Food and climate: two great challenges

By: Elson Concepcion

Havana, Cuba. – The year 2009 is coming to an end. Official statistics speak of more than 1 000 millions hungry human beings. Three fourths of those that have nothing to eat are peasants and rural workers. They are, in other words, food producers.

On the other hand, a handful of Agroindustrial corporations decide where the food goes and who gets it. They are the ones that sell and therefore pocket thousands of millions of dollars every year.

The worst is that this reality is in everyone’s sight, but agriculture business keeps thriving nonetheless. Industrial agriculture grows while climate change has a field day, destroying lands and crops and increasing hunger.

Meetings, conventions, summits like the one that will be held next week in Copenhagen, Denmark, come and go. Skirmishes between the rich and the poor; between perpetrators and victims; between pollutants and polluted keep happening, but climate keeps deteriorating.

Time goes by and lack of meaningful actions makes this intolerable situation increasingly worse. Climate and hunger walk hand in hand, as cause and consequence of an irresponsible world that doesn't care about its future.

Scientists squeeze off their brains and their arguments and conclusions are hardly ever discussed and seldom taken into account. The powerful seem more concerned about their fabulous business and profits, no matter how detrimental they are to life.

Increasingly higher temperatures, extreme weather conditions and the resulting acute water and soils problems will plunge many more millions into the ranks of the hungry. There isn’t the slightest doubt.

Quite a few countries already face true disasters caused by climate change. Hunger appears like a cruel ghost that threatens and kills.

A contradiction lurks behind this somber scenario. The deterioration of weather conditions in the planet is also related to the world food system. The pattern of industrial agriculture that supplies the world food system works, essentially, using oil to produce food. Huge quantities of gases with greenhouse effect are released in this process.

The same happens with the use of large quantities of chemical fertilizers. Prairies and forests are destroyed all over the world to produce cash crops. They are responsible for no less than 30% of the gas emissions that cause climate change.

Rational measures are urgently needed to produce food by means of non-pollutant agriculture. Feasible plans and true commitments should be adopted so that each and every inhabitant of the planet can make a small contribution to save human existence.

Translated by:Pedro A. Fanego

( 04.12.2009 3:40 PM )