An answer to the global food crisis: peasants and small farmers can feed the world!

The causes of the current world food crisis are complex, with recent coverage pointing to the impact of agrofuels, increasing world demand and global warming, among other factors. In this article, international peasant movement La Via Campesina argues that the crisis is also the result of many years of destructive noeliberal policies that have undermined domestic food production, waging a &ldquo;virtual war&rdquo; on small producers. As a way out of the&nbsp;current crisis, it argues that countries should seek to minimise dependence on the world market and rebuild national food economies,&nbsp;through investment in peasant and farmer-based food production. <br /><br />The article begins by providing an&nbsp;account of how, over the last 20-30 years, global institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and more recently the WTO, have forced countries to decrease investment in food production and to reduce support for peasant and small farmers. Under neo-liberal policies, state managed food reserves have been considered too expensive and governments have been forced to reduce and privatise them under structural adjustment regimes. Under pressure from the WTO, state marketing boards have been dismantled and countries have also been forced to &ldquo;liberalise&rdquo; their agricultural markets. The authors&nbsp;note that the same period has seen decreasing interest in and funding for agriculture by international aid donors.&nbsp;<br /><br />The emergence of agrofuels is also discussed as an additional cause of food price rises, creating a sudden shock in the already unstable international agricultural markets. Furthermore, it is argued that speculative betting on expected scarcity has played a key role, with&nbsp;TNCs manipulating markets and traders keeping stocks away from the market in order to stimulate price increases and generate huge profits.<br /><br />The article concludes that more free trade will not solve the crisis -&nbsp;despite institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF as well as some governments advocating more investment in agriculture, increased food aid and further liberalisation of markets. It argues that a second TNC-led &ldquo;green&rdquo; revolution in Africa and the Doha round of trade negotiations would only tie up the extra financial support to political criteria to increase the dependency of these countries. The only way out of the crisis, the article concludes, is through rebuilding national food economies. Recommended steps include: countries should give priority in their budget to support the poorest consumers so that they have access to sufficient food countries should give prioritise domestic food production and&nbsp;become less dependent on the world market diverse production systems have to be developed, that are not exclusively focusing on the main crops such as corn, soya, rice and wheat but that integrate local foods that have been neglected in every country an intervention system has to be put in place that can stabilize market prices. Import controls with taxes and quotas are needed to regulate imports and avoid dumping or low price imports that undermine domestic production national buffer stocks managed by the state have to be built up in order to stabilize domestic markets at the international level, stabilization measures have to be implemented, including international buffer stocks to stabilize prices on the international markets production of cereals for agrofuels has to be stopped: as a first step an immediate moratorium on agrofuels should be established