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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | War, Food, Decolonisation and Why India Needs to Thank its Farmers -Prabhat Patnaik

War, Food, Decolonisation and Why India Needs to Thank its Farmers -Prabhat Patnaik

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published Published on May 7, 2022   modified Modified on May 10, 2022

-Newsclick.in

The heroic kisan agitation against the farm laws has saved the day for India by defeating Imperialist efforts to undo India’s ‘food sovereignty’.

Russia and Ukraine together account for 30% of the world’s wheat exports. Many African countries, in particular, are heavily dependent on them for their food supplies, which are now getting disrupted because of the war. And this disruption will continue since the war is also affecting the acreage being sown under foodgrains there.

Ukraine alone accounts for about 20% of the world’s maize exports, which again are under threat, endangering food availability in several vulnerable countries. Besides, Russia is the source of fertiliser supplies for a number of countries and the disruption in fertiliser imports from Russia will have a further escalating effect on world food prices and reduce food availability.

Compared with what it had been in February before the start of the Russo-Ukraine war, the price of staple foodgrains had increased by 17% by April 8, making millions more vulnerable to famine; these numbers can only increase in the coming days. The countries most vulnerable are in West Asia and in Africa, especially Yemen, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Afghanistan.

Experts have been warning of this possibility for some time. But while there is much concern over the loss of lives in the actual theatre of war, the far greater loss of lives that the decline in food availability threatens in countries far away from the theatre of war, has scarcely drawn the attention of the world at large, especially the Western world.

In all this discussion however a central question has not even been asked: why have some countries in the world become so vulnerable to famines that any disruption in food supplies anywhere immediately threatens them with massive loss of lives? Why in short do we have “famine-vulnerable countries” at all?

The immediate answer to this question would be that these are countries that have themselves been afflicted by war. Whether it is Afghanistan, Sudan, or the Horn of Africa, there has been a history of wars, stretching even up to the present, and their vulnerability to famines arises from the disruptions effected by this history. This explanation, however simply would not do: wars in this context obviously must include internal insurgency or what is commonly called terrorism.

But this raises two questions: first, insurgency itself cannot be assumed to be an externally-given phenomenon; it is so rooted in and related to the phenomenon of poverty and food non-availability that it cannot provide an independent explanation for the latter. And second, wars in this more comprehensive sense, incorporating insurgency as well, characterise virtually the whole of the Third World; why then are only some countries considered vulnerable and not others?

The real answer to the question why some countries are considered vulnerable not others lies in the fact that these countries have sacrificed their “food sovereignty” to the demands of imperialism. 

Please click here to read more. 


Newsclick.in, 7 May, 2022, https://www.newsclick.in/war-food-decolonisation-and-why-india-needs-thank-its-farmers?fbclid=IwAR0etrtDa91XsOYvF7ucnZuBcwurnzqsSFMSzgZPU9pjjLbOhFOJkGcTBD4


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