[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 69 (Tuesday, April 29, 2008)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E759]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE HUNGER CRISIS

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                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, April 29, 2008

  Mr. KUCINICH. Madam Speaker, approximately 11 percent of our Nation's 
households are ``food insecure,'' meaning hungry or at risk of hunger. 
This includes over twelve million children. According to a recent study 
from the Center for Community Solutions, portions of my district, 
including Lakewood, Fairview Park and Parma, have experienced a 74 
percent increase in participation in the Food Stamp Program between 
2002 and 2007.
  In March 2008, the World Food Programme (WFP) of the United Nations 
issued an emergency appeal to member nations asking for $500 million to 
help close the funding gap created by increasing food and fuel prices. 
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) echoed a 
similar plea in March saying that an additional $200 million was needed 
to meet emergency food aid needs.
  Unrest has broken out around the globe due to rising food costs. In 
Cameroon, where food costs have increased by 50 percent over the last 
year, 4 days of rioting ended with a death toll of at least 40 people. 
Violent demonstrations have broken out in Senegal, a country that 
imports the majority of its food, over the rising prices of rice and 
milk. In Yemen, multiple days of rioting, spurred by a doubling of 
wheat prices over a 2 month period, culminated in one hundred arrests.
  A new study released by the international NGO, GRAIN, states that 
``[f]armers across the world produced a record 2.3 billion tons of 
grain in 2007, up 4% on the previous year . . . the bottom line is that 
there is enough food produced in the world to feed the population.''
  The following article by Anuradha Mittal raises valid questions that 
we must address in our fight against global hunger:

                 [From the Oakland Institute Reporter]

   Dangerous Liaisons: A Battle Plan From the United Nations and the 
      International Financial Institutions To Fight Global Hunger

                          (By Anuradha Mittal)

       UN agencies are meeting in Berne to tackle the world food 
     price crisis. Heads of International Financial Institutions 
     (IFIs), including Robert Zoellick, President of the World 
     Bank (former U.S. trade representative) and Pascal Lamy, 
     WTO's Director General, are among the attendees. Will the 
     ``battle plan'' emerging from the Swiss capital, a charming 
     city with splendid sandstone buildings and far removed from 
     the grinding poverty and hunger which has reduced people to 
     eating mud cakes in Haiti and scavenging garbage heaps, be 
     more of the same--promote free trade to deal with the food 
     crisis.
       The growing social unrest against food prices has forced 
     governments to take policy measures such as export bans, to 
     fulfill domestic needs. This has created uproar among policy 
     circles as fear of trade being undermined sets in. ``The food 
     crisis of 2008 may become it challenge to globalization,'' 
     exclaims The Economist in its April 17. 2008 issue. Not 
     surprisingly then, the ``Doha Development Round'' which has 
     been in a stalemate since the collapse of the 2003 WTO 
     Ministerial in Cancun, largely due to the hypocrisy of 
     agricultural polices of the rich nations, is being 
     resuscitated as a solution to rising food prices.
       Speaking at the Center for Global Development, Zoellick 
     passionately argued that the time was ``now or never'' for 
     breaking the Doha Round impasse and reaching a global trade 
     deal. Pascal Lamy has argued, ``At a time when the world 
     economy is in rough waters, concluding the Doha Round can 
     provide strong anchor.'' Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing 
     Director of the IMF, has claimed, ``No one should forget that 
     all countries rely on open trade to feed their populations. 
     Completing the Doha round would play a critically helpful 
     role in this regard, as it would reduce trade barriers and 
     distortions and encourage agricultural trade.''
       Preaching at the altar of free market to deal with the 
     current crisis requires a degree of official amnesia. It was 
     through the removal of tariff barriers, through the 
     international trade agreements, that allowed rich nations 
     such as the U.S. to dump heavily subsidized farm surplus in 
     developing countries while destroying their agricultural base 
     and undermining local food production. Reduction of rice 
     tariffs from 100 to 20 percent in Ghana under structural 
     adjustment policies enforced by the World Bank, rice imports 
     increased from 250,000 tons in 1998 to 415,150 tons in 2003, 
     with 66 percent of rice producers recording negative returns 
     leading to loss of employment. In Cameroon, poultry imports 
     increased by about six-fold with the lowering of tariff 
     protection to 25 percent while import increases wiped out 70 
     percent of Senegal's poultry industry.
       Developing countries had an overall agricultural trade 
     surplus of almost US $7 billion per year in the 1960s. 
     According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), 
     gross imports of food by developing countries grew with trade 
     liberalization, turning into a food trade deficit of more 
     than US $11 billion by 2001 with cereal import bill for Low 
     Income Food Deficit Countries reaching over $38 billion in 
     2007/2008.
       Erosion of agricultural base of the developing countries 
     has increased hunger among their farmers while destroying 
     their ability to meet their food needs. The 1996 World Food 
     Summit's commitment to reduce the number of hungry--815 
     million then--by half by 2015 had already become a far-
     fetched idea by its 10th anniversary. U.N. Special Rapporteur 
     on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, reported last June that 
     nearly 854 million people in the world--one in every six 
     human beings--are gravely undernourished.
       So on who's behalf are the heads of the IFIs promoting the 
     conclusion of the Doha Round and further liberalization of 
     agriculture. While Investors Chronicle in its April 2008 
     feature story, ``Crop Boom Winners'' explores how investors 
     can gain exposure to the dramatic turnaround in food and 
     farmland prices, a new report from GRAIN, Making a Killing, 
     from the Food Crisis, shows Cargill, the world's biggest 
     grain trader, achieved an 86 percent increase in profits from 
     commodity trading in the first quarter of 2008: Bunge had a 
     77 percent increase in profits during the last quarter of 
     2007; ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, 
     registered a 67 percent increase in profits in 2007. Behind 
     the chieftains of the capitalist system are powerful 
     transnational corporations, traders, and speculators who 
     trade food worldwide, determine commodity prices, create and 
     then manipulate shortages and surpluses to their advantage, 
     and are the real beneficiaries of international trade 
     agreements.
       The vultures of greed are circling the carcasses of growing 
     hunger and poverty as another 100 million join the ranks of 
     the world's poorest--nearly 3 billion people who live on less 
     than $2 a day. Agriculture is fundamental to the well-being 
     of all people, both in terms of access to safe and nutritious 
     food and as the foundation of healthy communities, cultures, 
     and environment. The answer to the current crisis will not 
     come from the WTO or the World Bank, but lies in the 
     principles of food sovereignty that can ensure food self-
     sufficiency for each nation. It is time for the developing 
     countries to uphold the rights of their people to safe and 
     nutritious food and break with decades of ill-advised 
     policies that have failed to benefit their people.

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