Rising food prices has been driving tens of millions of people into extreme poverty in the last years and are reaching very dangerous levels in some countries, entering a historic high as new data on the cost of grain and other staples shows.

A new European Development Policy with Europe being a mediator to aid the most vulnerable countries is absolutely necessary when the crisis is devastating key commodities and overall food costs which have risen 15 per cent from October through January. The reform of PAC should evidence the necessity of people and establish food price indexes, which could cover the costs of grain, sugar, food oils and other staples. The financial speculation is the proof of what is happening with world populations who are waiting for the G20 to take positions in an ambiance where farmers that cannot supply their production. The index of prices and a mechanism of transparency concerning cereals, with stocks that could allow preventing this kind of speculation is therefore seen as a solution for the current speculation.

The costs of some such as wheat have doubled in the past year and it is poor people who are now facing implausible pressure to feed themselves and their families. According to world’s bank data, rising food costs pushed an additional 44 million people below the threshold of extreme poverty, meaning they are surviving on the equivalent of $1.25 per day.

According to Gabriele Zimmer, Die Linke MEP, “the drama of 2008 should be present in our minds and the number of people facing hungry goes over 20 million when people are under extreme poverty and the funds are not enough to handle this crisis. The European Commission sends messages but the struggle against hungry should be a priority so that each state could provide food to supply their habitants”.

Finance ministers from the Group of 20 economic powers meeting in Paris this weekend are supposed to debate ways to stabilize world food prices, besides discussing on currency issues and other global economic policies.

“The likelihood that political turbulence in the Middle East might prompt countries such as Egypt to increase their grain reserves is also pushing up the price of wheat and other grain futures on world commodity markets”, the bank reported.

The global food prices reached a world record where six multinationals dominate the wheat market. But what does the EU to protect its producers and consumers? The last report of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), on January, leaves no space to doubt: the food prices are rising for seven consecutive months and have now reached a historic maximum.

In an intervention on the subject in the European Parliament plenary in Strasbourg, Marisa Matias attributed the situation factors: one cyclical, related to climate conditions in countries that are great producers. Second, already structural, that results from countries producers and consumers had become importers like the case of China.

Multinationals are now dominating the markets of food products and “manipulate the prices to their favor”.

 

The hungry of some cannot be the business of others, and the right to food has not been truly seen as a universal human right. The EU cannot continue to be in connivance with an irrational system as it already is in its consequences.