BY RAISA PAGES
HAVANA — A new world, without hunger and with justice, is possible Cuban President Fidel Castro affirmed at the closing ceremony of the first World Forum on Food Sovereignty, held September 3-7 with the participation of 300 delegations from 60 countries.
According to Fidel, this discussion is taking place at a highly threatening moment for our species in terms of food provision, given that in the past 100 years the world population has multiplied more than fourfold.
"I agree with you in affirming that there is more than enough food on the earth for the world", he said to participants, citing the example of China, which provides sufficient food for a population of 1260 million inhabitants over 100 million hectares. That Asian country imports very few foodstuffs, but rather exports them, demonstrating that properly conceived policies "even with errors, given that nothing is perfect" can bring an end to hunger.
The Cuban president pointed out that our nature is being destroyed. In the past 40-50 years, erosion and salinity have damaged some 2000 million hectares.
Climates are changing and rainfall is steadily becoming more intense, droughts more prolonged and cyclones more violent. Phenomena unknown 15 years ago have now become regular occurrences, like hurricane Mitch in Central America for example.
He charged how producers in poor African countries who, with great manual effort, harvest coffee, cacao, cashew nuts and cloves receive only one-hundredth of the amount received by those selling those products in the rich countries.
He questioned whether distributing land among peasants without an accompanying social and technical-scientific program, would alleviate hunger and social injustice.
How would they exploit those lands? With what machinery? What high-productive seeds? What markets would they have when agricultural development is concentrated in developed nations like the United States, which in addition can give themselves the luxury of subsidising their agriculture because they monopolize all the wealth in the world.
"We buy things that are increasingly more expensive and receive increasingly low pay for what we sell", Fidel indicated.
Based on statistics, he reported that between 1960 and 1997, the purchasing power of basic products in the underdeveloped nations descended to less than 80% of what it had shown for 30 years.
Speaking from experience he asked: "What can peasants do without schools, doctors, hospitals, vaccines, protection against illnesses; without credit, prices and markets, receiving increasingly less for their products and investing increasingly more sweat and time in producing their agricultural products."
"We want peasants and fishers, or the overwhelming majority of the people, to have acceptable life prospects", he added.
[Abridged from Granma International <http://www.granma.cu>.]