Hungry for change: the scandal of rising food prices

The lives of billions of people across the globe are under threat due to rising food prices.
A series of massive price increases has sparked panic in many parts of the world.
The latest food stuff to soar is rice, with prices doubling since January. There have also been steep rises in the prices of other basic foods, such as wheat, dairy and corn. This situation is set to produce a deadly crisis for the world's poor.
The mainstream media has put forward a number of explanations for the hike in food prices.
These rest upon the premise that there is a shortage of food. So a drought in Australia, a major wheat exporter, is said to cause shortages and higher prices.
The finger of blame is also being pointed at China and India, who are already being blamed for climate change. Their "larger and more affluent" populations are supposedly responsible for the alleged lack of food.
But the fact is that there is no food shortage. The world's food supply is characterised by abundance, not by scarcity.
There are enough grains, rice and wheat produced to provide every human being with more than their daily needs – and this is before other foods such as meat, dairy, vegetables, nuts, beans or fish are taken into account.
In the modern world, there has been enough food to feed people during every famine. People do not starve due to a lack of food – they starve because they cannot afford to buy it. Famine always hits the poorest.
Consumption
And the view that growth in population and consumption leads to poverty and scarcity is not true either.
According to the World Hunger Education Service, a US-based NGO, global agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago – despite the population of the world increasing.
Revolutionising production and increasing productivity are the hallmarks of capitalism. Today there is the potential to end food shortages.
So why have food prices risen so sharply recently? The main reason is that food is a commodity like any other, and is subject to speculation and the fluctuations of the market.
It seems the recent credit crunch is making food price rises worse. As speculators find their investments in housing and the stock market threatened they have shifted to invest in commodities, such as food.
The recent rush to investment in biofuels has also helped to drive up food prices as agribusinesses and traders shift from food to fuel crops in an attempt to chase profits.
"The credit crunch has pushed a lot of investors into commodities as a safe haven," wrote Paul Braks, commodities analyst at Rabobank, in the bosses' Financial Times newspaper.
Now speculators are betting on the chances of food prices climbing even further and are rushing to buy, which pushes the prices even higher.
There is no thought, of course, for what this means for the billions people this will affect around the world.
This is just one aspect of the madness of a world run on the basis of profit. Capitalists compete within the food industry to grab the biggest share of the market, leading to overproduction and a glut of food.
So business and governments use a variety of methods to keep food prices – and profits – high. This can mean the stockpiling of food or even its destruction as a way of dealing with overproduction and hiking up prices.
The US destroyed huge amounts of food during the 1930s Great Depression, despite rampant malnutrition – causing people to organise hunger marches.
The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 restricted food production to keep prices high. Six million pigs were slaughtered, ten million acres of crops were ploughed under and fruit was left to rot.
Even in "normal" times, malnutrition and food insecurity is a permanent feature of capitalism. Some 1.2 billion people in the Global South live on less than $1 dollar a day and of these, 780 million suffer from chronic hunger.
Children are particularly vulnerable – the stunting that results from malnutrition affects 33 percent of children in developing countries. Malnutrition is estimated to contribute to the deaths of five million children in poor countries every year.
Potential
The socialist revolutionary Karl Marx noted 150 years ago that capitalism provides the potential, for the first time in human history, to expand production to meet the basic needs of the world's population.
But he noted that although capitalism could expand production up to a point, eventually the way the system puts profits above other considerations would become a barrier to further development.
This is the situation we face today. Millions will starve and billions more will be malnourished because the system is geared towards making profits rather than meeting human needs.
The crisis in food prices has sparked riots and protests around the world – in Egypt, Indonesia, Mexico, the Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Argentina and Burkino Faso.
The resistance of ordinary people will be the key to putting an end to the capitalist system that produces too much food while letting people starve.