All of us, if we remain silent. In any case the perpetrators include the bandits in the banks and hedge funds who speculate on the commodity exchanges with agricultural commodities and push up prices. Therefore, 1.25 billion people in the slums, living on less than 1.50 dollars a day, can no more buy enough food. These speculators are mass murderers.
There was starving before the banks seized the commodity exchanges.
But these robber lowlifes have plunged the financial system into chaos, and the Western governments had to provide more than $ 1 trillion [to save the banking system]. At the same time, the contributions to the UN World Food Program have been lowered, a program designed to help people in acute crises. The result is that, just as in northern Kenya, every day the volunteers have to reject hundreds of families because they do not get enough money from the rich governments in the North to buy the expensive cereal. And ...
Speculation is possibly one of many causes.
... in addition to this there is the madness of biofuels. Americans burn 40 percent of its annual corn harvest in car engines. And in Europe tens of million tons of grain are processed into biodiesel, bioethanol and biogas. It does nothing to protect the climate, but is instead a crime against humanity, as long as so many people are starving. Only the agricultural and energy companies make money from biofuel.
Concerning the global agricultural trading companies such as Cargill or Glencore, you even claim that their bosses decide how many must starve. You can not prove it.
I certainly can. There is food only for those who can pay for it. And these companies control 85 percent of the trade in basic foodstuffs and that way they dominate the price setting.
That would work only as a cartel.
Of course they come to an agreement [about price fixing]! In a market where so few actors trade such large quantities, there is sure to exist, in the backroom and without any conspiracy, subtle, oligopolistic arrangements.
The vast majority of the world harvest is marketed in the harvest countries themselves. So your evil corporations are not involved in it.
Indirectly they are, because they fix the world prices on which all national markets are aligned. I have myself noticed how the wheat producers in Kazakhstan or the rice traders in Nigeria base their prices entirely on it.
The former head of the food giant Nestlà ©, Peter Brabeck-Letmate throws against you [the accusation of] "ideologically driven polemic". The fact is that "we have two people more to feed every second and we have 0.2 hectares less agricultural land available." So food would always get more expensive.
Alas, Brabeck. He feels attacked and says he is the wrong enemy. He's a smart man, but on the wrong side. Of course, the demographic pressure is undeniable. And yet there is an abundance of food. There are structures, structural violence, that deny access [to food] to the poor. And the institutions of the rich countries make it continually worse.
Again such a blanket accusation
No, it's always the same thing: a country is in debt, then the IMF and the World Bank come in and say, yes, you have to just enlarge the cotton fields and other export crops to earn the money for debt service. As a result, there is less millet, less tomatoes, less rice. And the "land grabbing" is especially bad, that is the sale of tens of millions of acres of farmland to foreign investors. That's why in Africa in 2011 peasants were driven away from 41 million hectares of land. The World Bank is financing these projects with the treacherous argument that local farmers are not as productive as agricultural industries.
You write yourself that Africa's agriculture is as productive as the European Middle Ages. 600 kilograms per hectare yield then, 10 000 kilos here and now.
37 of 54 African countries are agricultural countries. These farmers are therefore very little productive, because the states are suffering from their debts and can not invest in agriculture. Humans are not helped when the corporations in their countries produce for the world market. Instead, the states should be free of their debts in order to provide the necessary funds to small farmers for fertilizer, warehousing and transportation. The goal must be self-sufficiency in poor countries.
"A verbal slap in the face"
Are not the leaders themselves of the countries suffering from hunger the ones who have the main responsibility, since they enrich themselves and do nothing else?
That's right. In the Congo, for example, foreign mining companies plunder the valuable deposits of coltan ore and other metals in their own enclaves and transport them with truck convoys to ports in Kenya. I've seen it myself. And 1800 kilometers to the west sits Joseph Kabila, the most corrupt dog there is, and for each signature he gets a fat check. Just as the dictator of Cameroon, Paul Biya, who has completely ruined this wonderful agricultural country. These kleptocrats are only in power because the international corporations can use them to their advantage. They are mere puppets.
You can hardly use the same argument with the Government of India. It's the home to a third of all undernourished people in the world. What can the governments or corporations of the North do to keep the Indian elites from letting their people starve?
They benefit from India's politics which promote high-tech centers and resource extraction rather than the development of the rural areas, where more than half of the population lives.
Why don't you accuse the Indian leadership just as strongly as you do with the ones who are responsible in rich countries?
Mao said that we should beat our opponents one by one. I am a white intellectual and I have access to the knowledge and awareness of the local government. So I'm fighting here.
As a strategy against hunger you offer "concrete actions, riots, land occupations". This has been going on for a long time every day somewhere in the world, without changing anything in the global agricultural policy.
There was starving before the banks seized the commodity exchanges.
But these robber lowlifes have plunged the financial system into chaos, and the Western governments had to provide more than $ 1 trillion [to save the banking system]. At the same time, the contributions to the UN World Food Program have been lowered, a program designed to help people in acute crises. The result is that, just as in northern Kenya, every day the volunteers have to reject hundreds of families because they do not get enough money from the rich governments in the North to buy the expensive cereal. And ...
Speculation is possibly one of many causes.
... in addition to this there is the madness of biofuels. Americans burn 40 percent of its annual corn harvest in car engines. And in Europe tens of million tons of grain are processed into biodiesel, bioethanol and biogas. It does nothing to protect the climate, but is instead a crime against humanity, as long as so many people are starving. Only the agricultural and energy companies make money from biofuel.
I certainly can. There is food only for those who can pay for it. And these companies control 85 percent of the trade in basic foodstuffs and that way they dominate the price setting.
That would work only as a cartel.
Of course they come to an agreement [about price fixing]! In a market where so few actors trade such large quantities, there is sure to exist, in the backroom and without any conspiracy, subtle, oligopolistic arrangements.
The vast majority of the world harvest is marketed in the harvest countries themselves. So your evil corporations are not involved in it.
Indirectly they are, because they fix the world prices on which all national markets are aligned. I have myself noticed how the wheat producers in Kazakhstan or the rice traders in Nigeria base their prices entirely on it.
The former head of the food giant Nestlà ©, Peter Brabeck-Letmate throws against you [the accusation of] "ideologically driven polemic". The fact is that "we have two people more to feed every second and we have 0.2 hectares less agricultural land available." So food would always get more expensive.
Alas, Brabeck. He feels attacked and says he is the wrong enemy. He's a smart man, but on the wrong side. Of course, the demographic pressure is undeniable. And yet there is an abundance of food. There are structures, structural violence, that deny access [to food] to the poor. And the institutions of the rich countries make it continually worse.
Again such a blanket accusation
No, it's always the same thing: a country is in debt, then the IMF and the World Bank come in and say, yes, you have to just enlarge the cotton fields and other export crops to earn the money for debt service. As a result, there is less millet, less tomatoes, less rice. And the "land grabbing" is especially bad, that is the sale of tens of millions of acres of farmland to foreign investors. That's why in Africa in 2011 peasants were driven away from 41 million hectares of land. The World Bank is financing these projects with the treacherous argument that local farmers are not as productive as agricultural industries.
You write yourself that Africa's agriculture is as productive as the European Middle Ages. 600 kilograms per hectare yield then, 10 000 kilos here and now.
37 of 54 African countries are agricultural countries. These farmers are therefore very little productive, because the states are suffering from their debts and can not invest in agriculture. Humans are not helped when the corporations in their countries produce for the world market. Instead, the states should be free of their debts in order to provide the necessary funds to small farmers for fertilizer, warehousing and transportation. The goal must be self-sufficiency in poor countries.
"A verbal slap in the face"
Are not the leaders themselves of the countries suffering from hunger the ones who have the main responsibility, since they enrich themselves and do nothing else?
That's right. In the Congo, for example, foreign mining companies plunder the valuable deposits of coltan ore and other metals in their own enclaves and transport them with truck convoys to ports in Kenya. I've seen it myself. And 1800 kilometers to the west sits Joseph Kabila, the most corrupt dog there is, and for each signature he gets a fat check. Just as the dictator of Cameroon, Paul Biya, who has completely ruined this wonderful agricultural country. These kleptocrats are only in power because the international corporations can use them to their advantage. They are mere puppets.
You can hardly use the same argument with the Government of India. It's the home to a third of all undernourished people in the world. What can the governments or corporations of the North do to keep the Indian elites from letting their people starve?
They benefit from India's politics which promote high-tech centers and resource extraction rather than the development of the rural areas, where more than half of the population lives.
Why don't you accuse the Indian leadership just as strongly as you do with the ones who are responsible in rich countries?
Mao said that we should beat our opponents one by one. I am a white intellectual and I have access to the knowledge and awareness of the local government. So I'm fighting here.
As a strategy against hunger you offer "concrete actions, riots, land occupations". This has been going on for a long time every day somewhere in the world, without changing anything in the global agricultural policy.
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