Bill Clinton: "We Blew It" On Global Food

Ex-President Tells U.N. World Erred In Treating Food As A Commodity Instead Of Vital Right

(AP)  Today's global food crisis shows "we all blew it, including me when I was president," by treating food crops as commodities instead of as a vital right of the world's poor, Bill Clinton told a U.N. gathering on Thursday.

The former president, addressing a high-level event marking Oct. 16's World Food Day, also saluted U.S. President George W. Bush - "one thing he got right" - for pushing for a change in U.S. food-aid policy. He chided the bipartisan coalition in the U.S. Congress that killed the idea.

Clinton took aim at decades of international policymaking by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others, encouraged by the U.S., that pressured Africans in particular into dropping government subsidies for fertilizer, improved seed and other farm inputs, in economic "structural adjustments" required to win northern aid. Africa's food self-sufficiency subsequently declined and food imports rose.

Now skyrocketing prices in the international grain trade - on average more than doubling between 2006 and early 2008 - have pushed many in poor countries deeper into poverty.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the U.N. gathering that prices on some food items are "500 percent higher than normal" in Haiti and Ethiopia, for example. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the number of undernourished people worldwide rose to 923 million last year.

"Food is not a commodity like others," Clinton said. "We should go back to a policy of maximum food self-sufficiency. It is crazy for us to think we can develop countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves."

He noted that northern food aid could itself be a tool for boosting African agriculture.

Canada, for example, requires that 50 percent of its aid go as cash - not as Canadian grain - to buy crops locally in Africa or other recipient countries. But U.S. law requires that almost all U.S. aid be American-grown food commodities, benefiting U.S. farmers. Bush proposed earlier this year that 25 percent of future aid be cash.

"A bipartisan coalition (in Congress) defeated him," the Democratic ex-president said of his Republican successor. "He was right, and both parties that defeated him were wrong."

Clinton also criticized the heavy U.S. reliance on a food crop, corn, to produce ethanol for fuel, which helped drive up grain prices worldwide.

"If we're going to do biofuels, we ought to look at the more efficient kind," he said, referring, for example, to the jatropha shrub, a nonfood source that grows on land not suitable for grain.

The U.N. General Assembly president, Nicaragua's Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, agreed, speaking of the "madness of converting crops into fuel."

D'Escoto expressed disappointment that of $22 billion pledged by richer nations to help poorer nations' agriculture in this year of food crisis, only $2.2 billion has been made available.

Opening the hour-long meeting, U.N. chief Ban expressed dismay at the potential impact of the global financial crisis on world hunger.

"While the international community is focused on turmoil in the global economy, I am extremely concerned that not enough is being done to help those who are suffering most: the poorest of the poor," he said.

[downsteamjim]

''We blew it.'' That''s what Monica said.

[runningralph]

Imprisonrove has a good point. She says we have the intelligence to get rid of poverty. Some do and some don''t.She doesn''t specify how this could be done. A congressman from Louisiana has proposed that Louisiana should offer women on welfare money to get their tubes tied as a method of getting rid of poverty. His name is Labruzzo and he is in the Louisiana legislature. Imprisonrove should contact Mr. Labruzzo and impart her intelligence to the rest of us.

[runningralph]

Bill Clinton is right. There are some pirates on a ship off Somalia that are getting low on food. Just about all of Africa is underfed. Most of the Moslem countries that don''t have oilfields are having problems. But they just keep on making more babies. I know they blame Western countries for their problems but the truth is food shortage is caused by the same thing thing that causes poverty. Overpopulation. Bill should speak directly to that problem.

[cbs_tom]

Posted by tvtoy1000 at 03:27 AM : Oct 24, 2008
I am quite certain that you meant 300 million people.

[missingamerica]

[...]

Though very little publicity is given to his efforts, Bush has made more efforts to assist Africans in reaching health and prosperity than any other President. That will be part of of historical legacy though few average Americans are even aware of it.

Posted by Meg001 at 08:18 AM : Oct 24, 2008

lolll...my, you are generous.

Bush''s weak attempt to balance his personal karma - and save his reputation in the history books - is more than offset by his deregulatory actions and his deliberate weakening of the enforcement role of agencies like the SEC.

Those Bush actions are resulting in the world''s economic engines crumpling like an empty can placed in a vacuum chamber - and charity to third-world countries naturally follows the same slope as the world''s economies do.

Not to mention the fact that Bush''s adventures in Iraq continuously added to the perception of instability in the Middle East, enabling much speculation in the oil commodities markets which viciously and negatively impacted global fertilizer prices.

All in all, Bush and the Republicans can take great pride in the knowledge that they have managed to harm more of the world''s citizens than anybody but a - small - handful of history''s major villians have managed.

[missingamerica]

Observe how Clinton does not cover the impact of his beloved "free trade" policies on world hunger.

What did putting China and India''s economies into overdrive do?

a) Cost us our jobs - and as is now becoming apparent - our economy

b) Ramped up the unregulated generation of air and water pollution in both China and India

c) Caused energy demand to soar, with the result that oil prices rose in sync (which, unfortunately, attracted the attention of the hedge funds and funny-money like CDOs, but that is another story)

And when you make fertilizer with petroleum products, the price of fertilizer must go up too....

And BAM!

Billie Clinton got to fly around on Vinod Gupta''s private jets, even as more and more countries were being forced to the brink of starvation by soaring fertilizer prices.

Of course, I could blame it on the Republicans, I suppose - Clinton had their full backing for "free trade", because they too have eyes that can see no further than the wealth that they are accumulating right now.

[articfox4]

You are right ...BUT ...... Birth Control should be provided along with food! Our planet is burgeoning with overpopulation and we wonder why the globe is warming and why we have so many wars? Michelle

[Meg003]

Bush proposed earlier this year that 25 percent of future aid be cash.

"A bipartisan coalition (in Congress) defeated him," the Democratic ex-president said of his Republican successor. "He was right, and both parties that defeated him were wrong."

Though very little publicity is given to his efforts, Bush has made more efforts to assist Africans in reaching health and prosperity than any other President. That will be part of of historical legacy though few average Americans are even aware of it.

[brianbwb-2009]

"And, if it''''s such a negative factor (assuming, common sense-wise, that it is), why doesn''t mankind just eliminate it? We have the brains to do it, after all."
Posted by imprisonrove

Poverty is the by-product of greed. On a finite planet, which dictates a zero-sum economy regardless of what idiots posing as economists posit, the excessive gain of one results in loss for another.

Eliminate excessive greed, and you eliminate poverty, but it is the fight against the excessively greedy that no one has the sack to figure out.

[brianbwb-2009]

Posted by Demongirl60

It is not harsh at all.

The recipient countries then have the choice of going back to subsidizing their agriculture, something they should not have stopped, or accept foreign interference in their food infrastructure, which will only benefit the foreign countries.

It is time for the world to take a time out from "globalization, return to isolationism, until we are ready to open trade on a more equitable foundation, with a global minimum wage, then we can rethink how, when, and in what areas we want to globalize.