Oxfam has just launched an ambitious and wide-ranging new campaign about the growing world food crisis. It aims to go deeper than particular stories of famine and poverty to look at the underlying reasons why the food system is ‘broken’. It identifies four interacting causes:
1. Climate change, leading to droughts, floods and extreme weather conditions which make food production more difficult and more unpredictable.
2. Land grabs by wealthy companies and corporations which dispossess small farmers and use the land for other purposes (palm oil, biofuels, investment etc.)
3. Food price spikes, generated by the two previous causes but also by commodity speculation in ‘futures’ financial markets etc.
4. Intensive farming which is unsustainable and holds back the development of the small farming essential for a sustainable global food system.
Oxfam will be organising specific actions under the umbrella of this campaign over the next four years, and working with other campaigning organisations including partners in the global south. Initially it is inviting people to sign up to support the campaign. Please do! Go to: http://www.oxfam.org.uk/
The Guardian is running a series of features, in the paper and on-line, linked to the campaign. See
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2011/may/23/talk-point-food-security-hunger-poverty