Thank You for the Aid, President Bush?

In a recent Fox article, a speech given by President Bush in late October is covered. Bush discusses our constant obligation to provide aid for developing nations. The policies and beliefs that President Bush follows are all under the Millenium Challenge Account which provides aid to countries that have democracy, invest in education and health, and most of all are within the free market.

As far as loans go under Bush’s list of given “aid,” billions and billions of dollars has been spread across the map. These loans include: $16 billion for food, $1 billion for water sanitation, and $5.5 billion for means of addressing the global food crisis.

Although this money may help developing nations for a short amount of time, in the long run it only creates mroe poverty when they are unable to pay any of the money back. In turn, if a country refuses to pay back their loans, the World Bank may fine them even more. This creates more inquality on a global scale and fuels practices and institutions of globalization such as the race to the bottom and the development and sustainabilty of sweatshops.

A Second Green Revolution

In a recent Fox News article, Julie Watson discusses the need for a second revolution to solve the issue of the world’s food crisis. Sixty years ago, the green revoltuion began, creating more dependable, “hardier” seeds. Now as the hunger situation worsens, populations is outtrunning and nearly lapping food production. For example, Food production in Africa increases 2 percent a year while population grows 3 percent. Costs of fertilizers have sky rocketed and as global warming becomes more of an issue, climate change is causing drought.

Now the issue doesn’t only involve increasing food production as it did when the original green revolution was introduced. There are many more factors that need to be addressed in order to create the ability to make more food. Many predict another famine within 50 years, so the solution must be sustainable.

Many are attempting to not only aid larger farms, but also small local farms as well. In places like Africa and India, entire towns depend on these small farms and without their successful production, the hunger crisis is fueled.

A Cure to the Hunger

Dublin was the recent meetingplace of experts from Africa, Europe, and the US recently to discuss possible solutuions to the hunger crisis, says a recent Fox News article. The issue is involving the poor economy and high unemployment in America. As our economy weakens, hunger in other nations increases. Experts are expecting major neglect of the poor due to the fact that most people need to focus their finances on themselves and their families.

One of these experts believe that if you have enough to money to keep yourself alive and healthy, at least one precent of your finances should be donated to the needy. If this were to occur, the crisis could easily fix itself. Other suggestions include buying food from local African farmers to help them buy expensive necessities to sustain their crops.

The bottom line is that no one thinks we are capable of putting aside money for those who need it while we are worried for our own situations. We have let our economy get to the point of crisis and now we are even less capable of helping anyone else but ourselves.

For the Food Crisis

In a recnt CNN article, Cheif Alessio Vinci covers the advances made to prevent the food crisis in major parts of the world. More than $1 billion of emergency aid has been given. United Nation delegates have now vowed to ninvest in smaller local farmers in hopes of keeping food prices low. They have also suggested donating fertilizer, seed, and other various essentials to the upkeep of farm life. They hope to reach a goal of a 50 percnet increase in food production by 2030.

It seems that there is finally an understanding that aid is only good for short term help. The UN directly addressed that other solutions need to be made to fix the crisis for good.

However there are still many issues that need to be solved. The UN failed to comment on their solutions for escelating food prices, trade barriers, and farm subsides. These three issues are the largest determining factors in the world food crisis and without a reasonable solution to those, the larger problem will never be solved.

Food prices soar in Phillipines