FOOD FIRST

BURDEN 2

THE RIGHT TO FOOD IS A HUMAN RIGHT

Our Lord Vishnu used to grant boons when he was well fed and content. We now have a culture of holding free bhandaras (free feed-ups)on family celebration, festivals, and feast days to earn boons, out of satisfaction of the need of others.

Science tells us that under nutrition (UNN) and starvation impact the body machine in a negative manner, systems of the body fall prey to disorders, till life itself is under threat. Food security is an important indicator of a Nations Vitality. @

The food and agricultural organisation (FAO) in its repot (2002) states that 24% of Indians population is undernourished and other 1/5th of our population suffers from chronic hunger.

Food security is defined as “Reliable cost/availability of sufficient quantity and quality of nutritious food for a population”
In 2007 according to FAO there were record grain harvests, the yield was 2100 million metric tonnes. If all the cereals grown had been distributed equally across 6.6 billion world population and used as food there would have been no crisis.
The cereals alone would have supplied everyone adequate amounts of calories and proteins with about 30% left over.
In reality all over the world it is estimated that about 923 million people are undernourished, 1.4 billion people live in extreme poverty and over 3 billion live in less than 2$s per day.
We thus have to look into the reasons of food insecurity.

-In fact, over the last 20 years, world food production has risen steadily at over 2% a year, while the rate of global population growth has dropped to 1.14% a year.
Population is not outstripping food supply. The real reason is that people are too poor to buy the food that is available. We're seeing people hungry at greater numbers than before even when there is food on the shelves and stores.

Among the many causes that result in food shortage and price rise are:

-Cereal stock is being diverted in many countries as livestock feed, sweetener (i.e., high-fructose corn syrup), raw material for plastic, and feedstock for fuel in the form of ethanol.

-An estimated 100 million tons of grain per year are being redirected from food to fuel. Filling a tank of an average car with bio fuel, amounts to as much maize (Africa's principal food staple) as an African person consumes in an entire year.

-Another reason is the changing food habits i.e. increasing meat eating habits also have a major impact. Seven Kilogram’s of grains are equivalent to one Kilogram of beef.

-The rise in the price of oil has heightened the costs of fertilizers the majority of which require petroleum or natural gas to manufacture. Because natural gas can substitute for petroleum in some uses increasing prices for petroleum lead to increasing prices for natural gas, and thus for fertilizer.

-Speculation and futures trading have also contributed substantially to increase in prices of various essential commodities including food items.

-Environmental factors leading to reduction in crop production also contribute to the increasing price of food crops. Major environmental factors affecting crop production are drought, heat wave, unseasonal rains, Cyclone and Diseases such as stem rust that cause 100% crop loss.

-Large areas of croplands are lost year after year mainly due to soil erosion, water depletion and urbanization. Around 60,000 Sq.km per year of land becomes so severely degraded and becomes wasteland, adding to the crop supply problem.

-Though all the points mentioned above are relevant in Indian scenario, inadequacy of public distribution system, exhaustion of buffer stock as a part of globalisation and rapid opening up of the agricultural sector to foreign competition from vastly subsidized food grain from developed countries are the specific issues leading to food crisis in India.
In July 2002 India was at an all time high 63.1 million tonnes of food grain stocks with Food Corporation of India (FCI). This exceeds the requirement for food security by about 20million tonnes, yet above 200 million people go hungry and 50 million are on the brinck of starvation. The existence of food stocks above buffer requirements has not translated into availability.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement on agriculture unfortunately has made developing countries like India more committed to marketisation of agriculture than developed countries like USA which have continued to maintain their high level of agricultural subsidies. This has made agriculture in India less profitable, discouraging farmers from the field resulting in reduction of agricultural production.
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There are over 230 million people suffering from hunger or undernourishment in India. No other nation has so many people suffering chronic malnutrition, and the undernourished in India represent 27% of the worldwide hunger-stricken population.
The governments of developed countries refuse to eliminate their outrageous agricultural subsidies while imposing their rules of international trade on the rest of the world.
Their voracious trans-national corporations set prices, monopolise technologies, impose unfair certification processes on trade, and manipulate distribution channels, sources of financing, trade and supplies for the production of food worldwide.
They also control transportation, scientific research, gene banks and the production of fertilisers and pesticides.

It is this unfair trading world that globalisaton and W.T.O. has led a our poverty ridden citizens into. However we can be fair to all wihin our borders. Recoganizing that food at affordable price is a human right,
-This is what one Gandhi we all know would endorse. Parties can only ask for the boon of vote if they provide this human right.

With limiting of poverty and hungar hope will return. the thinking voter has an awesome power. Political Parties will have to reinvent themselves to meet the expectations of the thinking man.
Sixty years is a longtime and AAM AADMI's patience has limits.

Any questions can be sent to http://in.mc947.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=drmmkapur@gmail.com you will recieve a response
all items posted are stored in archieves can be accessed
@Informed Self Care 2001Published by orient black swan
ISBN 81 250 1961 8 for more on Nutrition
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