Thursday, October 2, 2008

Food crisis or food prices crisis?

"The main difference today is in the parting of extremes, or the deepening polarization between alternative paradigms, narratives and solutions. On one side of the court stand the impassioned NGOs and hardened campaigners who have long opposed large-scale agribusiness in place of food sovereignty, bottom-up development, and the empowerment of small farmers through local and regional markets. The food price crisis, they say, has exposed the disaster of global agricultural production and the conclusive failure of a market fundamentalist ideology left unchecked for far too long.

On the other side of the court, supported by Gordon Brown, George W. Bush, Bill Gates’ pockets and the most powerful financial institutions in the world, stand the Green Revolutionaries led by chemical technologies and multinational corporations from the E.U and U.S.A. One path, say almost all of the NGOs, will lead to social justice, the strengthening of local communities and food security for all, while the current path is inherently unsustainable, responsible for continued hunger in a world of plenty, and incapable of ending poverty."

Adam Parsons tolls the bells for export-led agriculture and distinguishes between the food crisis and the food prices crisis. (Thansk Marcy)

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