There’s a new kid on the block. Muppet Lily joined Elmo and Big Bird on the cast of Sesame Street last month. Despite Lily’s bright pink face looking cheery and healthy in her debut episode, the audience found out that Lily deals with hunger and food insecurity. Sesame Street’s newest primetime special, “Growing Hope Against Hunger,” introduced Lily in order to raise awareness of widespread hunger throughout the United States. Viewers were informed that over 50 million Americans don’t have the food they need much of the time. Seventeen million …
Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama launched a campaign against childhood obesity, which is interesting considering President Barack Obama’s past statements on hunger in America. In November of 2009 — only three short months ago — President Obama “reacted with concern” at a report that Americans are suffering “record levels” of “food insecurity,” according to a report from the Boston Globe. President Obama was quoted as saying that “it is particularly troubling that there were more than 500,000 families in which a child experienced hunger multiple times over the course …
Barack Obama doesn’t have a long career in the United States Senate, but while he has been there he has been a consistent supporter of subsidies and mandates for ethanol (his home state of Illinois is a major corn producer). To this day, it is still a key element in his ‘green jobs‘ platform. So how have Obama’s ethanol policies been effecting the rest of the world. The New York Times reports: A United Nations food agency called on Tuesday for a review of biofuel subsidies and policies, noting that …
Initiative for Public Policy Analysis executive director Thompson Ayodele writes about hunger, trade, and his homeland Nigeria in The Madison Times: Food prices have skyrocketed internationally. In my own Nigeria, rice has epitomized the crisis after doubling in price since last year. … It’s not hard to link African food crises to inappropriate government agricultural policies that stifle the continent’s great agricultural potential. Over the years, nothing has been done to address low crop yields. To the contrary, government has seemingly gone out of its way to hamper production with …
The New York Times reports today that at least 29 governments, including China, Norway, and South Korea, have drastically limited the amount of food their people can export. These protectionist measures have only worsened the global hunger crisis by driving up the price of food for poor nations. Heritage scholars Brett Schaefer, Ben Lieberman and Brian M. Riedl explain why trade barriers are a a major cause of hunger world wide: Although developed countries generally maintain low trade barriers, their highest trade barriers tend to apply to agricultural products and …
We know liberals in Congress no longer believe in free trade, but what about the world’s self described Marxists? If PoliticalAffairs.net, the destination for “Marxist thought online”, is any indication, Marxists are no fan of free trade and blame it for the world’s food crisis: For decades, neo-liberal trade liberalisation and structural adjustment policies have been imposed on poor countries by the World Bank and the IMF. … These countries have been forced to open their markets to global agribusiness and subsidised food exported from rich countries. In that process, …
Since the United States abandoned the protectionist policies that helped cause the Great Depression it has been the world leader in bringing free trade to the rest of the world. Since the end of World War II, free trade has lifted billions out of poverty and decreased hunger worldwide But now that leadership is threatened and so is global peace and prosperity along with it. Bloomberg reports: After six decades of ever-expanding international commerce, the high tide of free trade is ebbing. … Most important is the U.S., the world’s …
The rapid rise in the price of food staples like corn, wheat, soybeans, and rice has strained the ability of people in developing countries to feed their families. Hunger related unrest has broken out in Cameroon, Egypt, Haiti, and Somalia. Today, world leaders are meeting in Rome for a Summit on world hunger. A big part of the short and long term solution to the crisis: more free trade. ABC News reports: U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon told world leaders Tuesday …that nations must minimize export restrictions and import tariffs during …
Ethanol is due its share of the blame of the global food crisis, but protectionism abroad is also a major factor. Before Speaker Nancy Pelosi further destroys American credibility on trade she should consider what lack of free trade means to countries like Nigeria: The cause of the food crisis in Nigeria and Africa can be linked to inappropriate agricultural policies that have stifled the continent’s great agricultural potential. Over the years nothing has been done to address low yields–on the contrary, it seems as though government has gone out …
Domestically produced corn based ethanol has enjoyed preferential federal treatment for years including a $0.51 per gallon tax credit and tariffs that discourage potentially cheaper sugar cane-based ethanol from Brazil. Federal government government support for ethanol has only increased in recent years with the first ever renewable fuel mandate for gasoline in 2005 and the significant raise of the mandate in 2007. Few in Washington predicted the costs of this government interference in the energy market, but now they are beginning to be widely accepted. Heritage scholars Ben Lieberman and …
