid group Oxfam said on Thursday as it called for the world to fight poverty and hunger with the same determination it is tackling the financial crisis.
- Agencies
- Published: 15:13 October 16, 2008
London: Rising food prices have left nearly one billion people hungry, aid group Oxfam said on Thursday as it called for the world to fight poverty and hunger with the same determination it is tackling the financial crisis.
"The sharp rise in global food prices has banished 119 million more people to hunger, taking the global total to 967 million," the British-based group said in a report released to coincide with World Food Day.
"Higher food prices mean people are eating less and lower quality food, children are being taken out of school and farmers are being forced to migrate to live in slums."
Rather than higher prices boosting the income of farmers in poorer, agricultural countries, they had merely increased the profits of major food-producing conglomerates and left more people hungry, the organisation said.
Prices of wheat, rice, maize and other staples in the developing world have all risen dramatically this year, although they have fallen from their peaks in recent months.
In Cambodia, where half the population needs to buy rice for a staple meal, consumption fell as prices doubled in the 15 months to April this year, Oxfam said.
In Somalia, wheat prices have risen by 300 percent in the same period, and maize prices in southern Africa have risen by anywhere between 40 and 65 percent, crippling the ability of the poor, most of whom live on barely $2 a day, to feed themselves.
Oxfam expressed shock at the inability of the world's major institutions to deal with the problem in a coordinated way as they have responded to the global financial crisis, which has wiped billions off the value of major companies such as banks an insurance firms and hit global economic growth.
At an emergency meeting of food donors in Rome earlier this year, $12.3 billion was pledged to the food crisis, but little more than $1 billion has been disbursed so far.
In contrast, more than $2,000 billion has been committed to tackling the financial crisis, either in the form of bank recapitalisations or guarantees for lenders, over the past month in moves coordinated from New York to Brussels and London.
"It is shocking that the international community has failed to organise itself to respond adequately" to the food and energy crisis, Stocking said.
"We need to see one coordinated international response, led by the United Nations, which channels funds urgently to those in need, and leads on implementation of the longer-term reforms."
Oxfam listed 10 measures the developing world needed to adopt to tackle the food crisis, including increases in public spending on agriculture, more investment in social protection programmes, greater contributions to strategic food reserves and better services for women farmers.
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