Cheap food causes hunger
By admin on Mar 10, 2010 in Agriculture and Globalization, Food Security, Hunger and Poverty, News Clippings, Sustainable Agriculture
HungerWednesday shares this interesting article from Resurgence about how the globalization of the food market has made food cheap but ironically has also caused hunger. Chanced upon this in our Facebook as shared by FB friend Imam Cahyono.
Cheap food causes hunger.
On its face, the statement makes no sense. If food is cheaper it’s more affordable and more people should be able to get an adequate diet. That is true for people who buy food, such as those living in cities. But it is quite obviously not true if you’re the one growing the food. You’re getting less for your crops, less for your work, less for your family to live on. That is as true for Vermont dairy farmers as it is for rice farmers in the Philippines. Dairy farmers today are getting prices for their milk that are well below their costs of production. They are putting less food on their own tables. And they are going out of business at an alarming rate. When the economic dust settles, this will leave us with fewer family farmers producing the dairy products most of us depend on.
This is the central contradiction of cheap food. Low agricultural prices cause hunger in the short term among farmers. And they cause food insecurity in the long term because they reduce both the number of farmers and the money they have to invest in producing more food.
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