Topic: Global Food Crisis
Country: United States
Delegate Name: Talya Slaw
School: Forest Hills Central High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All United States position papers GLIMUN 2008 committees
Although this problem has had its roots growing for a while, it’s only in recent years that it has reach a point of growth where the term “Global Food Crisis” is now being applied. This is due to the increasingly food shortages around the world, as well as food scarcity, and the rapidly rising cost of food, which not only has led to an internal economic decrease, and have complicated worldwide food assistance efforts and has made is more difficult for the United States to meet its existing requirements, but also shows no sign in letting up soon. The United States recognizes that its domestic food prices have increased far less than global prices and that similarly a small percent of the increase is caused by biofuels production – the increased production of corn-based biofuels is estimated to account for only 3% of the 43% increase in global food prices. Another reason the U.S. has been hit to a lesser extent is because Americans consume more processed and restaurant food, while the developing nations facing the global food crisis head on consume more basic commodities. Other factors that have contributed to the global increase in food prices include increased demand in rapidly emerging economies, rising energy costs (which increase the cost of agricultural production and delivering products to consumers), several years of bad weather that has greatly affected harvest in places such as Australia, China, and parts of Eastern Europe, and export restrictions imposed by several countries.
Within our own nation, the United States is spending $60 billion in 2008 on domestic food assistance programs, including the Food Stamp Program (that currently serves more than 26 million Americans each months), and working with our Nation’s food banks and soup kitchens to the tune of $50 million worth of food to help these places stock their shelves.
On the international level, the United States is leading the fight against hunger in a few ways already. First, we recently gave $770 million to support food aid and development programs, $200 million in emergency food aid to be made available through a program at the Agriculture Department called the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust. This, along with additional funs, and other food security assistance programs already in place, the U.S. is projected to spend nearly $5 billion in the next two years to fight global hunger. In addition to this funding, which keeps the emergency food aid programs robust and helps farmers in developing countries increase their productivity (helping to reduce the number of people who need emergency food aid in the first place), the United States has also called for a change in the way food is delivered. We support the proposal to purchase up to 25% of food assistance directly from farmers in the developing world in order to build up local agriculture and increase the ability to get goods to the marketplace.
But the United States is not alone. We have called upon, and are working with, other G-8 nations to secure commitments from their governments for additional food aid, in addition to urging countries to remove barriers to advanced crops developed through biotechnology because these crops are safe, resistant to drought, and disease, and hold the promise of a greater yield, which means more actual food for people, which helps fight the roots of the problem. The United States also calls for help in building up local agriculture, to help break the cycle of famine, and encourages countries that have instituted restrictions on agriculture exports to lift those restrictions to help ease suffering for those who aren’t getting enough food.
