World Bank `Destroyed Basic Grains' in Honduras
May 14 (Bloomberg) -- Fidencio Alvarez abandoned his bean and corn farm in southern Honduras because of the rising cost of seeds, fuel and food. After months of one meal a day, he hiked with his wife and six children to find work in the city.
"We would wake up with empty stomachs and go to bed with empty stomachs,'' said Alvarez, 37, who sought help from the Mission Lazarus aid group in Choluteca in January. ``We couldn't afford the seeds to plant food or the bus fare to buy the food.''
Honduran farmers like Alvarez can't compete in a global marketplace where the costs of fuel and fertilizer soared and rice prices doubled in the past year. The former breadbasket of Central America now imports 83 percent of the rice it consumes -- a dependency triggered almost two decades ago when it adopted free-market policies pushed by the World Bank and other lenders.
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There now are 1,300 rice farmers in Honduras, compared with more than 20,000 in 1989, according to human rights group FIAN.
"The international lending agencies have destroyed the basic grains industry in Honduras,'' said Gilberto Rios, executive secretary of FIAN Honduras. "The best land now produces things like African palms, which are not for consumption.''
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Philippine President Gloria Arroyo now says the country has to change course toward being able to feed itself.
"We must move toward more self-sufficiency, not necessarily 100 percent, but more self-sufficiency, less import dependence on rice,'' she said last month
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(these same Federal and International scams, "laws," policies and rules (like NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO, CODEX, UN & other NGO programs, ETC.) are what causes food to cost more, while it's nutritional value is less, even toxic.).
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...AND THIS IS (and has been since the beginning of "man" kind) THE ANSWER and the SOLUTION. Self-sufficiency in the home, in the neighborhood, in your town, county and State. This should be the #1 Goal.
LOCALLY GROWN FOOD is the ANSWER
and the SOLUTION.
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