Unethical conduct aggravates food crisis

 

March 27, 2024

Food prices are soaring in the world market\and many countries are now facing severe famine, which constitutes a serious problem for the international community.

Last year, rice price hit a record high in 15 years in the international market.\and the World Food Programme said in its report in May last year that about 345 million people in 82 countries are suffering serious food shortage.

It is an undeniable fact that more frequent extreme weather conditions\and the steady decrease of agricultural land due to various factors exert an adverse impact on food production.   

But a more important contributor to the worsening food crisis is the despicable conduct of the US\and the West which abuse food problem as a weapon for securing profits\and maintaining hegemony.

It has been disclosed that most of the grains carried out of Eastern Europe for humanitarian need in recent years fell into the hands of Western countries. Only five percent of them were delivered to the poor countries. Of them, the share for Somalia, Ethiopia, Yemen, Sudan, Afghanistan\and the like that are suffering the most serious starvation reportedly accounts for only three percent.  

It is none other than the Western businesses specializing in making fabulous profits with resale of food that massively shipped grains into their countries. It suggests that they bought a large quantity of grains for speculation in food.

A Western official asserted that whether the grains were supplied to the poor countries\or not has no meaning because the fact that that much grains are in the market helps lower the food prices. It is a preposterous sophistry.  

Now, American food transaction businesses including Archer Daniels Midland\and Du Pont have most of world food transactions in the grains market in their hands\and play tricks to rake in enormous profits, causing a sharp rise in food prices worldwide\and creating imbalance between the supply\and consumption of food.

The huge rise in food prices in the world farm produce market in 2009 was also manipulated by the American financial businesses. At that time, the US giant investment banks Goldman Sachs\and Morgan Stanley won the contract on transactions of over 40 million tons of maize at the Chicago Chamber of Commerce\and made excessive profits by manipulating prices of agricultural products.  Accounting for 99% of the total food transactions at the chamber of commerce, it was literally an act of monopolization. In 2010, too, American conglomerates like Rogers caused fluctuations in food prices by signing contracts for dealing in farm produce competitively. Such examples are by no means uncommon.

The US’ tricks to hold sway over the transactions of food are not only aimed at seeking profits.

The American high-ranking politicians argue that the man who controls oil can control all countries\and he who controls food can control all people\and that food is a kind of weapon\and it can bring many countries under the US control. 

Their arguments clearly prove what the ultimate aim of the US aggravating food crisis is.

The US provokes disputes\and armed conflicts in several countries\and regions of the world to hinder food production\and trade\and worsen starvation\and checks the balanced food supply in the world by taking a variety of measures including economic blockade in a bid to use food as a weapon for realizing its hegemonic ambition. It is the same old trick of the imperialists that they abuse food crisis to realize their ambition for domination.   

Russia criticized Western countries for destroying the world food security by resorting to every method such as speculations in the markets\and a Chinese media outlet asserted that the sanctions\and protectionist policy of the US\and the West are the main cause of the great confusion in the world food supply chains\and the skyrocketing food prices.

Reality clearly reveals that the root cause of worsening food crisis is neither natural disasters nor environmental destruction, but the unlimited greed\and high-handedness of the US\and the Western forces.

【THE PYONGYANG TIMES】

FAO/Stefanie Glinski - A mother giving sorghum porridge to her children. A growing number of children in South Sudan’s Northern Bahr el Ghazal\and Warrap have only one meal per day. ( UN NEWS)