Church in the World

Pope condemns greed of ‘food speculators’

Opulence and waste are unacceptable especially when hunger – the cruellest form of poverty – continues to rise, Pope Benedict XVI told world leaders at a summit on food security.

The Pope condemned the greed that fuels speculation on food prices, aid that debilitates agricultural production, and excessive exploitation of the earth’s resources.

Pope Benedict spoke on 16 November during the opening session of the United Nations World Summit on Food Security in Rome. The 16-18 November conference brought together leaders and delegates from countries around the world to find concrete solutions to end the scourge of hunger and find ways to stabilise food prices. The Pope, speaking at the opening session, warned against resignation or indifference. He said there was a tendency “to view hunger as structural, an integral part of the socio-political situation of the weakest countries, a matter of resigned regret, if not downright indifference.” But he insisted: “It is not so, and it must never be so.”

There has been widespread criticism of key leaders from wealthy nations who failed to attend the summit. Some 60 heads of state or government were there, but Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was the only participant from the Group of Eight industrialised countries.

It was attended mostly by African and Latin American leaders, including Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe. President Lula, accepting an award from the charity ActionAid for his efforts to combat hunger, criticised the apparent indifference of the international community. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, more than 1 billion people are undernourished and one child dies every six seconds because of malnutrition.

In tackling the “tragedy of hunger”, the Pope said, “norms, legislation, development plans and investments are not enough; a change in lifestyles of individuals and communities is needed.”

The Pope said the number of hungry people is not directly linked to an increase in world population. There is enough food to feed the world, he said, adding that lack of food is caused by the rising price of foodstuffs, “the reduction in economic resources available to the poorest and their limited access to markets”. “The lamentable destruction of foodstuffs for economic gain” is more proof that “there is no cause-and-effect relationship between population growth and hunger”, he said. It was essential to create  “a network of economic institutions capable of guaranteeing regular access to sufficient food and water”, the Pope insisted.

Countries must “oppose those forms of aid that do grave damage to the agricultural sector, those approaches to food production that are geared solely towards consumption and lack a wider perspective, and especially greed, which causes speculation to rear its head even in the marketing of cereals, as if food were just like any other commodity,” he said.