Oxfam Grow
Home » Blog » Lynda Brendish » Oxfam GrowOxfam New Zealand launched its Grow campaign in Auckland, to highlight the inequalities in world food distribution and the reasons behind it.
If you happened to be walking by Freyberg Square in Auckland's CBD this past Wednesday, you might have wondered why a well-dressed commodities trader was throwing piles of money into the air.
It wasn't real money but part of Oxfam's local launch of the global Grow campaign, designed to highlight the inequalities in world food - and wealth - distribution.
Our world population is rapidly growing; we took thousands of years to get to six billion, but we're forecast to add half that again, in under 40 years, to hit nine billion by 2050. Already over a billion people don't have enough to eat every day—and the problem isn't under-supply, it's an unequal supply.
Barry Coates, the executive director of Oxfam New Zealand, put it this way. "The problem of hunger is about to get far worse because of the impacts of climate change and the emerging shortages of fertile land, fresh water and fish stocks. "
"Feeding the world is about to get much more difficult. Millions more men, women and children will go hungry unless we transform our broken food system," Coates said.
The issues, as Oxfam sees them:
- Land grabs: Agricultural land in poor countries sold for commercial use. Not in and of itself a problem, but when that land has been used by families, who are subsequently evicted, to grow food—that is a problem.
- Climate change: Rising temperatures will cause crop yields to fall—possibly to half their current levels in some places. Temperature rises also mean more heat waves, droughts and floods. The Grow campaign calls for a global agreement to keep global warming below 2 degrees and an investment in small-scale farming and green energy.
- Food price spikes: Some families have to spend as much as 80 percent of their income on food—and in those cases, even small price fluctuations can make a big difference to putting enough food on the table. Part of the problem are biofuel strategies which has taken corn off the menu and put it into petrol tanks.
- Small-scale farming: Intensive farming can only go so far. Small-scale farmers (who are often women) in developing countries can help put food on the table for our communities as well as having less of a detrimental impact to the planet.
Head to the Oxfam site to learn more about the campaign and ways in which you can take action.
