Solving the Global Food Crisis Starts with Women's Rights Posted
on: Thursday, June 5, 2008 A version of this article was
distributed through the Progressive Media Project. Ana Chumba is
facing a choice that no mother should ever have to make: whether
to feed her daughter or send her to school. Ana is a small-scale
farmer who also sells homemade tortillas to make ends meet. But
this year, the cost of staple foods in Nicaragua, where she
lives, has more than doubled. If she keeps her daughter out of
school to help with the tortillas, they may be able to bring in
enough to buy rice, cooking oil, and on a good day, milk. For
most of us, the world food crisis has meant an annoying hike in
our grocery bill. For Ana, already living on the brink of
survival, it’s a true emergency. Economists explain the food
crisis as a perfect storm: rising demand for resource-intensive
foods like meat, protracted drought, and more land being used to
grow fuel instead of food. More critical thinkers point out that
long before biofu