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Food prices set to double by 2030, aid group says
925 million people go hungry every day, according to Oxfam report
"All the signs are that the number of people
going hungry is going up," Stocking said.
Hunger was increasing due to rising food price
inflation and oil price hikes, scrambles for
land and water, and creeping climate change.
Yusuf Ahmad / Reuters
A worker carries a bundle of rice stalks in a rice
field in the Gowa district of Indonesia's South
Sulawesi province on May 7. Food prices could
double in the next 20 years and demand in 2050
will be 70 percent higher than now, UK charity
Oxfam SAYS.
msnbc.com news services
'An age of growing crisis'
Food prices are forecast to increase by
something in the range of 70 to 90 percent by
2030 before taking into account the effects of
climate change, which would roughly double
price rises again, Oxfam said.
"Now we have entered an age of growing crisis,
of shock piled upon shock: vertiginous food
price spikes and oil price hikes, devastating
weather events, financial meltdowns and
global contagion," Oxfam said in a report.
updated 5/31/2011 6:33:57 AM ET
LONDON— Food prices could double in the
next 20 years and demand in 2050 will be 70
percent higher than now, U.K. charity Oxfam
said on Tuesday, warning of worsening hunger
as the global food economy stumbles close to
breakdown.
"The food system is pretty well bust in the
world," Oxfam Chief Executive Barbara
Stocking told reporters, announcing the
launch of the Grow campaign as 925 million
people go hungry every day.
Entitled "Growing a Better Future: Food Justice
in a Resource-Constrained World," the report
said: "The scale of the challenge is
unprecedented, but so is the prize: a
sustainable future in which everyone has
enough to eat."
The report assigns part of the blame to
commodities traders, saying three companies
control 90 percent of the trade in grain.
"Financial speculation must be regulated, and
support dismantled for biofuels that displace
food," it said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/cleanprint/CleanPrintProxy.aspx?unique=1306853754093
5/31/2011
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Stocking said she favored the introduction by
regulators of position limits in agricultural
commodities futures trading, noting that
financial speculation aggravated price
volatility.
The report said: "The vast imbalance in public
investment in agriculture must be righted,
redirecting the billions now being ploughed
into unsustainable industrial farming in rich
countries towards meeting the needs of smallscale food producers in developing countries."
Story: Drought in US, EU stressing crops,
farmers
The report said the failure of the food system
flowed from failures of government to regulate
and to invest, which meant that companies,
interest groups and elites had been able to
plunder resources.
"Now the major powers, the old and the new,
must cooperate, not compete, to share
resources, build resilience, and tackle climate
change," it said.
"The economic crisis means that we have
moved decisively beyond the era of the G8,
when a few rich country governments tried to
craft global solutions by and for themselves.
"The governments of poorer nations must also
have a seat at the table, for they are on the
front lines of climate change, where many of
the battles — over land, water, and food — are
being fought."
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this
report.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/cleanprint/CleanPrintProxy.aspx?unique=1306853754093
5/31/2011