A Bailout for the Poor?
While car companies and banks are getting a bailout to address their dire financial situations, poor people struggling to feed themselves need one, too.
That's the message delivered by Joachim Von Braun, Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute, in an interview in this week's Scientific American:
Von Braun says despite a drop in market food prices, the food crisis is still severe and more aid to invest in agricultural reforms is needed. For example, if the amount of money that goes into agriculture research in development was doubled in the poorest parts of the world — sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia — almost 282 million people would come out of poverty in the next 10 years. Providing high-yielding crops and fertilizers to small farm sectors and investing in child nutrition will increase food production and a country’s productivity. Without such investments, an additional 16 million children will be left malnourished by 2020.
Read the full interview here.
Digg
Facebook
Google Buzz
LinkedIn
StumbleUpon
Twitter
Printer-friendly version
Comments
Post new comment