Food in the news, but speculation out of the picture
Date: 13 October 2010
Today, there are many stories about food price rises – hitting poorer people in Mexico and countries in Africa, but delivering fat profits for the likes of contraversial agribusiness, Cargill, which is the world’s largest agricultural commodity trader.
In the Daily Mail, climate change is blamed, stemming from academics studing extreme weather events and the impact on food production – they recommended more investment in agriculture and weather resistant crops.
Over at the BBC, they are asking you why you think Africa is still hungry which will culminate in a phone in on World Service this afternoon, should make interesting listening.
And the FT, they highlight that Cargill has made bumper profits because corn prices are at a two year high, that tortilla riots in Mexico in 2006 were a sign of things to come, and that there is a stampede to buy corn because of a reported drop in supply.
With the exception of the BBC, who are leaving you to make your own mind up (impartial to the last?*), the media is missing the point: whilst discussing the trading and massive profits to be made by Cargill, Monsanto et al, they are neglecting to say that it is exactly this trading which is pushing up prices still further and thus, it is the traders who are causing fears of another food crisis, not climate change or biofuels or meat eaters in Beijing or any of the other reasons that are regularly trotted out to cover up the scandal that bankers are to blame.
On the day of the launch of the Worst Lobby Awards, where the lobbying efforts of corporate giants are exposed, it makes a dishearted Press Officer wonder if she will ever be able to counter the lobbying and the spin of big businesses who are literally profitting off hunger.
* The last time I spoke to the BBC they were not impartial. I was told that the role of speculation in pushing up food prices was ‘moot’ and when I countered reeling off the list of international organisations and governments that agreed with our analysis, i was told that it was ‘off message’ for the story they were covering that day, i.e that there are one billion hungry people in the world today. I hung up speechless (not a good look for a press officer) wondering how the cause of that hunger could be off message?
