6-14 IAN Food Policy

"We can't wait anymore. That statement from a growing number of people with a lot of political clout in the agricultural arena.

 America is responsible for a huge percentage of the international food supply. Thus our agricultural policies are of interest to leaders around the world which is evidenced by a statement from the ex-president of Brazil.  “Political leaders and global companies must act now to ensure that all people can put food on their table. There are no excuses. We have the capacity to feed everyone on the planet now and in the future. If the political will is there no one will be denied their fundamental human right to be free from hunger.”

A new report catalogs the symptoms of today’s broken food system, including growing hunger, flat-lining yields, a scramble for fertile land and water and rising food prices. It warns we have entered a new age of crisis where depletion of the earth’s natural resources and increasingly severe climate change impacts will create millions more hungry people.

Here is the Oxfam  America Grow Campaign Press Officer Ben Grossman-Cohen: “ there are a number of policies that we actually work on and some can be proactive ways to help farmers in the developing world but others including our food aid policies and our bio-fuel incentives have a tendency to actually make life more difficult for some of the poor farmers who are struggling to get by. Subsidy issues, we have been working on trade issues for a number of years so we want to make sure our policies are useful for both American farmers but also to ensure that people have enough to eat around the world.