Thought of food

According to EU statistics the price of vegetables in Malta has risen by over 13 per cent - more than in almost all other member states. However, our problem is minor when compared with that provoking food riots all over the world. Do you think that given the mediocre local sensitivity to the global crisis, the new Labour party leader will have anything immediately useful to say about the matter?

The best that Malta could do is support as fully as possible the efforts already being made by many countries to radically revise EU agricultural policy.

The generosity of Nicolas Sarkozy's monetary aid offer did not of course blind the FAO summit to the fact that it is a small fraction of the subsidies given by the EU and the West to their own rich farmers, and that it is those subsidies which in fact are the main cause for the economic failure of food production in the world's poor countries.

As a people, we Maltese, if we became aware of the magnitude of the threat to human lives, especially children, that the global food crisis represents, would probably outdo Sarkozy's generosity in relative terms.

However, we may not realise that we could make a much more significant contribution to resolving the long term problem. We only have to act within the EU according to the declarations that I among others was authorised to make on behalf of Malta - namely that we sought membership of the EU not because we believed in Fortress Europe or Europe as a superpower, but in the Union as a major step towards a system of world governance and equity on a planetary scale.

John Powell, the UN World Food Programme's deputy director, said that for the first time in history, there is a clear link between the price of fuel and the price of food. How significant do you think the issue and consequences of the food and energy link are for us?

For the most part the media are putting around the following story: the rising cost of oil has induced many former producers of wheat, rice or even meat, such as Brazil, to reduce production destined to feed people. Instead, it has become more profitable for them to produce biofuels. This is, according to the Western media, the main cause that has triggered the rise in food prices that is also so markedly affecting us in terms of prices of bread, pasta and so on.

Now it is certainly true that many Westerners, mostly Americans, have been purchasing large tracts of formerly agricultural land at prices attractive enough to induce poor Africans to give up their sole means of livelihood in return for a small lump sum that can tide them over their present dismal prospects. Nevertheless, experts say that this factor cannot plausibly account for the extent of the food crisis.

The rise in demand in the fast-growing economies of China and India are probably much more accountable. It is consequently hitting the poorest of the poor, from Uzbekistan to the Yemen, worst of all. The nations that are or on the way to becoming wealthy, like those already wealthy, are suffering less.

Besides the removal of the huge subsidies to US and European farmers (not all of them, because when Poland was admitted together with us to the Union, farmers of the new member states were not given the same benefits as the French) there is a second important measure that Malta can help bring about. It became clear to me when I was chairman of the Commonwealth Science Council.

In fact, if Indian rice growers planted the kind of rice that the Rice Institute had discovered gave the best results and used the best techniques recommended by the institute according to their context, rice production would rise sufficiently to eliminate the hunger problem.

Unfortunately, the research results do not find their way readily to the farmers because of communication difficulties. The council (now sadly defunct) had put in place a voluntary personal network system to bridge the group between researchers and farmers.

There are available today even more efficient systems of networking. Once again Malta's contribution to the establishment of these communication networks in the poor Commonwealth countries as was canvassed during CHOGM in Malta would be most valuable - infinitely more than any sums of money that we might collect for the people facing catastrophe if we allowed ourselves to be touched by their plight as we did in the case of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Don't you think that the food problems for us in Malta are related to inept nourishment rather than lack of supply?

We are scoring higher on the scale of obesity in Europe, certainly higher than our songs are placing in the Eurovision. Besides, a sign of the increasing number of victims of psychological stress about food, related to sexual consciousness, is the quite widespread incidence of anorexia.

Although nutrition is one of the elements that is still most lacking in our system of education, supposedly life-wide as well as life-long, choice of food is one of the main ways in which both personal and national identity is asserted.

Among the most cheering events in Malta lately from this point of view were the bread festival at Qormi and the strawberry festival at Mġarr.

Among the least cheering was the Mediterranean Food Festival organised by the Malta Tourism Authority because it was almost exclusively a display of hotel catering.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Nicole Bugeja.