LIANE HANSEN, host:
From Afghanistan to Africa, rising global food prices are making it difficult for the world's poor to buy bread, rice and other staples. President Bush has asked Congress to approve $770 million for emergency food aid. Here to discuss the food crisis is Raj Patel. He's a former analyst for Food First, a leading food policy think-tank. He's scheduled to testify about the global food crisis on May 14th before the House Financial Services Committee. Welcome to the program.
Mr. RAJ PATEL (Former Analyst, Food First): It's good to be here, Liane.
HANSEN: What do you think needs to be done right away to address this food crisis?
Mr. PATEL: Well, I think food aid is important but the trouble with a lot of food aid is that it is U.S. food shipped on U.S. ships halfway around the world. And in all the major famines and all the major sort of hunger hot spots, there usually is enough food in the region. And the trouble is when U.S. food aid is dumped into that region, it drives the price of food down and it forces farmers in that region out of business. The food aid needs to be purchased locally and as regionally as possible, as close to the source of hunger as possible.
HANSEN: Is there food locally?
Mr. PATEL: One of the cardinal findings in development economics was done by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen. And he looked at the 1943 Bengal famine. And what he saw was that there was enough food locally but the trouble was that it wasn't made available on the market.
HANSEN: Which parts of the world are being most seriously affected by this?
Mr. PATEL: Well, it's going to be the areas of the world where people spend the greatest amount of their income on food, and that means the poorest countries in the world. Particularly Haiti, certainly parts of sub-Saharan Africa. India has the world's largest number of people who are going hungry. There are 200 million people going hungry every year in India, and I suspect that we would quite reasonably see hunger there increasing as a result of the price increases.
HANSEN: How did it get so bad that in a number of countries there's been violence because of this situation?
Mr. PATEL: There are a number of factors that are driving that. Certainly the price of oil, because so much of our food requires fossil fuel to make, not just in the transportation of food, but in fertilizers for example. They're very energy dense. So when the price of oil goes up, the price of fertilizer goes up and the price of food goes up.
Another reason is biofuels. A ludicrous idea, frankly, and one from which the European Union is retreating in quite a hurry. Which is where you grow food not in order to be able to feed people but in order to be able to turn it into ethanol and then burn it. So I do, you know, recommend stepping away from biofuels and moving towards more sustainable solutions, both towards energy independence but also towards agriculture.
HANSEN: In the United States the price of food is skyrocketing. Many people are being hit hard. What do you think could be done in the United States to help lower the cost of food?
Mr. PATEL: In the United States the cost of food has been very, very low in comparison with the rest of the world. In a sense what we're seeing is the price of food now nearing its sort of market cost. But, of course, you're right. That's hurting working American families very hard. I think we do sadly have to get used to an era where the price of food is a little higher than it has been for the past few decades, because now the price of food is actually being driven up by factors we can't control, like the demand for oil.
And certainly we can move away from a fossil fuel-dependent agriculture. But that's going to take resources and, you know, that's going to take time. And in the interim I think we do need to get used to high prices and we need the social policies in place so that working Americans can survive that.
HANSEN: You're written that even though so many people in the world are starving, many more are overweight. How is that possible?
Mr. PATEL: Well, it happens because, again, the way we distribute food is according to ability to pay. And the corporations that are in the business of supplying food have every incentive to do as every corporation does. They want to buy cheap, and that means buying cheap from the poorest people on earth - buying cheap from farmers - and selling us products that we want to buy more of, selling us products that are profitable. And that means products that are rich in salts and fats and sugars. The sorts of things our bodies crave.
The United States is the world's most overweight country but number two is Mexico. And in every country in the world we're seeing the sort of divergence where to some extent the number of people who are food insecure, who are finding it difficult to put food on the table, that's going up but so are the number of people who are overweight and obese.
And, you know, to the extent that India, for example, now has the world's largest number of people with Type 2 diabetes, and that's a developing country that also has the world's largest number of people who are hungry.
HANSEN: Raj Patel is the author of the book "Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System." Thank you so much for your time.
Mr. PATEL: Thank you, Liane.
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