Raj Patel: Mozambique’s Food Riots Are the True Face of Global Warming

[marmar]

from Democracy Now!:




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AMY GOODMAN: The Food and Agriculture Organization, the FAO, has called for an emergency meeting later this month to discuss global food security. But on Tuesday, an official with the agency blamed the Mozambique riots on "market turbulence," not a food crisis.

Well, for more on this story, we go now to San Francisco. We’re joined by author and activist Raj Patel. His books include Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System and The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy. His latest article appears in The Guardian of London; it’s called "Mozambique’s Food Riots–The True Face of Global Warming."

Raj, welcome to Democracy Now! What is happening in Mozambique?

RAJ PATEL: Well, right now, the government has indeed reversed its 30 percent food price increase. But the government was right in pointing to international financial speculation. Of course, there were domestic issues, as well. It wasn’t just the price of bread that went up by 30 percent; the price of utilities—water and, like, electricity—in urban areas also went up in the double digits. And this is what people were rebelling and protesting against. But it’s true that Mozambique was subject to these huge fluctuations on the international wheat market. And as you say, Russia has been experiencing some incredible drought and wildfires. Russia has experienced its worst heat wave in over a century.

But there’s nothing natural about the way that those weather events get transmitted around the world. The way that we experience climate change, the way that we experience global warming, is always mediated. It’s always an interaction between the natural systems and our human systems. So, for example, in Russia, the fact that there was a heat wave was compounded by the fact that Russian preparations and fire fighting equipment wasn’t very good and the preparations to actually fight the fire were inadequate. And then, of course, on top of that, Vladimir Putin announced that there would be a ban on exports of wheat to the international market. And what that did was send signals to traders and speculators in grain that, in fact, there would be less wheat available than they thought. And there were worries already about how climate will impact wheat harvests in Argentina, for example. And all of a sudden you have a sort of speculative bubble.

And again, this is—there’s nothing natural about these speculative bubbles. They’re very much human-generated, particularly since legislation in 1991 was waived as the result of lobbying by Goldman Sachs. You’ll see increasing levels of speculation in food and fuel, that creates these bubbles in prices. And a few people profit a great deal. In 2006, for example, Merrill Lynch estimated that speculation was causing commodity prices to rise 50 percent higher than if they were based on just supply and demand alone. So there’s a lot of money in these markets.

But the consequence of that is that governments such as Mozambique find themselves in a position, when the price of wheat goes sky high, that they’re caught between a rock and a hard place, and they make the political decision to pass those costs on to their citizens. And that political decision proved to be a very poor one, because people in the cities protested widely. And as a result, as you say, thirteen people were killed. Initially, reports were that rubber bullets were being fired, but at least one report suggests that the reason that the police switched to live ammunition is because they ran out of rubber bullets. And again, there’s nothing natural about those consequences. Those are all human systems compounding and magnifying the effects of the strange climatic events that we’re experiencing worldwide. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/8/raj_patel_mozambiques_food_riots_are

[Mimosa]

1. Or too many people in non-arable land.

This situation was predicted in the 1960s.