| By :
Alison Withers
Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers At one time food prices were largely stable, based on supply and demand, and crop prices were protected by regulations which fixed their prices so that in a bad year farmers' incomes were protected while in good ones, they might lose out slightly. During the 1990s strong lobbying by financial stock traders led to the abolition of food price regulation on basic crops. Crops then became something to be traded like any other commodity such as coal,oil and others. Suddenly in 2006 food prices started rising dramatically leading to food riots in some countries by 2008 and forcing more than 200 million people into malnutrition or starvation. At the time it was thought that the causes were largely to do with slowing food production and the competition for land between biofuel and food crops, but more recent research by the Centre for Economic Studies in Delhi has found that actually global wheat production had increased while demand fell by about 3%. In any event given the finite acreage of farmland in the world and projected population increases, the technology exists to increase crop yield sustainably using the new generation of biopesticides, biofungicides and other low-chem agricultural products being devised by Biopesticides Developers. But (how could anyone possibly forget) the Autumn of 2008 was when the credit crunch really hit hard, mortgages and the housing market collapsed and financial houses no longer found trading in derivatives based on property viable or attractive, so traders switched their attention to other commodities, particularly food. Even now, therefore, food availability and price issues are still critical for low income countries around the world. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) more than a billion people around the world in 2009 did not have enough to eat and 65 percent of the world's hungry live in only seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan and Ethiopia. The OneWorld network Is an international foundation set up as a charity in 2003 to promote a vision of a world where resources are shared fairly and sustainably, where human rights are nurtured and protected, and where democratic governance structures enable people to shape their own lives. In a report on its website oneworld.net in early June 2010 it said that unprecedented food scarcity is beginning to dictate the rules of a new global political order where individual countries are rushing to secure their own future food supplies with little concern for the rest of the world, "the troublesome portents of an entirely new chapter in the book of food security." It means the vision of a world where resources are shared fairly and sustainably is under severe threat as countries increasingly act in their own national interests by buying or leasing land overseas to grow crops and feed their people. For example, China has contracted land in Laos, Kazakhstan, Tanzania, Brazil and others. India is looking towards on Uruguay and Paraguay, while Libya and Egypt have been negotiating deals to lease land in Ukraine. In Asia, rice prices have almost tripled this year alone, and to protect their domestic consumers, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, and China have all taken steps to restrict exports and China has become a net grain importer. In the Indian state of Kerala there is a yearly widening gap between production and requirement of food grain caused by a combination of rising prices and more farmers retreating from farming because of a growing gulf between investment and revenue - there is a 11% annual increase in farmers' agriculture-related expenses while the price for farming products has only risen by 6%. The plight of debt-ridden farmers in Andhra Pradesh, where there have been steep rises in suicides among small farmers following the reduction of grain subsidies, has been well rehearsed. Add to that the unpredictability of the climate each year making it more difficult to plan the yearly farming cycle and the outlook for food prices continues to look grim.
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