A Dream for a Better World

The world is undergoing an acute food crisis with soaring prices for basic food.  Prices of rice and wheat were about double their levels a year earlier, and corn prices were over a third higher.  The crisis in food prices is the result of a combination of factors, among which the reduction of supplies due to farmers’ switch from growing crops for food to crops for agrofuels. Rich countries have promoted the production of agrofuels despite strong arguments warning about the ecological and social disaster they would imply on the world’s food security and on local peoples’ livelihoods and environments.  Agrofuels will indirectly destroy forests and lead to more costly food by increasing land pressures upon natural forests and agricultural crop lands

Global Power Centers, while trying to develop policies to alleviate common global problems, are actually acerbating the problem of world hunger.  For example, while promoting agrofuels under the guise of environmental protection (through the replacement of fossil fuels) and the green label of “bio” fuels, millions of hectares of land are being turned over to the production of food for automobiles.  Basic food crops like corn are no longer being raised to feed humans, but instead to produce ethanol.  In addition, lands that once produced food have been taken over by sugarcane or soybean monocultures to produce agrofuels. In both cases, the result is a dwindling supply of foodstuffs, leading to soaring prices; and presents a lack of access to food among the poorest and most vulnerable.  The only thing that world governments have succeeded in “developing” is profits of large transnational corporations, at the expense of human hunger and environmental destruction.