Posted on 10/23/2008 3:37:34 PM PDT by presidio9
Former President Clinton told a U.N. gathering Thursday that the global food crisis shows "we all blew it, including me," by treating food crops "like color TVs" instead of as a vital commodity for the world's poor.
Addressing a high-level event marking Oct. 16's World Food Day, Clinton also saluted President Bush — "one thing he got right" — for pushing to change U.S. food aid policy. He scolded the bipartisan coalition in Congress that killed the idea of making some aid donations in cash rather than in food.
Clinton criticized decades of policymaking by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others, encouraged by the U.S., that pressured Africans in particular into dropping government subsidies for fertilizer, improved seed and other farm inputs as a requirement to get aid. Africa's food self-sufficiency declined and food imports rose.
Now skyrocketing prices in the international grain trade — on average more than doubling between 2006 and early 2008 — have pushed many in poor countries deeper into poverty.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the gathering that prices on some food items are "500 percent higher than normal" in Haiti and Ethiopia, for example. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates the number of undernourished people worldwide rose to 923 million last year.
"Food is not a commodity like others," Clinton said. "We should go back to a policy of maximum food self-sufficiency. It is crazy for us to think we can develop countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves."
He noted that food aid from wealthy
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
One of his favorite words......
Put some ice on it.
“Give a man a fish” vs “Teach a man to fish.”
Give a man a taco made from GM corn and he won’t starve.
Wow, read the rest of the article. I don’t think there’s a single thing that Bubba says in this article that I disagree with.
they wanted to give corporate welfare to american farmers. How can local farmers be in business when everyone is going to get all this free American food?
No food for oil.
“It is crazy for us to think we can develop countries around the world without increasing their ability to feed themselves.”
Sam Kinison summed it up YEARS ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKNoJ2BzSRU
Clinton is world’s only impeached former president. Everything he says or does is at least as irrelevant is anything George Bush is going to say or do when he gets out of office. I hope he does finally manage to change the world and establish some sort of legacy other than the one he has. But until he does, I give him less credence than Jimmy Carter (who I can’t stand), and I refuse sit back and allow the press to (I’m sorry, I just can’t avoid this expression) cram Bill Clinton down my throat.
Speak for yourself Billyboy. Only a chickenshit Ivy League lawyer could be stupid enough to make that mistake. F*ing duh-'rats.
Burn food, cause food shortages.
My favorite saying: "Give a man a fish you feed him for a day...Teach a man to fish, you have a guy who sits in a boat drinking beer all day.
not one mention of zimwabe...sheesh.
NOW he gets it? Maybe the WH defiler is starting to get a clue in his old age - stranger things have happened. He also said something else about a mistake he made just recently, but I can’t recall what it was.
Who’s to say? Barry Goldwater became very liberal in his old age. COuld the reverse happen?
Is that a genetically-engineered ear of corn in your pocket or are a just happy to see me?
Monica, Ever show you how to make popcorn, honey?
Ya think it might be that using FOOD FOR FUEL is contributing to the plight of the world's hungry, starving & dying?
How many have died because of Ethonal mandates worldwide?
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