by Robert M. Saper, CommonDreams.org
August 12, 2008
Worldwide, people are suffering the effects of skyrocketing food prices. Mexico -- where over half the population are poor -- is part of this global disaster that, according to the World Bank, has already impoverished an estimated 100 million people. As Frances Moore Lappe of Food First indicates, this is perhaps the largest human rights crisis in decades; however, it is altogether avoidable because it is the product of bad policy. Mexico's vulnerability and the impacts on its population are easily anticipated as the result of eroding Mexican food security under U.S.-backed trade liberalization and the legacy of policies in the U.S., such as the recently approved 2008 Farm Bill, that grant unfair advantages to large agricultural corporations and prioritize profit over the basic rights of people.
In January 2006, a Mexican consumer needed about $74 to purchase the items in a market basket, a selection of basic products necessary for survival. By April 2008, the same items cost about $117 -- a staggering 58-percent increase in only 27 months. While food staples such as beans, rice, condensed milk, and eggs rose in price 79 to 114 percent over the course of 2007, there was only a 4.5-percent increase in wages.
The urgency of the issue is heard in the voice of a poor indigenous shopkeeper in Oaxaca: "I hope to God that prices come back down -- there is no hope otherwise." She then lamented, "Another one from our family will have to emigrate to the U.S." [...]
Read the full article:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/12/10945/
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