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Prices of basic foods have sharply increased amid a rise in costs of commodities. The crisis has led to riots in poor countries by people who have limited access to food. Dr. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecologist, activist, editor, and author of many books. She talks to Al Jazeera about the food crisis in India, and what can be done to overcome it.

14th April 08 - Vandana Shiva, Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera: One of the causes of the huge rises in India's food prices is the soaring rate of inflation. India is experiencing its highest rate of inflation in three years. What is behind this increase?

Dr Shiva: There are a number of reasons why the prices of food commodities are rising in India. The first is related to economic policies – the policies of integrating India with global markets.

There is a huge agrarian crisis but it's not from the beginning of our freedom, it's not a leftover of feudalism. The agrarian crisis is a result of globalisation.

The farmers who are committing suicide in India are precisely in those areas where genetically engineered cotton is being grown by Monsanto [a chemicals and agricultural science corporation].

This is a new crisis. A small farmer could make a living in this country a few years ago. Today, as a result of globalisation, agriculture is being run down.

We have grown enough wheat in the last few years – 74 million tonnes. We are still self-reliant in food, but we are being forced to import; both under the multilateral globalisation free trade agreements as well as under bilateral arrangements like a crazy treaty called the Agriculture Knowledge Initiative between the US and India.

It was signed at the same time as the nuclear treaty was signed. The nuclear agreement has had a lot of political attention. The agriculture treaty has had absolutely no attention.

Indian farmers are being paid 8,000 rupees [$200] for a tonne of wheat. When the farmers ask for more, to make a viable living, the government says it will cause a rise in inflation.

So the government goes to Cargill [a transnational agricultural corporation] and the United States because of this bilateral agreement and buys wheat at $400 dollars a tonne, which is 16,000 rupees a tonne – twice the price that Indian farmers can produce wheat for.

What effect is that having on ordinary people in India?

It's having a huge impact. Already, about half of India was not eating full meals; going through days without food. With the price rise, I can see about 70 to 80 per cent of India will be pushed into hunger and starvation.

There are two other additional issues that have come up in recent years. Last year, both the European government and the US government made a 10 per cent blending requirement and put huge subsidies into biofuels, diverting food from feeding the hungry to running automobiles. This has driven up prices of food.

Climate change is creating instability in agriculture. Unfortunately the UN representative said the new green revolution in Africa would solve these problems. It is going to make it worse.

A green revolution based on nitrogen fertilisers in 2008 is a recipe for emissions of nitrogen oxides, further instability of the climate and further hunger and starvation.

We need to localise food systems. We have enough farmers to produce enough food in this country [India], if we were not being forced to integrate with a speculative market.

There are now calls for some sort of co-ordinated response to the problem – by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the UN. Is there any short term solution?

There is a very short term solution – give up the industrial agriculture using fossil fuels, high cost imports.

Give up the forced linking with an international commodity market. Allow farmers to grow and give them a just price. We can solve the problem tomorrow.

I work with 400,000 farmers in India growing organic food. We have doubled yields and doubled output on farms. Nobody is dying of starvation in the villages where there is organic farming.

But do you think governments will look at that as a solution? What has the government in India done?

It has to be the solution. The Third World does not need charity; the Third World needs food sovereignty. It needs freedom to produce it own food. Let's just recognise the ecological endowments – it is Africa and Asia that have the best soils, the best sun, the best biodiversity.

Never, ever have we had this scale of a problem, except during the great Bengal famine, which also was driven by so-called free trade.

I'd like to just mention: free trade is not free. Every one of the problems we have … have been triggered by government policy.

Globalisation is government policy. Trade liberalisation is government policy. Biofuels is government policy. Climate change is triggered by government subsidies for fossil fuel use.

If the governments have caused the problem, they cannot now throw up their hands and say that they cannot intervene. They have created the price rise, they need to intervene in creating a fair market for famers and ensure the rights of all.

Food is about life, and the right to life is protected in our constitution.

If those solutions are not taken, where do you think this will end? Will there be more food riots in Africa and Asia?

If the governments continue to make interventions on behalf of the rich, they can bail out the banks in their absolute unwinding of the financial crisis – then they can intervene in the market.

But if they refuse to intervene in the market to ensure food prices are regulated, we will see more riots. Either governments will fall because of riots or they can become enlightened and not see the pseudo free trade as a sacred cow that has to be protected.

Food rights of people have to be protected; the rights of the poor have to be protected. That is the only obligation governments have. Any democratic government that fails in that duty will only be part of the problem of creating food wars and food riots.

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Rich countries have ability to solve problem

12th April 08 - Sean O'Grady, The Independent (UK) 

The world knows the biggest single step it could take to alleviate the food crisis – and has in fact been talking about it at the highest levels for the past eight years. The World Trade Organisation's Doha Round of trade talks that began in 2001 was aimed at liberalising the planet's dysfunctional agricultural markets, with cheaper food for all being a principal benefit.

One reason why so many governments in emerging nations such as the Ukraine, Syria and Egypt are turning away from world markets and embracing barter deals is because those world markets are so hideously distorted by a web of subsidies and tariffs constructed by the developed world to protect our farmers.

The Common Agricultural Policy, barely reformed in recent years, ensures that Europe's agriculture remains primarily committed to protecting the way of life of the French countryside; the American government's protection for dairy products, sugar, tobacco and peanuts has created some of the most formidable trade barriers in the world; the Japanese government has positively encouraged its comically inefficient rice and beef producers to live in the past.

All these misguided policies have deprived the developing world of markets and incomes for decades. Of course nations such as India and Brazil need to do something in return – they could liberalise their service sectors, as the American and Australian governments are loudly demanding, and they might look again at their own agricultural policies.

American, European and indeed Brazilian and Indonesian enthusiasm for biofuels might also be re-examined in the context of the Doha round. So Gordon Brown was right, in his letter to the Japanese Prime Minister, the chair of the G8, to say that the G8, the IMF and the World Bank "should redouble our efforts for a WTO trade deal that provides greater poor country access to developed country markets and cuts distortionary subsidies in rich countries".

He also reminded the advanced economies that they are required to help less developed nations cope with any short-term dislocation that comes about as a result of trade liberalisation, via the so-called "Marrakesh Mechanism". The rules of the WTO state that it must confer "differential and more favourable treatment for developing economies" in trade deals. But a successful Doha round could boost world economic growth and lift millions out of poverty.

Will a deal happen? The outlook is not positive. If an agreement is not reached by this autumn, then abandonment could follow. This is because a new incumbent in the White House will probably want to revisit America's negotiating position, and that would leave the Doha Round "in deep freeze ... and it will have turned to mash by 2010".

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