WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2008-04-27 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
As government departments prepare to present measures to the cabinet on how to stem the looming food crisis, aid bodies are desperately working on plans to continue feeding the poorest of the poor as food stocks dwindle and prices rise.
The National Agricultural Marketing Council said it would make a presentation to the cabinet this week that might include a short-term solution that would involve more funds for social programmes to protect the poorest of the poor from price increases.
Ronald Ramabulana, the council’s chief executive, said long-term interventions would probably include ways of making the country self sufficient.
“I think the situation is bad,” he said. “The increases that we are seeing are unacceptable. People are right to demonstrate and demand very quick answers to the problems we have.”
The council’s memorandum to the cabinet, developed by the agriculture department and other government departments concerned with economic and social development, is expected to recommend not only implementing new measures but also improving existing programmes.
The council warned in February that rising food prices were a threat to the country’s household food security, and that food inflation was a major driver of inflation.
Ramabulana said part of the problem was the export bans on certain commodities, particularly rice and wheat, imposed by major producers who had not grown enough for their own populations.
“Unfortunately, we are hit,” he said, adding that, though he did not believe this was the right way to resolve the crisis, the suppliers did.
He emphasised that, though South Africa would not get to a situation where there was no food, rice and other foods would be a lot more expensive.
As prices rose and supplies dwindled, the international aid organisations serving the millions of hungry in Southern Africa indicated this week that they were managing to cope – for now.
The World Food Programme (WFP) fed nearly 2,3 million Zimbabweans, 880 657 Malawians, 573 363 Mozambicans and more than 1,2 million people in Lesotho, Swaziland, Madagascar, Malawi, Zambia and Namibia. Oxfam’s programmes, other than the large-scale, food aid programme in Zimbabwe, were largely home-based. The WFP said that 256 869 of the nearly 5 million people it fed in the region were orphans or otherwise vulnerable children.
In March, the real price of rice hit a 19-year high and that of wheat rose to a 28-year high. Rice prices have increased by 70 percent in the past two months and wheat prices have doubled over the past 12 months as wheat stocks hit a 30-year low.
The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) estimated that the total cost of imported food for low-income, food-deficit countries would increase dramatically.
And the World Bank estimates that 33 countries face social unrest because of the sharp increases in food and energy prices. The WFP said it needed $500 million (about R3,5 billion) merely to maintain its operations at their 2007 level. USAid estimated that it would be $260 million short of the funding it needed to operate by the end of the year.
Josette Sheeran, a WFP executive director, said this week that high food prices were creating the biggest challenge the WFP had faced in its 45-year history – it was “a silent tsunami” threatening to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger, she said.
“This is the new face of hunger – the millions of people who were not in the ‘urgent hunger’ category six months ago but now are. The response calls for large-scale, high-level action by the global community, focused on emergency and longer-term solutions.
“What we are seeing now is affecting more people on every continent, destroying even more livelihoods and the nutrition losses will hurt children for a lifetime.”
Sheeran said the urgency of the food situation was underlined by the FAO’s decision to suspend school feeding to 450 000 children in Cambodia next month unless new funding could be found.
Marcus Prior, the spokesman for the WFP in east and central Africa, said: “So far we have not cut the number we are feeding, or the amount of food we are giving them. We are still coming to an understanding of the real impact of rising food prices on our operations.
“We will always prioritise those who, without us, would not be able to feed themselves at all: refugees in camps, the internally displaced and victims of conflict and drought.”
Part of the solution, he said, lay in getting farmers to plant more, and know that by doing so they would get higher prices. Farmers across Africa needed to be helped to produce more, he said.
Jo Walker, the campaigns co-ordinator in southern Africa for Oxfam, said the organisation was concerned that high food prices would cause an increase in food insecurity and widespread food crises in developing countries.
Poor people in developing countries spent between half and 80 percent of their income on food. Soaring prices meant that many of them would be forced to cut back on meals or buy cheaper, less nutritious foods.
She said the worst-affected countries included Senegal, Kenya, Mauritania, Indonesia and Bangladesh.
“In Southern Africa we are yet to see the [increased] food prices impacting on our programming. But we are monitoring the situation,” said Walker.
“We will work with others, including our partners on the ground, academics, governments, multilateral institutions and other NGOs to devise the best responses to the challenges posed by the evolving situation.”