[prakruti] Surging food prices bite across Asia

[Guest guest]

At 09:31 PM 5/11/08, you wrote:

Dear Colleagues,

 

See the situation developed by rich nations, their giant corporations

and their political leaders.

 

All over the globe the situation is worsening while business makes the

hay. Quarterly profits of Monsanto, Cargil and other food giants as well

as oil refiners have doubled/trebled running tinto billions of dollars

while nearly three billion in Asia and Australia are passing through

anxious moments, facing starvation and hunger.

 

Climate is playing truant as well. Global warming has started making

impact again on the poor.

 

However this affects the poor only. The rich and exploding middle

class basking in consumerism is not worried about others. The few rich

here as well swell their profits in hte same range like global food and

oil coroproaitons thereby multyiplying the grief of yhe poor.

 

 

There is no effort at conservation or equitable distribution of

handystocks. Wall Street and all buesiness housaes the world over

have taken possession of available stocks to mop up higher profits.

 

See the report below.

 

Best wishes.

 

Kisan

Mehta

Priya Salvi

**********************************************

 

-- Forwarded Message -----

 

 

Surging food prices bite across Asia

 

 

by Staff Writers

Sydney (AFP) May 11, 2008

From the rice paddies of Asia to the wheat fields of Australia, the

soaring price of food is breaking the budgets of the poor and raising the

spectres of hunger and unrest, experts warn.

A billion people in Asia are seriously affected by the surging costs of

daily staples such as rice and bread, the director general of the Asian

Development Bank, Rajat Nag, has said.

" This includes roughly about 600 million people who live on just

under a dollar a day, which is the definition of poverty, and another 400

million who are just above that borderline, " he said.

Globally, the World Bank last month estimated that 33 countries were

threatened with political and social unrest because of the skyrocketing

costs of food and energy.

Across Asia, workers made a campaign against high food prices their May

Day battle cry last Thursday in marches through cities including the

capitals of Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

While the demonstrations were mainly peaceful, concern is growing over

the potential for political instability and unrest if high prices

persist.

" Once people get hungry they start also getting quite desperate and

take desperate measures, " Damien Kingsbury of Australia's Deakin

University told AFP.

India's top farm scientist and architect of the 1960s " Green

Revolution, " Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, has said India needs a

second agricultural revolution to boost food supplies or face huge social

turmoil.

Experts blame the high food prices on a confluence of factors, including

increased demand from a changing diet in Asia, droughts, the rising use

of crops for biofuels, and growing energy and fertiliser costs.

In Australia, which usually ranks second after the United States as a

global wheat exporter, several years of drought cut harvests to just 13

million tonnes last year from an average of 22 million tonnes.

So while consumers are struggling, Australian farmers are not getting

rich on the backs of the poor, said National Farmers Federation chief

executive Ben Fargher.

" It's been the worst drought in our history and many, many farming

families are under significant financial and emotional stress and it will

take our communities a long time to recover, " he said.

And even in a relatively prosperous country like Australia, people are

feeling the squeeze in the supermarkets, prompting the government to

launch an inquiry into how to stem rising grocery prices.

Around the rest of the region, the impact varies from traumatic to

minimal:

-- AFGHANISTAN: Millions of Afghans are finding it

" problematic " to meet their basic food needs with prices of the

staple, wheat, doubling in some areas over recent months, the World Food

Programme has said.

About 400 people demonstrated in eastern Afghanistan last month, blocking

a key road linking the eastern town of Jalalabad to the capital Kabul and

demanding the government step in to control prices at food markets.

 

-- BANGLADESH: One of the world's poorest nations, Bangladesh has been

hit by a doubling in the price of the main staple, rice, in the past year

and many low paid workers say they have been forced to make do on only

one meal a day.

Last month about 20,000 garment workers rioted near the capital Dhaka for

higher wages to cover food prices.

-- CAMBODIA: Soaring rice prices have forced the World Food Programme to

indefinitely suspend a programme supplying free breakfasts to 450,000

poor Cambodian schoolchildren.

-- CHINA: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told a meeting of the State Council

last month that high prices were the biggest problem in the domestic

economy.

" The inflation is led by food price rises, which especially hurt the

poor, " said Ma Qing, a Beijing-based analyst with the CEB monitor

group. " So the pressure (on maintaining social stability) is

certainly quite large. "

The finance ministry announced a special 100 percent duty on exports of

fertilisers and the raw materials used to make them in order to ensure

domestic supply over the ploughing season and " guarantee this year's

grain harvest " .

-- INDIA: A general strike against spiralling food prices paralysed

Kolkata on April 21 as thousands of police were deployed across West

Bengal state to stop protests turning violent.

New Delhi has already slashed food duties and banned exports of lentils

and other staples, and will not hesitate to further " sacrifice

revenues to control prices, " Finance Minister Palaniappan

Chidambaram said.

-- INDONESIA: Anger over rising food prices was a focus for some 10,000

Indonesians who took to the streets of the capital Jakarta for Labour Day

rallies.

High prices for rice, cooking oil and soybeans helped drive Indonesia's

annual inflation rate to 8.17 percent in March.

-- JAPAN: In resource-poor Japan, which relies on imports for 60 percent

of its food, companies have hiked prices on everything from beer to beef,

mayonnaise and " miso " paste made from fermented soy beans in

recent months.

Although Asia's largest economy has been struggling for years to end

deflation, rising food and commodity prices have not been welcomed

because of the pain they inflict on small businesses and low-income

households in particular.

-- MALAYSIA: Anger over rising prices was a major factor in March

elections which saw the ruling coalition lose a third of parliamentary

seats and five states in its worst results in half a century.

-- NEPAL: Nepal last week banned the export of grains as prices soared.

 

" There is a high possibility of food crisis in a poor country like

ours where domestic production is not enough, " said Hari Dahal, a

spokesman at the ministry of agriculture.

-- NORTH KOREA: North Korea's food crisis has already seen some people

starve to death in remote rural towns, according to an aid group which

works in the impoverished communist nation, South Korea's Good Friends

organisation.

Prices of staple foods have almost tripled over the past year.

-- PAKISTAN: Analysts say public anger over food shortages, particularly

wheat flour for the staple roti bread, was a factor in the defeat of

President Pervez Musharraf's allies in elections in February.

-- SOUTH KOREA: Rising rice prices abroad have almost no impact on South

Korea, which imports less than five percent of its annual consumption and

heavily subsidises its rice farmers.

-- SINGAPORE: Singapore is the wealthiest economy in Southeast Asia but

charities say inflation is driving more people to join queues for free

meals. Consumer price inflation reached 6.6 percent in January-February,

officials said.

-- TAIWAN: Taiwan is self-sufficient in rice so international prices have

no impact. However, domestic rice prices hit a 26-year high earlier this

year due to typhoons affecting the harvest.

-- THAILAND: In Thailand, export and domestic rice prices have risen

about 50 percent in a month. Some farmers have taken to arming themselves

and staking out their fields at night to protect their precious crop from

rice thieves.

In a phrase particularly chilling for Asia, the World Food Programme has

described rising food prices as a " silent tsunami " .

 

--

Kisan Mehta Priya Salvi

Save Bombay Committee and Prakruti

c/o Rajiv Mehta

1203, Kanchanjanga " A " Wing.

Plot 20, Sector 11, Koparkhairne,

Navi Mumbai 400709, India.

www.savebombaycommittee.org

Kisan Mehta: 0091 9223448857

Priya Salvi: 0091 9324027494

 

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