Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
being sold to wealthier landowners, whih in turn makes land distribution uneven
and creates a large pool of landless labourers (Sadik, 1991). As with peasants who
cannot survive from the crops planted on small pathes of land, impoverished land-
less labourers migrate to urban areas. Researh in East Africa has shown that rural
households are becoming more and more dependent on wage labour, not only as a
coping strategy during hunger seasons, but also as a regular strategy to meet their
food needs (Dorélien, 2008).
While displacement and migration to urban areas are more often the case, cross-
border movements prompted by hunger can also be observed. There is a case to be
made in terms of protecting those fleeing from famine as 'refugees from hunger'.
Governments continue to treat these people as illegal economic migrants, as if they
have a hoice in deciding to leave their countries, although there are few moral or lo-
gical reasons not to extend refugee status to those who are
forced
to flee when faced
with the prospect of starvation for them and their families. As the Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights points out, 'there is litle to distinguish between a
person facing death through starvation and another threatened with arbitrary exe-
cution because of her political beliefs' (Ziegler, 2007, paras 47-63).
A demographic hange of a qualitative nature has also put supplementary pres-
sure on the demand side of food. The expansion of the middle class, coupled with
urbanization in developing economies (in particular China and India), has resulted
in hanging dietary needs: a rapid growth in demand for meat, dairy, and other high-
value food products has followed. his hanges the amount of food producing re-
sources that are consumed: on average, 5kg of cereals produce 1kg of meat.
he hallenge of energy
he second factor co-responsible for the recent food crisis is the hallenge of energy.
The growing demand for oil due to the needs of the developed world and, increas-
ingly, developing economies suh as China and India together with speculation, and
the decline of the US dollar, have pushed the oil price to new records in the recent
past (Farm Foundation, 2008). Consequently, the cost of producing food has also in-
creased: fertilizers, pesticides, transportation, pakaging and processing and all other
mehanized processes that use energy have become more expensive.
Meanwhile, agro-fuels have become an atractive alternative, given the high
price of oil and the substantial subsidies paid to farmers for producing agro-fuels,
especially by the European Union and the United States government. As the current
