Dr. Raj Patel Speaks on the Global Food Crisis

A recent Financial Times headline reads, "Western countries have upgraded the food (and fuel) crisis into a national security concern as they fear that record high energy and agricultural commodity costs are destabilizing key developing regions of the world." Considering the underlying causes, including industry-influenced biofuel decisions, an exploding developing-world middle class and a destructive spasm of speculative commodities trading, a solution will not come easily.

Coming to help us understand the scope of this global dilemma - and point out possible solutions - is an eminently well-qualified speaker, Dr. Raj Patel.

Patel writes, "With estimates of the world's hungry topping one billion in the wake of the current food crisis, increasing levels of obesity and type-2 diabetes, a projected population of 9 billion by 2050, climate change making harvests more erratic, and a limited amount of arable land on which to farm, the future of food seems bleak...but it doesn't have to be. There are ways both to tackle the problem of hunger and the problems of diet-related disease in a way that promotes social justice, environmental sustainability, and human development."

We will have for sale Patel's book "Stuffed and Starved," which tells the current story of the global food system.

As part of his academic training, Patel worked at the World Bank, World Trade Organization and the United Nations. He has since become an outspoken and noted critic of all of these organizations, and has been tear-gassed on four continents protesting against his former employers. He was one of many organizers in the 1999 protests in Seattle, WA, and has organized in support of the organization Food Sovereignty.

Patel is currently a Fellow at Food First. Earlier this year he went to Capitol Hill to testify on the global food crisis before the House Financial Services Committee. He is regularly interviewed on the BBC, NBC, Al Jazeera and NPR.