OneWorld.net (U.S.)

WASHINGTON, Jun 5 (OneWorld) - As the UN summit on the global hunger crisis comes to a close today, advocacy groups are demanding greater attention be afforded small-scale and women farmers.

"[T]he main causes of the world food crisis are not being dealt with and...the world's food producers -- the farmers, fisherfolk, agricultural workers and indigenous people -- have been shut out of the discussion," said Via Campesina, a global social movement representing more than 150 million small producers from five continents.

© International Rescue Committee / Peter BiroIn fact, "rural women produce between 60 and 80 percent of food in most developing countries," pointed out Yifat Susskind from MADRE, an international women's human rights organization. For this reason, Susskind continued, "women's human rights and capacity to produce food should be central to a global New Deal on agriculture."

Farmer and civil society leaders held a peaceful demonstration in Rome on Tuesday, the first day of the Summit, to voice their concern that millions are going hungry while "the corporations that control the global food system are making record profits."

The farmers and their representatives were forcibly removed from the Summit premises after a demonstration outside the press room expressing their "outrage" that issues of corporate control and food speculation were not being adequately addressed at the Summit.

While activists say many issues were left out, world leaders did discuss "the need to expand emergency aid and social protection; calm the markets with sound trade, reserve, and regulatory policies; change the biofuels policies that spur high food prices; and invest much more in agriculture," said Joachim von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).

Food shortages and rising prices have increased malnutrition and spread starvation where food was already scarce, and spawned angry mobs from Haiti to Egypt to Bangladesh in recent months.

Some 850 million people around the world were short of food before the crisis began to escalate, says the UN, which believes that number will soon approach 1 billion.

Analysts blame the escalation of the food crisis largely on rising fuel costs, erratic weather patterns, the widespread diversion of food crops for biofuels, and, paradoxically, rising incomes in poorer countries, which have increased food demand and diminished global reserves.

As food has become scarcer, financial speculators have become more active, buying up food at low prices and driving prices even higher.

As the Summit was wrapping up, MADRE issued the following statement:

In Guatemala, women from MADRE's sister organization now spend 80 percent of their sweatshop earnings on food. In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where MADRE works, mothers are preparing "cookies" of mud, oil, and sugar to feed hungry children. In Sudan, women MADRE works with now routinely go without food in order to ensure a meal for their children. In Iraq, where food costs now exceed many people's incomes, MADRE is reaching out to women forced to work as prostitutes in order feed their families.

To address this crisis, MADRE has activated its Emergency and Disaster Relief Fund to deliver food aid funds to the women of our sister organizations.

Vivian Stromberg, MADRE Executive Director, said today, "We know that putting money into women's hands ensures that it will be used to meet household needs. By partnering with our local sister organizations, MADRE strengthens progressive, community-based women's initiatives and builds women's capacity to respond to future crises."

This emergency appeal is coupled with MADRE's efforts to create local, sustainable solutions to hunger. These include women-run seed banks in Nicaragua and Panama, agricultural cooperatives in Sudan and Mexico, and small-scale organic farms in Guatemala and Kenya.

Read more from MADRE on food and global women's rights.

Via Campesina published the following information on the Web site of their U.S.-based partner organization, Grassroots International:

The issues of corporate control and speculation, which are leading causes of recent spikes in food prices, are not being discussed by the government delegations and the international agencies meeting in Rome to debate solutions to the crisis.

"We are outraged that such fundamental aspects of the food crisis were nowhere on the agenda for the Summit," says Paul Nicholson, member of the International Coordinating Committee of Via Campesina and one of the farmer leaders who was expelled from the Summit.

The 10 people involved in the action carried posters contrasting the record profits of agribusiness corporations during the latest reporting financial quarter of 2008 with the estimated 100 million people in the world who now, alongside 800 million or so others, are hungry because they cannot afford to eat. Profits for Monsanto, the world's largest seed company, were up 108 per cent, while Cargill and Archer Daniel Midlands, the world's largest food traders, registered profit increases of 86 and 42 per cent respectively. Profits for Mosaic, one of the world's largest fertiliser companies, rose 1,134 per cent.

The action was necessary to bring to the world's attention that the main causes of the world food crisis are not being dealt with and that the world's food producers -- the farmers, fisherfolk, agricultural workers and indigenous people -- have been shut out of the discussion. In previous high-level FAO events, civil society was given more space to express its views and to have a dialogue with the delegates. For this Summit, civil society was blocked from meaningful participation in the preparation and in the event itself.

"We are concerned that this Summit will only reinforce corporate control of the food system and lead to a further destruction of the way of life of indigenous peoples and their survival," says Saul Vicente Vasquez of the International Indian Treaty Council and one of the supporters of the action. "It is time for indigenous people and other food producers to take charge of food policy."

Those involved in the action have been meeting with other civil society organisations at the Terra Preta* civil society forum, parallel to the FAO Summit.

Read more from Grassroots International and Via Campesina.