In December 2010, the FAO Global Food Price Index surpassed the previous high level reached in 2008 which had led to food riots and social instability in many countries. This is the context in which the CARICOM Regional Food and Nutrition Security Policy (RFNSP) has been prepared..
“The paper notes that Jamaica remains one of the most highly indebted countries in the world, and that its interest payments as a percent of GDP were higher than anywhere else in the world in 2011, including even crisis-stricken countries in the eurozone. Jamaica’s large debt burden has displaced most other public expenditures, taking up almost 50 percent of total budgeted spending over the last four fiscal years while health and education have been only around 20 percent combined.”
At UNCTAD XIII recently held in Doha, a united front of the BRICS, the G77 and China, supported by intense NGO lobbying and a highly publicised letter from former senior UNCTAD staff (including several from the Caribbean), successfully resisted efforts by the Global North to retsrict the agency’s critical work linking trade, development and the global financial and economic crisis. Was it a victory for the South, or a draw?
Since its establishment almost 50 years ago at the instigation of developing countries UNCTAD has always been a thorn in the flesh of economic orthodoxy. Its analyses of global macro-economic issues from a development perspective have regularly provided an alternative view to that offered by the World Bank and the IMF controlled by the west. Now efforts are afoot to silence that voice…
(At their recent meeting ) the BRICS states not only repeated their critique of the world economic order and North Atlantic financial hegemony, but they offered new policy guidelines and institutions as a counterpoint (and they) have taken some more steps toward the rejection of the North Atlantic’s political leadership over the planet..
This Reflection could be written today, tomorrow or any other day without the risk of being mistaken. Our species faces new problems. When 20 years ago I stated at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro that a species was in danger of extinction, I had fewer reasons than today for warning about a danger that I was seeing perhaps 100 years away….
Celebrated scientists and development thinkers have warned that civilisation is faced with a perfect storm of ecological and social problems driven by overpopulation, overconsumption and environmentally malign technologies. In the face of an “absolutely unprecedented emergency”, say the 18 past winners of the Blue Planet prize – the unofficial Nobel for the environment – society has “no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilisation…
The EU’s response to the financial crisis and the escalating eurocrisis has exposed more clearly than ever the disastrous dominance of neoliberal ideology. Obsessed with budgetary discipline, EU decision-makers are imposing sweeping austerity measures, privatising public services and cutting welfare…(but) There are encouraging signs of resistance. The indignados and occupy movements, union strikes and demonstrations, mark a growing rejection of the EU’s free-market fundamentalism..
The generation of young Caribbean adults who did not live under colonialism, nor the dictatorships of Batista and Duvalier, must play a leading role in the re-thinking of our region and its identity. It must be a collective reflection on many levels: regionally, nationally,, locally, and across generations…
Ever since the US-supported coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela failed in April 2002, Washington has been pursuing a variety of strategies to remove the overwhelmingly popular South American head of state from power. Multimillion-dollar funding to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela … has increased exponentially over the past ten years, as has direct political support through advisors, strategists and consultants- all aiming to help an unpopular and outdated opposition rise to power..
South Centre Report on Durban Meeting
Globalization creates big winners and big losers. But where food systems are concerned, losing out means sinking into poverty and hunger. A vision of food security that deepens the divide between food-surplus and food-deficit regions, between exporters and importers, and between winners and losers, simply cannot be accepted…
The Marcus Garvey People’s Political Party (MGPPP) is calling for a demonstration in front of the Bank of Jamaica on Thursday at 1 PM to express sentiments similar to those being made in America by the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement or the 99% Movement and which has now spread to many other countries especially in Europe…
There is general consensus that the current global financial crisis, which originated in the USA, is the most devastating since the Great Depression of the 1930′s. Martin Wolf described the unfolding events as the “disintegration of the financial system, without which, no modern economy could survive.” (1) ..
The politico/business elite’s parasitic and corrupted modus operandi is an impediment to both national and Caricom development.Trinbago’s ruling elites of parasitic corporate leaders and politicians have demonstrated by their actions and relationships over the last 20 years that all our political parties are inter-woven into a corrupted web of mutual money interests with major business elites…
As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies…
An article I recently received from Patricia Khan (How Global Investors Make Money Out of Hunger, by Horand Knaup, Michaela Schiessl and Anne Seith, published by Speigel Online) is an excellent treatment of the effects of financialisation of world food commodity markets on driving up food prices. It marshals evidence from several authortitative sources to show that the recent spikes in food prices have little to do with the reasons one often sees in the media, like population growth, demand fron China and India, biofuels, climate change etc. but rather to the entry of the banks and other financial entities to the futures markets following deregulation in 1999 and relaxation of banks’ equity requirements in 2004.
I was particularly struck by the statistic from FAO that 98% of futures contracts do not lead to actual deliveries, that the bulk of the contracts are sold by the banks etc prior to maturation, and by the UNCTAD finding that futures prices are driving up present prices, rather than vice versa as it ought to be. I am also struck by the emergence of “land grabbing” in resource-rich African countries by investors exporting food to the rich countries, and by the way in which commercial industrial agriculture has several deleterious effects and that the technical consensus is that food security for the world’s hungry should be based on sustainable agricultural practices carried out by small farmers–an issue which has been addressed by several writers on this blog.
While this is probably familiar to many readers, I am concerned as to whether it has percolated into the thinking of our key decision-makers and the general regional public. Earlier this year we were informed that a CARICOM Common Agricultural Policy has been adopted, but there are, several questions that arise:
1. What is the status of the Caricom Common Agricultural Policy? Is it receiving the urgency it deserves from decision-makers? Are stakeholders satisfied that the implementation arrangements and mechanisms will result in its timely and effective implementation?
2. How has the recent (2011) spike in global food commodity prices impacted the cost and availabilty of food in CARICOM countries? How many people in CARICOM have been pushed below the poverty line, or the hunger line (if there is such a concept) by the rise in food prices since the beginning of 2011?
3. What steps have CARICOM governments taken to support internationally the calls for (a) regulation of global commodity markets and (b) a transactions tax, to curb speculation? (see article).
4. What steps have CARICOM governments taken, or are taking, or should be taking, to prevent “land-grabbing” in countries like Guyana and Belize, to ensure that the food needs of the people of the region are the first call on the land resources of the region?
5. What steps have CARICOM governments taken, or are taking, or should be taking, to provide land, credit, R&D and other incentives to small farmers to carry out sustainable agricultural practices for domestic food production in the region?
6. And finally, who is championing these issues in the Caribbean media? Is it getting the attention it deserves and is the regional public sufficiently seized of its importance? Anf if the answer is “no”, what can be done to remedy this situation?
Norman
In recent years, the financial markets have discovered the huge opportunities presented by agricultural commodities. The consequences are devastating, as speculators drive up food prices and plunge millions of people into poverty. But investors care little about the effects of their deals in the real world.More at http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,783654,00.html,
Regional Food and Nutrition Security Policy Brief No 2 2011 CARICOM Secretariat
