FOOD PRICES TO DOUBLE BY 2030, OXFAM WARNS

HUNGER CRISIS WORSENS
FOOD SYSTEM BROKEN, OXFAM

(Reuters) - Food prices could double in the next 20 years and demand in 2050 will be 70 percent higher than now, UK charity Oxfam said on Tuesday, warning of worsening hunger as the global food economy stumbles close to breakdown.  “The food system is pretty well bust in the world,” Oxfam Chief Executive Barbara Stocking told reporters, announcing the launch of the Grow campaign as 925 million people go hungry every day.  “All the signs are that the number of people going hungry is going up,” Stocking said.  Hunger was increasing due to rising food price inflation and oil price hikes, scrambles for land and water, and creeping climate change.  Oxfam also opposed support for using food as a feedstock for biofuels.

Food prices are forecast to increase by something in the range of 70 to 90 percent by 2030 before taking into account the effects of climate change, which would roughly double price rises again.  “Now we have entered an age of growing crisis, of shock piled upon shock: vertiginous food price spikes and oil price hikes, devastating weather events, financial meltdowns and global contagion,” Oxfam said in a report.  It is believed one way to tame food price inflation is to limit speculation in agricultural commodity futures markets.  “Financial speculation must be regulated, and support dismantled for biofuels that displace food,” it said.  The failure of the food system flowed from failures of government to regulate and to invest, which meant that companies, interest groups and elites had been able to plunder resources.

The international confederation Oxfam warns in a report that prices of staple foods will double in 20 years, with the average cost of key crops increasing between 120% and 180%, unless world leaders take action to reform the global food system.  Food prices’ increase will be caused by climate change and we should remember.  The environment and the material creation are supplied with all the potencies to produce all the necessities for all the living beings. 

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?  

Human society should not consider itself as the only enjoyer of all of God’s creation, and that no other creatures have a claim to it. Humanity is actually a minority species when we consider the many types of creatures that are sustained by the environment. If we manage the ecosystem properly, it will continue to produce everything we need. However, if people who have no genuine spiritual understanding start exploiting the Earth to take whatever they want in any way they want, then the supply of resources starts decreasing and the Earth, being a living organism, stops producing or responding to the needs of society as abundantly as it used to do. Then there will be shortages, droughts, and forest fires; subsequently the prices on commodities will increase. Gradually more people will become poor, and poverty and starvation will spread in parts of the world.

Stephen Knapp (Śrīpad Nandanandana dasa) :
“Environmentalism According to the Vedic View”
http://www.stephen-knapp.com  -  http://www.stephenknapp.info/
http://www.stephen-knapp.com/environmentalism_according_to_the_vedic_view.htm