THE FOOD OF LIFE

16-04-2008

Food riots around the world have only attracted minor coverage in Britain, but Barbara Panvel argues they represent a challenge to this country – not least because so much of what we eat is sourced abroad. Time, she says, to re-assess food security.

There have been riots in Haiti about rising food prices, violent protests in Ivory Coast, price riots in Cameroon in February that left 40 people dead and demonstrations in Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Bolivia and Indonesia.

Many countries have placed high taxes on food exports to retain food for their own use - India finally banning the export of rice.

Gordon Brown has mentioned 'food security' by using the term four times in one speech & offered to discuss it with G8 ministers in June - but the French government is going further.

Opening a political campaign at an EU agriculture meeting in Luxembourg, the French agriculture minister said that Europe must boost its food output and resist further cuts to the EU's agriculture budget.

With a fine disregard for international vested interests, he argued that the responsibility of EU farmers was to produce food rather than biofuels, adding: "we must not leave the vital issue of feeding people to the mercy of market laws and international speculation." 

Our government’s astounding solution is to increase reliance on imports from Africa. It has just set up a £2 million ‘Food and Retail Industry Challenge Fund’, to fund supermarkets who create ‘innovative schemes’ which will increase the number of products they sell from African farmers.

This is bad news for the many hungry people in Africa, for British farmers struggling to compete with cheap foreign imports and for envi­ronmentalists who seek to reduce the use of fossil fuels and emissions caused by transport.

Should Britain start growing more of its own food? Are bio-fuels a waste of good resources? Leave a comment on The Stirrer Forum.