Enough Food For Everyone IF

My article in this coming week’s Cornish Guardian covers the “Enough Food For Everyone IF” campaign. It will be as follows:

Over 45,000 people crowded into London’s Hyde Park last weekend to show their support for the new “Enough Food For Everyone IF” campaign.

The campaign is supported by over 150 organisations and is calling on the leaders of the world’s eight most wealthy countries, known as the G8 – who will soon be meeting at a summit in Northern Ireland – to do more to tackle global hunger.

The facts are truly frightening and the IF campaign is working hard to point out that: “Our planet could provide enough food for everyone, [but] one in eight people on this planet are living with the pain of hunger and two million children die every year because they can’t get enough to eat.”

Speakers at the London rally included film-maker Danny Boyle, who conceived the opening ceremony for the London Olympics.

He said: “Anyone who says that we can’t crack the hunger crisis is wrong. This is my dream – it’s a passionate dream – that in Olympics to come there will be no one dying of hunger in any of the countries whose wonderful flags wave in the wind. And it is a fight that will be won. We expect our government and other world leaders to fight with all the energy and cunning and determination of Chris Hoy and Mo Farah and Jessica Ennis and Bradley Wiggins – to fight and fight and fight to end hunger until they win.”

Danny Boyle and others urged the G8 to take three important steps.

1. The IF campaign wants the G8 and other countries to take their commitment to aid seriously and to honour spending commitments of 0.7% of national income. It wants the priority for the money to be the fight against hunger and malnutrition, and has challenged world leaders not to stand by “when children are dying.”

2. The IF campaign wants action taken to stop big companies “dodging … millions of pounds every day” that they owe to poor countries, and to close international tax loopholes. The campaign believes such money could do much to tackle hunger.

3. The IF campaign wants to protect land around the world from exploitation by corporate interests, so that “poor countries make sure that everyone, especially children, has enough nutritious food to eat” and that they can support poor families to grow their own food.

This is an important campaign, which I hope many people in Cornwall will wish to support.