[stop-imf] Anuradha Mittal on hi food prices and IMF

[robert weissman]

This op-ed was distributed by the Progressive Media Project and
McClatchy Tribune Information Services on Thursday, April 17, 2008, and
it was published by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Houston Chronicle,
Sacramento Bee, Fresno Bee, Senegal Post and other papers.

*
Prevent Food Riots by Changing Policies*

By Anuradha Mittal*

Food riots are erupting all over the world. To prevent them and to help
people afford the most basic of goods, we need to understand the causes
of skyrocketing food prices and correct the policies that have fueled them.

World food prices rose by 39 percent in the last year. Rice alone rose
to a 19-year high in March - an increase of 50 per cent in two weeks
alone - while the real price of wheat has hit a 28-year high.

As a result, food riots erupted in Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Indonesia,
Mauritania, Mexico, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. For the 3 billion
people in the world who subsist on $2 a day or less, the leap in food
prices is a killer. They spend a majority of their income on food, and
when the price goes up, they can't afford to feed themselves or their
families.

Analysts have pointed to some obvious causes, such as increased demand
from China and India, whose economies are booming. Rising fuel and
fertilizer costs, increased use of bio-fuels and climate change have all
played a part.

But less obvious causes have also had a profound effect on food prices.

Over the last few decades, the United States, the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund have used their leverage to impose
devastating policies on developing countries. By requiring countries to
open up their agriculture market to giant multinational companies, by
insisting that countries dismantle their marketing boards and by
persuading them to specialize in exportable cash crops such as coffee,
cocoa, cotton and even flowers, they have driven the poorest countries
into a downward spiral.

In the last thirty years, developing countries that used to be
self-sufficient in food have turned into large food importers.
Dismantling of marketing boards that kept commodities in a rolling stock
to be released in event of a bad harvest, thus protecting both producers
and consumers against sharp rises or drops in prices, has further
worsened the situation.

Here's what we must do to prevent an epidemic of starvation from
breaking out.

First, it is essential to have safety nets and public distribution
systems put in place. Donor countries should provide more aid
immediately to support government efforts in poor countries and respond
to appeals from U.N. agencies, which are desperately seeking $500
million by May 1.
*
*
Second, we should help affected countries develop their agricultural
sectors to feed more of their own people and decrease their dependence
on food imports. We should promote production and consumption of local
crops raised by small, sustainable farms instead of growing cash crops
for western markets. And we should support a country's effort to manage
stocks and pricing so as to limit the volatility of food prices.
*
*
To embrace these crucial policies, however, we need to stop worshipping
the golden calf of the so-called free market and embrace, instead, the
principle of food sovereignty. Every country and every people have a
right to food that is affordable. When the market deprives them of this,
it is the market that has to give.
*
*
* Anuradha Mittal is the Executive Director of the Oakland Institute, a
policy think tank whose mission is to increase public participation and
promote fair debate on critical social, economic, environmental and
foreign policy issues. www.oaklandinstitute.org
<http://www.oaklandinstitute.org>.