The Right to Food: Fighting for Adequate Food in a Global Crisis (Agriculture‪)‬

Nine hundred seventy-five million people are hungry in the world today, up from 852 million in 2003-2005, and 820 million in 1996. Previous policies have failed. The world food crisis, characterized by sudden increases of prices of agricultural commodities on the international markets which peaked in June 2008, took states and the international community by surprise. The crisis had devastating human consequences, with particularly severe impacts on women and children because of inequalities within households and the specific nutritional needs of children for their physical and mental development. For many families, particularly in developing countries, the sharp increases we have witnessed made food unaffordable, leading them to cut back on expenses in education or health, to switch to less varied diets, or to have fewer meals. But the crisis reaches much further, and it is much deeper, than the question of prices alone would suggest. The crisis illustrated the unsustainability of a global food system which may be good at producing large amounts of food, but that is neither socially nor environmentally sustainable: while the incomes of small scale farmers in developing countries are below subsistence levels, often leaving them no other option but to leave their fields and seek employment in cities, the current methods of agricultural production deplete soils, produce large amounts of greenhouse gases, and use vast quantities of water, threatening food security in the long term, and making the repetition of crises such as the one we"ve seen unavoidable if we do not act decisively. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]