Saturday 26 May 2012

KCNA Calls for Vigilance against Imperialists′ Food Domination Strategy


Pyongyang, May 26 (KCNA) -- A worldwide food crisis is threatening mankind.
Nearly a billion of people in the world are suffering from malnutrition and millions of children die of hunger every year.
The food prices in the world skyrocketed 71 percent in one year from July 2010 to July 2011.
Every year more than 10 million children are seriously undernourished and half of them die of hunger.
Food prices steadily rise and the number of people suffering from chronic hunger is on the daily increase.
The worldwide food crisis is attributable to the imperialists' food domination strategy.
The imperialists leave no stone unturned in their moves to put food production and supply system in other countries in confusion.
The fluctuation of food prices is attributable to the politicization of food.
The politicization of food is aimed at using food as an important lever for implementing foreign policy strategy of a country by taking advantage of its property as a strategic material and thus influencing other countries and, furthermore, putting other countries under its control.
In the middle of the 1970s when the agricultural production increased thanks to the successful green revolution and the food prices dropped, the imperialists began making arrangements for a food war to control all the food stocks behind the scene and flout the destiny of mankind.
Protectionism which Western countries have persistently pursued is a typical policy for food domination.
Pursuant to this policy, Western countries blocked developing countries from advancing to their markets by applying high tariffs on farm products.
Meanwhile, they enforced export subsidies system whereby their farm products were dumped on the markets of developing countries.
Consequently, the farm products of developing countries were nudged out of international food markets, creating striking imbalance. The West controlled markets and manipulated food prices as it pleased.
So, an increasing number of countries opted to import "cheap" food of the West or depending on its aid rather than investing money in agriculture.
Under the signboard of "aid" and "fund for debt relief" the imperialists used "surplus farm products" created through protectionism as a bait for imposing the West's view of value on developing countries.
A sum total of such "aid" and "fund for debt relief" was less than one fourth or one fifth of the loss suffered by developing countries due to the unfair trade with the West.
Monopoly capitalists' grabbing of farm land caused a serious hindrance to the world food production and was another factor of skyrocketing food prices.
Through their predatory protectionism and farmland grabbing, the Western imperialists have taken the bulk of the world food products and many developing countries including African countries, main food exporters in the 1960s and the1970s, were reduced to food importers.
Bio-fuel production brisk in the U.S. and other Western countries is worsening the food crisis.
The U.S. pays six billion U.S. dollars and Europe four billion Euros as subsidies every year to encourage monopolies in the race for bio-fuel production.
It is reported that an ordinary car in the U.S. needs 200kg of corn to produce bio-fuel for its tank.
The quantity of grain consumed by machines in the U.S. and Europe is equivalent to the food for half billion people.
The mass production of bio-fuel in 2007 reduced the amount of reserve grain to the lowest in several decades whereas food prices sharply rose.
It is the unanimous view of the news analysts that the main target of the unprecedented bio-fuel policy of the U.S. and the West are OPEC member nations.
State monopoly capitalism is the arch criminal which sparked off the present food crisis as it creates disorderly speculation and extremely chaos under the reign of the jungle law.
In 2008 when a financial crisis broke out in the U.S. owing to the collapse of real estate market and it hit the capitalist world as a whole, the monopoly capitalists sought a way out of it in investing money in food production, not in metal and energy industries which required relatively high advance payment and invited danger.
Taking advantage of the food instability, not only food monopolies but various other monopolies vied with each other in throwing themselves into food speculation.
This resulted in the competition in money-making by food and the leapfrogging of food prices.
It is none other than the monopoly capitalists who gained big profits by bringing food disaster to mankind.
At present when the imperialists are deepening the food crisis in a desperate bid to threaten the lifeline of mankind and subjugate other countries and nations, to settle the food shortage is not just a matter of eating but an issue on which hinges whether a nation protects its sovereignty and dignity or becomes slaves.
Dry bread at home is better than roast meat abroad.
Self-sufficiency in food is the only way out. It is necessary to meet the imperialists' challenge by concerted efforts.
It is the genuine way of solving the food problem for a nation to do farming well by its own efforts in its own land and attain self-sufficiency in food. -0-

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