Floating nurseries provide a way to grow food despite increasingly severe annual water logging/flooding of hundreds of hectares of fields in the marshy central lowlands of Bangladesh. This technology was learned from a small region further south where farmers have been using floating gardens to grow food on a large scale for hundreds of years. Such adaptation technology is vital for increasing numbers of Bangladesh's population who are forced to live a 'floating life' for the wettest months of the year due to changes in the climate and environment. These conditions mean that crops do not produce their usual yields causing hanger and malnutrition.
Food is becoming a major campaign issue in 2011. During the 1990s and early 2000s, aggressive lobbying by investment banks and hedge funds led to weaker regulations on food speculation. As a result, hundreds of millions of pounds have been poured into food commodity markets, pushing up prices and resulting in increased hunger and poverty. Stopping excessive food speculation is easy. All that's needed is basic regulation. The World Development Movement (www.wdm.org.uk) is calling for two things: All futures contracts to be cleared through regulated exchanges. Most contracts are currently done in private, which means it is impossible to know what is being traded. Strict limits to be set on the amount that bankers can bet on food prices. Please send this postcard to the Treasury now asking it to support strong and effective regulation to stop food speculation. Mark Hoban, Financial Secretary to the Treasury 2/W1 HM Treasury 1 Horse Guards Road London SW1A 2HQ
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Dear Mark Hoban, Financial Secretary to the Treasury Excessive speculation on food by financial institutions has pushed up food prices and left millions across the world facing hunger and malnutrition. In 2007 and 2008 the IMF food price index rose by over 80%, pushing the total number of people living in hunger to over 1 billion The dangers of high food prices have not gone away - food prices have been rising steadily over the last year and remain higher than seen during the food crisis of 2008. Commodity futures markets need better regulation to ensure stable and affordable food prices for the benefit of consumers, producers and businesses in the UK and globally. This is especially important for the world’s poorest countries. I would like the Treasury to support European proposals that:
- Ensure transparency on commodity futures markets, by requiring all deals on food derivatives take place on regulated public exchanges.
- Prevent excessive speculation from distorting food prices by introducing position limits to restrict the number of food futures contracts that can be held by financial institutions at any given time. Yours sincerely,
