How does the world best prevent against shocks to food prices?

Food and grain prices hit record highs over the summer. This was helped in part by the drought in the United States.  The record high prices is prompting an emergency meeting of G-20 agricultural ministers to discuss the issue. The cost of food has dropped since the summer. Still, world leaders are debating what should be done to prevent steep price increases for the future.

France proposes returning to a food stockpile system, similar to how the U.S. has "strategic" stockpiles of oil. Other countries in E.U. disagree and say we should concentrate in increasing crop yields.

From Reuters Alert Net, writer Silvia Aloisi looks into this debate.

Building strategic agricultural stocks to curb market volatility, as proposed by France, would not be the most effective way to tame food prices, EU Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said on Monday.

He said what was needed instead was an increase in food production in the world's poorest countries, which remain vulnerable to the threat of a new food crisis despite the recent easing in grain prices from record highs hit this summer.

Last month, French President Francois Hollande launched a global campaign to win support for creating strategic stockpiles of food commodities after a year of drought renewed fears of a new crisis in agricultural supplies.

Paris has also called an emergency meeting of G20 farm ministers for mid-October to discuss ways to curb price volatility.

"I believe it is one of the instruments but it is not the most effective," Piebalgs told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of an international cooperation conference in Milan when asked about the French stockpiles proposal.

"The answer to food insecurity is sufficient food production in the world's poorest regions," he said, adding that increasing investments in agriculture was the best way to keep a lid on prices.

"Resilience in farming, access to water, fighting against climate change, crops, access to the markets - it's a lot of elements, one element does not help sufficiently," he said.

Drugs and crime in France's second largest city

Marseille is France's oldest city and it's second largest. The city is full of culture and the arts, but it also becoming well known for drugs and street gangs. The problem has gotten so bad that local politicians even called for the army to step in to take control.

From NPR, reporter Eleanor Beardsley talks to a couple of people involved in the city. 

Reporter Karim Baila spent two months in Marseille filming a documentary for French television on the city's troubles. He says he wanted to understand what was at the root of the violence stalking his native city. Since the beginning of the year, drug- and gang-related shootouts have killed 20 people, many of them cut down by automatic rifles. Marseille is also France's purse- and chain-snatching capital. Some 840 gold chains have been ripped from their wearers' necks since June.

Baila focused on the city's huge juvenile delinquency problem. He believes the problem starts in the isolated housing projects on the city's north side.

"There is poverty, discrimination and segregation where we've put people in these high-rise ghettos," Baila says. "And they are so overcome by unemployment and misery that a parallel economy has taken over. Drugs and gangs now rule, and they've become no-go zones for the police."

Drug running from one of the high-rise complexes can bring in anywhere from $40,000 to $100,000 a day, Baila says. The gangs move marijuana, cocaine, heroine and ecstasy. The dealers operate with impunity; their idol is Al Pacino's character in the film Scarface. And by age 30, they're often in prison or dead.

Saida Hidri runs a support group for mothers living in the high-rises. She lives in one herself, in an apartment on the 15th floor, which she reaches via a ride on a dirty, graffiti-tagged elevator.

Hidri says unemployment in her neighborhood is nearly 50 percent.

"The kids drop out of school to work but there are no jobs. So they fall into the drug gangs where they can earn good money," she says. "But later, if they want to leave they'll be killed because they know the network. They're prisoners, and so are their families. That's why we live in fear."

First pledge of new aid comes from France

The first pledge has been announced from the United Nations Millennium Development Goals summit. France President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to increase aid by 20 percent to the world's poor. Sarkozy urged world leaders to join him in increasing aid and not to fall back into "old habits."

From this Associated Press article that we found at WOI-TV in Des Moines, writer Edith Lederer gives us this round-up of the mornings speeches.

"We have no right to do less than what we have decided to do," Sarkozy told the assembled leaders. He also said the world body should join in creating a small international tax on financial transactions that would go toward ending poverty and meeting other millennium goals.

Sarkozy said France currently donates 10 billion euros a year.

"The financial crisis is severe in the rich countries, it creates deficits," he said, "but its consequences are far worse for the poor countries."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the summit with a call to the assembled presidents, prime ministers and kings to use their power to meet U.N. goals to help the world's poorest by 2015.

Ten years after world leaders set the most ambitious goals ever to tackle global poverty, they are gathered again to spur action to meet the deadline - which the U.N. says will be difficult, if not impossible, in some cases.

General Assembly President Joseph Deiss called the session to order, saying: "We must achieve the Millennium Development Goals. We want to achieve them. And we can achieve them."

For centuries, the plight of the world's poor had been ignored but with the turn of the new millennium, leaders pledged to begin tackling poverty, disease, ignorance and inequality.

Israeli President Shimon Peres said peace and full stomachs were key to erasing poverty.

"We share the burden of saving the world from war and hunger. Without peace, poverty will remain. Without food, peace will not prevail," he said.

France kicking Roma out of country

A controversial move by French government is kicking a minority out of the country. The Roma are being sent back to Romania over concerns that the wandering band of gypsies cause crime and prostitution.

From this story at the New York Daily Times, writer Aliyah Shahid gives us more details on the deportation.

France began the controversial deportation on Thursday, placing 79 Gypsies on a flight to Bucharest, Romania, according to Immigration Ministry authorities. Approximately 700 men, women and children are expected to be kicked out.

Critics have called the policy racist and have compared it to France's wartime detention of Jewish citizens.

"I am worried about the risks of populism and xenophobic reactions in a context of economic crisis," Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Baconschi told Radio France International.

The government gave $386 dollars to each adult and $128 to each child who left on a voluntary basis, according to officials. But advocates for the Roma said those who declined the offer would be sent to holding centers, where they would eventually be deported anyway.

The Roma are a group who live, often in poverty, mainly in southern and eastern Europe. The group has been persecuted through much of history.

The foreign-born Roma are often seen begging for cash in France's big cities, and have been considered by many to be a public nuisance. Sarkozy has linked the group to crime, which has resulted in the exploitation of children and prostitution.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2010/08/20/2010-08-20_french_president_nicolas_sarkozy_begins_crackdown_on_gypsies_more_than_100_put_o.html#ixzz0xAVPKXUW

France urged to pay back Haiti

A letter sent to France President Nicolas Sarkozy urges the country to repay a 200 year old debt. When Haiti became independent from France they imposed a payment on Haiti which is now valued at 22 billion dollars. France imposed the payment because they felt they would lose money because their Haitian slaves were now free and would no longer work for France. Haiti was still making payments on this debt in up until 1947.

From Al Jazeera, we find out more about the letter.

Campaigners, including Noam Chomsky, the US linguist, and Naomi Klein, the Canadian author, described the debt as "patently illegitimate ... and illegal".

"The 'independence debt', which is today valued at over 17bn euros illegitimately forced a people who had won their independence in a successful slave revolt, to pay again for the freedom," the letter, published in Britain's Guardian and France's Liberation on Sunday, said.

Haiti launched a lawsuit in 2004 to recover the money, but it was abandoned after France backed the overthrow of Haiti's government.

The letter said such actions were "inappropriate responses to a demand that is morally, economically, and legally unassailable".

"In light of the urgent financial need in the country in the wake of the devastating earthquake of January 12, 2010, we urge you to pay Haiti, the world's first black republic, the restitution it is due," it said.

Bringing power to the Dertu region of Kenya

A renewable energy project in Kenya is being supported by a grant from France. 250,000 U.S. dollars has been granted to the project to provide energy to an area that has a great number of refugees. Resources in the Dertu area of Kenya are also being strained by a prolonged drought.

From Afriquejet, we read more about the power needs in the region.

The Dertu millennium project came at a time Kenya is facing an imminent power shortage and an anticipated increase in the cost of energy.

The country is now looking for alternative sources of power, following a long spell of drought that has led to drastic reduction of water levels in the country’s hydro-power generating dams.

During the last few weeks, there has been drastic reduction of water levels at the country’s main hydro-dam at Masinga, forcing the closure of the 14 megawatt power generating facility.

Ministry of Energy officials said the national power grid had lost 40 megawatts of power as a result of the receding water levels occasioned by the prolonged drought.

Government has, however, appealed to private players to help provide energy through the “Feed in Tariff” policy.

Defender of the poor, Sister Emmanuelle dies at 99

One of France's most beloved nun's has passed away.

Sister Emmanuelle died in her sleep at a retirement home in France Monday.

She helped an outcast people in Cairo, who eked out living collecting garbage. The residents of Cairo's slums had no rights of there own before Sister Emmanuelle met them.

She then spent two decades building schools, clinics and gardens for the people. The organization she began now helps the poor in 8 different countries.

This snippet from the AP story found on KFMB, gives her obituary, and more details on her life's work.

Born Madeleine Cinquin in Brussels on Nov. 16, 1908, she spent her childhood between the Belgian capital, Paris and London, according to the association's Web site. A member of the Notre Dame de Sion order, she lived many years in France.

Sister Emmanuelle initiated development efforts in the Muqattam, a peripheral Cairo slum, founding a primary school and providing scavengers with vehicles to haul garbage.

She eventually attracted broader attention to their plight, which led to new schools, health care projects and income-generating strategies for the slum dwellers.

"She was living right among them, the garbage collectors, the pigs, the whole mess. I had never seen anything like this in my life," said Dr. Mounir Neamatalla, a leading Egyptian expert in environmental science and poverty reduction who worked closely with her throughout the 1980s.

Neamatalla worked with the nun on a composting plant to process the vast amounts of manure produced by the garbage collectors' pigs, which was then processed and sold as fertilizer.

Upon her return to France in 1993, Sister Emmanuelle continued to speak out for the needy, regularly appearing on French television, her white hair swept up into a gray habit and her eyes sparkling behind large glasses.

French govt lowers ambition on anti-poverty measure

from the Guardian

By Jean-Baptiste Vey
PARIS, The cash-strapped French government is scaling back plans for a national rollout of cash incentives for people to go back to work, to the dismay of the cabinet member fighting for the measure.

The RSA, or Active Solidarity Revenue, aims to help bring France's poor back into the workforce, targetting people who risk losing money by taking up jobs because they would earn less than the benefits they receive while on the dole.

Now being tested in 34 administrative regions, the measure is championed by Martin Hirsch, one of several left-wing activists and politicians whom President Nicolas Sarkozy surprisingly invited into his government in 2007.

But ambitions for how widely it will be applied are being scaled back as the government scrambles to find budget savings to meet its public deficit goals, even after revising up its deficit projection for this year.

"The RSA is a good idea...(but) it must be carried out in a budget environment compatible with our public finances," Budget Minister Eric Woerth told France Inter radio on Wednesday, echoing a line taken by Sarkozy a day earlier.

Hirsch, one of France's most prominent anti-poverty campaigners before he became the government's High Commissioner for Active Solidarity, has estimated a national application of the RSA would cost about 2 to 3 billion euros in total.

He responded to the change in tone by telling the weekly Le Pelerin he did not want a "cut price" RSA.

"The RSA is an investment. At the beginning it will cost some money to get things going but in the end it is the whole country which will benefit," he said in an advance copy of the interview which will be published in Thursday's Le Pelerin.

Sarkozy has charged Hirsch with cutting the number of French living in poverty by a third over the next few years. Some 7.1 million people in France live below the poverty line of 817 euros per month, or 60 percent of the median income.

Opposition Socialists, some of whom have accused left-wingers who joined the government of being traitors, were quick to highlight the divisions and accuse the government of breaking its promises.

"It is the abandoning of a programme on which we had agreed," Arnaud Montebourg, a prominent Socialist deputy, told Canal+ television.

Hirsch would only say after Wednesday's cabinet meeting that discussions over the RSA were still underway and the government had a goal to which it was sticking. (Writing by Swaha Pattanaik; Editing by Michael Winfrey)

Sarkozy Must Highlight Aid in Country's Visit

from All Africa

BuaNews (Tshwane)

NEWS
26 February 2008
Posted to the web 26 February 2008
Pretoria

International humanitarian body Oxfam, has welcomed French President Nikolas Sarkozy's visit to South Africa, urging he use it as an opportunity to reaffirm France's commitment to spend 0.7 percent of its Gross national Product (GNP) on aid by 2012.

"In many countries around the world, France's aid saves lives. Sticking to the 2012 target would mean increases in real development assistance of 1.9 billion per annum starting in the 2009 budget," said Charles Abani, Oxfam Southern Africa Regional Director.

"This would help save millions of lives in Africa and around the world, and maintain France's reputation as a leading nation in the G8 and European Union in the fight against poverty". Oxfam said France was the first G8 nation to set a clear timetable to reach the UN agreed aid target of 0.7 percent of GNP by 2012, announced when France held the G8 chair in 2003. France was also at the heart of the promise made by the G8 in 2005 to increase global aid levels by $50 billion by 2010, with half of this increase to go to Africa. This aid has been channelled directly towards countries such as Mali and to multilateral institutions such as the Global Fund. This has led to hundreds of thousands of Malian children getting access to education, assisted over 1 million people receive treatment for HIV and AIDS and helped distribute 30 million bed nets across Africa, said Oxfam. France counts among South Africa's top 10 economic partners, with bilateral trade totaling some R25 billion in 2006. France is an important investor in South Africa's economy and about 150 French companies, including multinationals such as Total, Alcatel, Renault, Lafarge and Danone, are represented in South Africa.

Bilateral relations between South Africa and France are directed by institutionalised mechanisms such as the MoU on Political Dialogue, and joint commissions on trade and industry and education; arts, culture, science and technology; and sport. Economic relations between France and South Africa continue to strengthen. South African Airways recently procured Airbus aircraft as part of its comprehensive fleet-modernisation programme.

In September 2006, South Africa and France signed a partnership agreement setting out joint development projects worth R3.1 billion. The Framework Charter Partnership covers the fields of service delivery, small business, job creation and energy efficiency.

French estates blame social ills for violence

from Reuters

By Kerstin Gehmlich

VILLIERS-LE-BEL, France (Reuters) - Unemployment, poverty, police victimization, and poor housing top the long list of problems that residents of the run-down housing estates of Paris blame for violence that erupted this week.

There is nothing but scorn for President Nicolas Sarkozy's view that the unrest was not rooted in social crisis.

"Violence is wrong. But it comes from somewhere," said Ali Hammudi, a worker in Villiers-le-Bel, where the unrest broke out on Sunday after two teenagers died in a collision with a police car.

"Youths here have so many problems -- unemployment, housing, poverty. They don't know how to get out of it ... and the government hasn't done anything about it," Hammudi said, parking his car next to a vehicle torched in the disturbances.

On Thursday, Sarkozy blamed a "thugocracy" of criminals for the violence and rejected suggestions it was the result of social deprivation.

A heavy police presence has kept a lid on violence for the past two nights but the disturbances have revived memories of 2005 riots, when youths torched thousands of cars after two teenagers were electrocuted while apparently fleeing police.

Many young people say they feel stigmatized by police and discriminated against when trying to find a job or an apartment. They say they struggle to leave the often isolated estates, which tend to have poor transport links into central Paris.

In 2005, the conservative government in which Sarkozy was interior minister promised for deprived neighborhoods, home to many immigrants from Northern Africa and West Africa as well as their children.

NO CHANGE

Student Zacara said nothing had changed since then.

"They drew no lessons from 2005. And things can start again elsewhere any time," said the 17-year old.

"We need to make ourselves heard," said Zacara, who declined to give his last name. "Violence isn't good. But we must get people's attention somehow, no?"

Several hundred people silently marched through the streets of Villiers-le-Bel on Thursday, walking behind the coffin of one of the two teenagers killed in the crash on Sunday.

A public prosecutor has said an initial report cleared police of blame in what she said was a road traffic accident.

But some friends of the death youths question police actions after the crash and the speed with which help arrived, highlighting deep mistrust between police and some locals.

"Police are angry at the young people and they are angry at police," said Naziha Benaddi, a 34-year old woman of Moroccan origin. "We just want the truth to be told (on the crash)."

Benaddi said she was relieved that calm seemed to have returned over the past few days.

But many residents also feel uncomfortable with the heavy police presence.

Abbé Pierre, 91, Fervid Champion of Poor

from The New York Sun

By STEPHEN MILLER

Henri Grouès, who died yesterday at a Paris hospital, was the activist priest whose "holy anger" at poverty and homelessness forced the French politicians to address the nation's problems and inspired the international Emmaus Community for the poor, now in 39 nations. He was 94.

A member of the French Resistance who once carried General Charles de Gaulle's brother to safety across the Swiss border, Grouès continued in peacetime to be known by his nom de guerre, Abbé Pierre.

Abbé Pierre leapt to international fame during the frigid winter of 1954 with a radio appeal to France to come to the aid of the homeless. His appeal set off a wave of donations, and the French government responded with new programs to help the homeless and a law, still on the books, forbidding wintertime evictions.

Emboldened, Abbé Pierre became to many the conscience of the nation, speaking out on issues of poverty and civil right for immigrants. He brought strident advice to churchmen and to world leaders, including President Eisenhower, whom he urged to make war on poverty.

On a tour of South America in 1959, Abbé Pierre told an Ecuadorian bishop to scrap plans for an elaborate cathedral and give the money to the poor. And he urged Pope John Paul II to retire at age 75, which, given the pontiff's popularity, must have taken guts. The pope evidently liked Abbé Pierre and had four audiences with him, which was surprising, as Abbé Pierre called for the right of priests to marry and for the church to ordain women. He even admitted that he had broken his vow of chastity "on rare occasions" when he was a young priest.

Abbé Pierre was the son of a wealthy silk manufacturer in Lyon. Inspired while still a teenager by St. Francis of Assisi, he renounced his inheritance, distributed his belongings to the poor, and at 18 entered a Capuchin seminary. He was ordained as a priest by the inspirational theologian Fr. Henri de Lubac, who, Abbé Pierre said, advised him to "make just one prayer to the Holy Spirit: ask it to grant you the anticlericalism of the saints."

French jeans manufacturer uses cotton at above market price to try to help West African farmers under 'fair trade' concept

from The Houston Chronicle

Doing good in denim

By JENNY BARCHFIELD

PARIS - It turns out that fashion's baddest, coolest, most rock 'n' roll fabric — denim — has a do-good side, too.

Bluejeans made from cotton bought from impoverished African growers at above the market rate are making their debut in Europe. Their French manufacturer, Rica Lewis, bills them as the world's first jeans to be created from 100 percent "fair trade" cotton.

The fair trade movement aims to support small farmers in developing countries by buying their products at a fixed price that cushions them from fluctuations in global markets and provides them a better living. From coffee, produce and tea, the gamut of fair trade products has expanded to include apparel — first cotton basics like socks, underwear and T-shirts, and now jeans.

"We wanted to turn shopping into an act of solidarity," Rica Lewis director general Dominique Larson said in an interview.

Harvesting by hand
Cotton represents an estimated 30 percent of export earnings for countries in West and Central Africa, and at least 10 million people depend directly on cotton production.

Most work tiny parcels of land, sowing the cotton seed, tending the plants and harvesting by hand. With few facilities to spin, dye and weave raw cotton, African growers have little choice but to sell to intermediaries who resell it to fabric factories in Europe and Asia.

The system works better when prices are high. When they are low — as they have been for years — African producers often sell at a loss.

Rica Lewis teamed with Max Havelaar, a nonprofit organization that certifies products as "fair trade" in Europe and contacted growers in Cameroon, in West Africa, offering them a guaranteed minimum price. Larson said the cotton costs Rica Lewis 70 percent more than the average world price.

15 percent more
At $45 per pair, the fair trade jeans are 15 percent more expensive than Rica Lewis' regular line, which retails for about $39. The company makes jeans under the Rica Lewis line and other apparel under the label Carnet de Vol.

The men's model, launched in May, comes in four stonewashed shades. Two women's models — a skinny jean and a boot cut, both in two shades — followed in November. They sell in stores in Spain, Italy, Belgium and France.

Only 100,000 of the nearly 3 million pairs that Rica Lewis makes annually carry the Max Havelaar seal certifying them as free trade.

"It's a drop in the bucket now," Larson acknowledged.

He said he hopes free trade models will account for 15 percent of the label's total production in three years, although that will depend on sales.

Larson added that the idea is not a charity venture, and he hopes eventually to make a profit from the jeans.

Some are skeptical
Skeptics say the limited output suggests a marketing ploy rather than a serious attempt to help poor Africans. Others complain that by focusing exclusively on the cotton producers, Rica Lewis has not gone far enough.

"Cotton growers are earning a living wage, but what about all the other laborers whose work goes into making the jeans?" said Daniel Joutard, who lectures on the fair trade industry at Paris' Dauphine University.

Still, he described the initiative as a step in the right direction.

A root of the problem for African growers remains developed-world subsidies. They can produce cotton more cheaply than rich nations, but are undercut by huge subsidies paid by the United States, the European Union and China to their domestic cotton industries.

West African nations have lobbied the World Trade Organization to reduce the subsidies, to no avail.