Is famine coming our way, as food prices continue climbing at the same time as fuel prices? Are we entering a increasingly insecure world?
Realising that a billion people, a very large part of the global family here on earth are going to bed hungry, Oxfam in around 40 countries, has initiated a giant global campaign called GROW which is an intelligent response to the hunger that people are suffering from at this very moment.
Where recently hunger has been declining, it has since 2008 risen dramatically, where in 23 countries there have been food riots and major protests in 61.
This is coming at a time of Peak oil, but Peak Agricultural Land Use was reached in around 1999 to 2001 and has been in actual decline ever since.
This is a critical issue that deserves serious attention, attention in the world already in the grip of multiple, economic, environmental and societal challenges.
Note that the average NZ family spends 16% of its income on food, whilst in the developing world 50% of a families income is spent on food. If our food price doubles we spend 1/3 of our income on food, if theirs doubles there will be nothing left - only hunger. Yet, we in the West suffer from the strange predicament of obesity and diabetes, whilst the developing world, actually starve.
Good safe food, like good clean water needs to be a human right, yet global food growth has been flat lining for the last 30 years and is of increasing concern.
At the same time woman's emancipation, education, and her need for control over her destiny and reproductive system, have to be supported, particularly in patriarchal and developing world societies.
With the GROW campaign, food has to be good, G E Free, preferably organic, fairly grown, harvested and paid for, and all people in the supply chain have to know where it comes from and how it was produced.
The aim of Oxfam in this worthy initiative is to enable all peoples as well as the developing world to start growing food more easily and every day and healthy food at that, resulting in healthy bodies, that empowers the family and bringing them closer together, saving money across the board, especially in the health systems, prisons, and the work force.
Statistics show that the more access to education and the more woman are empowered and have the ability to feed oneself, the smaller families can become.
Oxfam in taking this initiative is acting both ethically and strategically to avert a new age of crisis.
Learn from a very coherent and articulate communicator of how Oxfam a Non Governmental Organisation is mobilising globally to meet the challenge of encouraging the localisation of growing food, even here and in so called developed countries.
Starting off this global GROW campaign first, here in NZ on the 1st of June.
http://www.Oxfam.org.nz
