Food, farming and the future

by Barbara Crowther, Director of Communications & Policy, Fairtrade Foundation

This year, World Food Day and Blog Action Day both take place on Sunday 16 October. As one billion people go hungry each night, whilst another billion are overweight, whilst famine stalks East Africa once again, and farmers increasingly report the effects of climate change, it’s clear our global food system needs to change.

This week couldn’t have put the food crisis into clearer focus. On Monday, three UN agencies issued a stark warning in their 2011 World Hunger Report, saying that food price volatility was set to continue, including continued high prices. “Demand from consumers in rapidly growing economies will increase, the population continues to grow, and further growth in biofuels will place additional demands on the food system,” the report said.

Food commodity speculation by financial investors, and distorted international trade policies are exacerbating the problem. According to the World Bank, food price increases pushed another 70 million people into poverty in 2010-11. 

And it is an irony that half of the world’s hungry people are smallholder farmers themselves. As food prices rise, farmers – especially small farmers – get not richer, but poorer. Of course, farmers are not just producers, but also purchasers of  foods they don’t grow. And in many cases fuel or fertiliser prices, and prices of local foodstuffs, have risen faster than the farmgate value of their own crops.  However, investing in small farmers can have a catalytic effect, not just on farmers’ own livelihoods, but also in making more food available in general, as Oxfam partners in Colombia have shown. Fairtrade’s own report also showed the importance of multicrop farming - those who produce both export crops and foods for their own consumption or for local sale - are more resilient to price volatility.

Here in the UK, the Fairtrade Foundation this week released new consumer research, in which 3 in 4 of people reported their concern about food prices. And yet today, a kilo of bananas in the supermarket costs just 55p, compared to £1.12 per kilo five or six years ago. In the same survey, 85% of people listed fair treatment of farmers and workers as being very important, in terms of how they expect companies to behave. So how do we square our desire for ever cheaper food (especially in a recession), with our support for poverty eradication, workers’ rights and fair trade? How do we produce enough food to feed a growing global population, and at the same time tackle climate change and protect biodiversity?  How do we ensure small farmers do not get squeezed out of increasingly globalised supply chains, and tackle the concentration of power in the marketplace? 

Blog Action Day 2011 is a timely opportunity to discuss not just the problems, but  where some of the solutons may lie. The Fairtrade Foundation is also debating the Future of Food live on Saturday at our national Supporter Conference in Birmingham - with a panel including Soil Association, Sainsbury’s and the Windward Islands Farmers Association - and we’ll share the highlights.   

Bloggers from over 80 countries around the world will be talking about food, as part of Blog Action Day & World Food Day 2011.  If you want to join in, you can also follow all the action on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #BAD11. Bloggers can also register at www.blogactionday.org and post your contribution on Sunday 16 October.