Raj Patel is a blithering idiot...
If Ag business had not developed the high yeild RICE...CORN...WHEAT The *** and asiatics would have starved a long time ago!!!
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‘We Should Feel Angry’
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In your book, you point out a link between coffee prices at Starbucks and famine in Africa. What is the connection?
The reason there's famine in Africa is that people are too poor to be able to eat--and this is true of every major famine since the second world war. Because the poorest people tend to be involved in agriculture, the price that we pay for our food matters. Unfortunately we as consumers don't get the chance to decide how much of our money goes to the people who grow the food as opposed to the people who process it, particularly if there are lots of steps in between us and the origin of the food. When you pay your $5 for a latte at Starbucks, that money gets sucked out of your community to Starbucks central, and then it gets diffused among the shareholders, and at the end of the day, some of that trickles down to the people who grow the coffee beans, but very little of it. The people who grow the beans are in a very weak bargaining position, and they can't increase the amount that they're able to demand for it. That means that we're left in the situation where the poorest are going hungry.
What is your outlook on the state of the global food supply over the next food months and years?
If things don't change, we're heading toward some very dire situations indeed. The fact that one government has started to crumble as a result of food riots suggests that this is just the beginning of a long and painful few months as governments seek to find whatever policies they can grab to be able to keep their citizens fed. To find long-term solutions, we need to have a democratic conversation about food, insuring that communities are able to talk about and get policies that support their decisions around how food is produced, how food is grown, what food is allowed to be imported and who gets paid what. In terms of macroeconomic policy, we need to regulate tariffs to some extent, increase grain storage, and provide support for sustainable farmers, because sustainable and small-scale farmers are the ones who feed the majority of people in the developing world. Those kinds of policies can be turned on, but it's going to take political will. These food riots are a crisis, but they are also an opportunity for putting together a better food policy. There's no guarantee that it will happen, but it's worth fighting for.
What do you think average citizens can do help to alleviate the food crisis?
What I'm trying to suggest in this book is that we shouldn't feel guilty, we should feel angry. We should feel angry that we're part of a system that exploits people. We should feel angry that we're caught up in a system that manipulates our tastes and how our kids are going to eat and how they are going to die younger that we are. With anger, certain kinds of social change becomes possible--otherwise we are left thinking that the only people who can do this for us are the corporations. If we're sufficiently angry, then we realize that there are other means to make change happen, like demanding it from our government. People shouldn't feel guilty about the food that we're forced to eat, but realize that through anger and by organizing in your church groups, local community, workplace or whatever it is, you can do things to make food more just and to enjoy it more.
© 2008
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