SOARING FOOD PRICES SPREAD HUNGER AND SPARK RIOTS

 

In recent months the doubling and tripling of prices of dietary staples like rice, flour, eggs and dairy products is plunging more people into poverty, leading to greater hunger among the poor and sparking riots over food.

The causes are multiple. World leaders and analysts have cited a number of factors, many of them linked, including

• poor harvests due to weather issues that some attribute to climate change
• the rising cost of oil and its affect on transportation costs for food
• more agriculture being diverted to biofuels like ethanol rather than food
• the rising middle class in some developing countries and the resulting demand for more meat and dairy products (though little is said about consumption patterns of richer countries' citizens)
• trade liberalization that encourages crops for export rather than for local markets, as well as food commodity market speculation
• the sinking value of the U.S. dollar and its impact on poor countries' economies

What is not being said is that women are particularly hard hit by this crisis. As with other food crises that that have recently hit poor areas of the world, female-headed households especially struggle. Women are often the last to eat in traditional settings, and when there is not enough they go without. Malnutrition especially affects women for both social and biological reasons. When women are malnourished during pregnancy and the first year of a baby's life, a number of complications can occur that threaten the lives of both mothers and babies.

Food crises also affect women's already heavy workload. When food is rationed or hard to find, it is women who rise early and spend long hours in lines waiting for markets or distribution centers to open up. It is they who must make the multiple trips needed to try and get enough to feed the family. As Irene Phalula notes in an AfricaFiles article, women are more vulnerable to violence when they must travel pre-dawn hours to stand in food lines. In past crises, more women have also been pushed into the sex trade and more families marry off young girls in exchange for food.

Cantave Jean-Baptiste, World Neighbors country representative in Haiti, is witnessing firsthand the effects of rising prices and food shortages on his countrypeople. "There is a general situation of hunger all over the country," he says. "During the last few weeks, this situation has worsened due to the increase in fuel and rice prices on the world markets." In Haiti, bags of rice that before were $35 are now $53. A gallon of oil has almost doubled in two months.

World Neighbors and Sustainable Agriculture

How can you help? One way is to support WOW! at World Neighbors. World Neighbors programs help people gain the skills and access the resources they need to end poverty and hunger.

World Neighbors promotes sustainable agriculture and helps people improve their income earning strategies using low-cost technologies and practices. Cantave Jean-Baptiste reports that while the communities where World Neighbors works are feeling the pressure, it is less than in other communities. "The different livelihood strategies, including diversification of agriculture production, microcredit and the promotion of local production that improves diet makes our areas less vulnerable than others without such program," he explains.

He continues, "I think that food aid is necessary after a disaster, for short-term relief. After that, it creates dependency upon aid and discourages local efforts to produce. Long-term food aid programs are harmful to local production and undermine people's dignity." World Neighbors works with villagers to help them learn how to produce more food, plan for year-round availability and sustain their progress over time.

By learning basic agricultural techniques, food production is often dramatically increased in just a season. When families are able to produce enough for themselves, they are encouraged to sell surplus to their local markets. Kitchen gardens, small food producing gardens, supplement a family's diet and add needed nutrients. Women are an integral part of all of this work.

Farmers - men and women - learn how to produce, store and use their own seeds, green manures and other techniques that promote self-sufficiency, independence from external "inputs" like chemical fertilizers and pesticides and production in balance with the environment.

World Neighbors support for community health also helps support families that are more resistent to crises. We work to make health activities more sustainable and rooted in the program communities so that programs will continue when World Neighbors leaves.

Through our integrated program that builds people's skills, World Neighbors both works to prevent hunger and help communities build their resilience in facing crises like the food crises that we currently face.

For more on the crisis, read the BBC's "Assessing the Global Food Crisis" or listen to PRI's "Food Crisis Factors."