Global food situation

AT the recent meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, food shortages emerged as the major issue, requiring immediate attention of the governments. There was a consensus that the world was moving towards a food crisis that may lead to riots and war. According to World Bank President Robert Zoellick, the price of wheat had risen 120 percent over the past year and overall food prices had increased by 83 percent during the last three years. In many developing countries, the poor spent upto 75 percent of their incomes on food. As such, the phenomenon of surging food prices could mean “lost years” in the fight against worldwide poverty and contribute to malnutrition, one of the “forgotten” Millennium Development Goals. To meet the crisis, Zoellick called for a “new deal on global food policy” and urged the governments to immediately fill the $500 million food gap identified by the UN’s World Food Programme. Under the new deal, the World Bank will nearly double agricultural lending to Sub-Saharan Africa over the next year to $800 million to increase crop productivity. In addition, the International Finance Corporation will boost its agribusiness investments. The World Bank President also proposed that the sovereign wealth funds around the world allocate $30 billion - one percent of their $3 trillion assets - to investments for African “growth, development and opportunity.” IMF Managing Director Strauss Kahn also issued a dire warning about the food crisis and its economic and political impact. “Food prices, if they go on like they are doing today - the consequences will be terrible,” he said, adding that if they continued, “hundreds of thousands of people will be starving.”
The Managing Director reiterated that this was a huge problem which could put at risk years of development gains and “as we know, learning from the past, those kinds of questions sometimes end in war.” Other financial experts warned that food riots were breaking out in many regions and food shortages threatened millions of people, sparking protests around the globe. It is good to see that the emerging food crisis has attracted such a great deal of attention at the spring meetings of World Bank and its twin institution, the International Monetary Fund, sparking loud warnings of dire consequences. Of course, many countries of the world are moving rapidly towards a situation where they could face severe food shortages and skyrocketing of food prices. Where the crisis will ultimately lead to is difficult to tell but the possibility of economic and social instability, arson and rioting and destabilisation of the existing order cannot be ruled out. In fact, in some of the countries like Haiti and Egypt, such manifestations are already there and most sub-Saharan and some south-east Asian countries could also face unrest of varying degrees soon. The more worrying aspect is that price rises of farm commodities are believed to be structural. The World Bank is of the view that food prices would remain elevated throughout 2008 and 2009 and not return to the levels of the early 2000s, at least until 2015. Global wheat stocks are at historic 30-year lows and US wheat stocks are at 60-year lows. Analysts are almost unanimous in concluding that rising appetite of the biofuels industry, increasing consumption in emerging economies and a “sense of complacency” towards agricultural investment over the past two decades, were the main reasons for triggering the food crisis. Since these factors are of long-term nature, the inhabitants of various countries would continue to experience the consequences of past policy lapses for a considerable length of time.



Wilders’ film

A NUMBER of Islamic scholars and leading political figures have called for a boycott of Dutch products in protest at the film by Dutch MP Geert Wilders which attacks the Qur’an and equates Islam with violence. It is a revolting, blasphemous and deliberately insulting film. The desire not to let this abomination pass without response is wholly understandable. Nonetheless there is little logic to a boycott. It is not the Dutch who have committed this outrage. It is an individual — albeit an MP — but one who does not represent the Dutch mainstream. It would be different if the film had been made by the Dutch government or a member of the Dutch royal family or had been approved by the Dutch Parliament. In fact, the Dutch government has resolutely condemned the film — Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende went on television to castigate it and its maker — while Dutch TV stations have refused to show it and there has been widespread public disapproval. Moreover, at the last election, Dutch voters specifically rejected the far right with its anti-Muslim agenda.
Moreover, if there were to be a boycott of Dutch products because one individual MP insults Islam, then there would have be boycotts of other countries. The Russian far-right leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky regularly attacks Islam. In France, the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen has been just as vitriolic in his attacks on Islam. In the US, New York Republican Congressman Peter King has said that the vast majority of American mosques are run by extremists whom he calls “the enemy living among us.” So why not boycotts of those countries? Because no nation can be held responsible for the ravings of an individual not matter how malicious or evil they are. It is not fair. Nor do we target countries when entire political parties are overtly anti-Muslim, such as the case of India’s BJP — not even when it was in power. And what about the growing and flourishing Dutch Muslim community? To condemn the Netherlands because of the actions of one MP is to condemn Muslims as well because they are part of the Netherlands. Dutch Muslims do not want a boycott. It would undermine their position by implying that Islam and the Netherlands are in conflict and that Muslims are an alien implant. There is, nevertheless, an important reservation in all this. In the Netherlands, as in other Western secular states, the freedom of speech, which permitted Wilders to make and publish the film, is relative, not absolute. Limitations apply. No one has the freedom to shout fire in a crowded cinema. That is what Wilders is effectively doing — trying to stir up communal hate and conflict. That is not the voice of the Dutch mainstream. According to Bernard Wientjes, chairman of the Dutch Employers’ Organization VNO-NCW, Dutch businesses have already threatened to sue Wilder if his film led to a commercial boycott. The Dutch government too can, and should, pursue him through the courts on those grounds.

—Arab News