G8 to Poor Women: Let Them Eat Dirt

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G8 to Poor Women: Let Them Eat Dirt

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By Yifat Susskind

 

23/07/08 " " --Real Women, Real Voices

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- -Last week, leaders of the world's richest countries, the Group of Eight

(G8), met to chart the course of the global economy at the luxurious Windsor

Hotel Toya Resort and Spa in Toyako, Japan. While President Bush and his

colleagues discussed world hunger over a six-course lunch, women in Haiti were

preparing cakes of dirt for their children's dinner.

 

Eating dirt, mixed with salt and vegetable shortening, is the latest coping

strategy of Haitian mothers trying to quiet hungry children in a year when

the cost of rice (Haiti's staple food) has risen nearly 150 percent.

 

Ironically, many of these women were once rice farmers themselves. But in

the 1980s, U.S.-grown rice began pouring into Haiti. Thanks to federal

subsidies, the imported rice was sold for less than what it cost to grow it.

Haitian

farmers just couldn't compete.

 

Neither could millions of other farmers around the world, who have been

bankrupted by the influx of rice, corn, and wheat from the U.S., Europe and

Japan. These farmers have gone from growing their own food and feeding their

countries to having to buy food that's priced on a global market. Now that

these

commodity markets have spiked, millions of more families cannot afford to eat.

 

Even here in the U.S., still the world's richest country, more and more

families are struggling to afford food these days. Thankfully, we are not

forced

to feed our children mud cakes. But ultimately, all working families and

small farmers, whether in Haiti or Iowa, are hurt by farm policies that are

designed for the benefit of giant food corporations.

 

Consider the U.S. grain subsidies that have pushed so many Haitian families

to the brink of survival. They have also hurt family farmers here at home.

That's because the lion's share of this $307 billion goes to the largest

factory farms, leaving small-holder farmers to fend for themselves.

 

As we saw last month, when floods wiped out hundreds of acres of crops in

the Midwest, farming is a risky business. It's the family farmers who don't

have much of a financial cushion that we should be protecting with subsidies.

 

The same goes for small-holder farmers in Haiti and other developing

countries. Most of these farmers are women, are mothers, who like most moms in

the

U.S., are responsible for putting dinner on the table every day. In developing

countries, these mothers often grow their family's food from scratch.

 

The small-holder, women farmers had no say in the decisions that the G8

leaders' made about the global food crisis. Yet, it turns out that they have a

lot to say when it comes to finding solutions to the crisis they are facing.

 

Just before the G8 meeting, a network of women's groups from Haiti,

Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Colombia issued an open letter to the G8. Brought

together

by the international women's human rights organization, MADRE, the women

called on the G8 to support real solutions to the food crisis. They proposed

concrete changes in the global economy, like international mechanisms to

stabilize the cost of food and protect the livelihoods of farmers. They called

for

billion-dollar-a-day agricultural subsidies to be converted from support for

big agribusiness to incentives for sustainable, small-scale and organic farms.

 

These are solid proposals backed up by research and years of first-hand

experience in communities that are on the frontlines of today's food crisis.

 

But instead of taking steps that could remedy the problem, the G8 plugged

more of the same corporate-friendly trade and agriculture policies that brought

on the food crisis in the first place.

 

G8 leaders called for more " open markets " in food trade. Openness sounds

good, but in practice this means that poor countries can't use tariffs to

protect farmers from unfair competition.

 

The G8 also pushed for stricter patent laws. These rules take ownership of

seeds - the very basis of all agriculture - away from small farmers and enable

giant biotech companies like Monsanto to control our food supply.

 

The G8 did call for more aid to countries like Haiti that have been hard hit

by the spike in food prices. That's an important step when lives are at

stake. But the money is to be administered through the International Monetary

Fund, famous for making offers with strings attached. In this case, governments

will be required to implement more of the kind of trade liberalization that

hurts poor people and small farmers and has created record profits for big

food corporations this year.

 

But as the women's letter to the G8 clearly shows, it's not corporate

profits, but human rights -including the basic right to food - that will

underpin

real solutions to the food crisis.

 

 

Susskind is the communications director of MADRE: Rights, Resources and

Results for Women Worldwide.

 

by the American Forum.

 

 

 

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