Thursday, January 24, 2013

There is enough food

Almost one billion children will be trapped in poverty by hunger and malnutrition by 2025 unless action is taken, a new campaign has warned.

 Kathy Galloway, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said: "In a world where there is enough food for everyone, the fact that not everyone has enough to eat is nothing short of a scandal.

 Actor John Michie, is supporting the campaign. He said: "We need to solve the underlying issues which create global hunger once and for all. People are denied access to land that could produce food. Parents work tirelessly, but still can't afford to feed their children. It's unfair, it's unjust and the truth is it's totally preventable. If we get enough Scots behind this campaign we can make world leaders listen."

Did the politicians listen in 2005 when hundreds of thousands of charities churches and celebrities marched in Edinburgh to "make poverty history"? Did they listen when tens of thousands besieged Bush, Blair and the G-8 at Gleneagles?

Socialist Courier over the years has witnessed numerous campaigns and pleas from well-intentioned folk and organisations but they have always fallen short in identifying the real cause of poverty and  hunger - the capitalist system and because of that failure they mis-direct their policies and solutions to symptoms and not the root of the problem. They repeat red herrings and political baloney. Reformers have wait for crumbs to fall from the overflowing plates of world capital.

  IF a socialist world came about we would be able to stop people dying from hunger immediately and rapidly increase world food production to reach a point where every person on the planet would have free access to sufficient good quality food to maintain good health. It is not a utopian fantasy – but a practical, revolutionary proposition. Let’s campaign for the abolition of capitalism and not misdirect our energies in pleading to politicians.

1 comment:

ajohnstone said...

Every six minutes 26 children somewhere in the world will have died of malnutrition.

14% of people go to bed hungry every night. Imagine if they lived in your community, 2000-strong, that would be about 280 thin, ragged, hungry people. Of course, they wouldn't starve because of all the perfectly good food we chuck in our bins every day but life doesn't work like that.

The "Food for Everyone If" campaign is based on a simple premise: if the world grows enough food for everyone (which it does), hunger is morally indefensible.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/columnists/do-we-have-the-appetite-to-tackle-world-hunger.19997673

Yet what is Oxfam's answer? "Developing countries desperately need private investment like that of Scottish entrepreneur Sir Ian Wood, who has just bought a majority shareholding in two Rwandan tea factories"

The mind boggles at the naivity and simplistic analysis of what capitalist realities