Oxfam is right to highlight the long-term impacts of climate change, land grabbing and natural resource degradation on the price of staple foods, and the consequent rapid increase in the number of hungry people (Harsh effects of global warming, 1 June). But while these trends require major policy and societal shifts to reverse, some of the short-term causes of hunger could be dealt with almost overnight. For example, much of the price volatility and inflation in food prices could be prevented by limiting the ability of banks and hedge funds to speculate on financial derivatives in food.
The US is moving to rein in food speculation, and controls are also being debated in the EU – but our government is opposing such limits. In doing so, the UK risks becoming the chief global villain by putting the interests of a handful of super-rich traders over ensuring that people everywhere can fulfil a basic human need. Unless we control the speculators, our attempts at dealing with the fundamental challenges of feeding the world will be undone.
Deborah Doane
Director, World Development Movement
• Oxfam has this week warned that the cost of basic foods such as maize will double in 20 years. The only thing wrong with this is the timescale. Friends who regularly visit Kenya say the price of maize has increased by more than 50% since the end of March – two months, never mind two decades. At that time they were paying 2,200 Kenyan shillings (about £17) per 90kg bag. Now it's 3,500 shillings (about £27) and increasing. Beans cost twice as much. Admittedly, some of the present increases are due to speculation on the food market but will they come down again? And such rises come on the top of the 50% increase the previous year. Imagine how this affects the poor, who already have to spend all the money they have on food.
Oxfam cites a number of reasons for the impending food crisis. However, it fails to address the most serious one of all, which is simply that more and more meat is being eaten in the world by a growing population, and livestock consume about 10 times more food than they produce. Meanwhile, the remaining wild areas of the world are rapidly being destroyed to feed farm animals, such as the vast clearance of the Amazon rainforest to grow soya. The world as a whole needs to consume less meat. As individuals our best contribution is to eat none at all. We can use the money we save to support charities that provide aid that does not depend on animals, such as Vegfam and Hippo.
Patricia Tricker
Member, The Vegan Society
• The idea that financiers and an open trading system will put enough money into agriculture to solve the world hunger problem is ludicrous (Editorial, 1 June). This "logic" did not fail just in 2008 but has done so for decades. There has always been plenty of food available worldwide, but only to those with money to buy it. Millions of people are excluded as they are either paid low wages or have no work. This is an economic matter, not one of food production. Until jobs are created at reasonable pay, hunger will continue.
Tony Jackson
Co-author, Against the Grain: the Dilemma of Project Food Aid
• As World Environment Day approaches (5 June), your report is a welcome reminder of the linkages between food security and climate change (1 June). Using crops for fuel rather than food as a way to combat climate change, is a key factor in pushing up food prices. For example, Tearfund partners in Nepal are reporting that a sack of maize costs 40% more than last year. Farming communities are already saying they don't have enough access to land to produce crops and feed their children. Diverting the use of cropland for biofuels will only compound this problem.
The government has a huge opportunity to demonstrate the value for money of aid by investing in sustainable agriculture and energy sources. This will stop millions from being pushed further into hunger and will build their resilience to economic and climate impacts – more cost-effective in the long run.
Paul Cook
Advocacy director, Tearfund
• It is shameful that people in developing countries are displaced and go hungry so that we can drive our cars with so-called renewable energy (British firms leading the rush to buy up Africa in biofuels boom, 1 June).
Biofuels are destroying rare species and habitats too. An RSPB study into a biofuel proposal for the Dakatcha woodlands of Kenya recently found that carbon emissions from the biofuel produced there would be up to six times worse than fossil fuels, and destruction would threaten the endangered Clarke's weaver bird with extinction .
Norman Baker says that the UK is against such destruction, but our voice is not being heard in Europe where no account is taken of the knock-on effects of biofuels displacing people and agriculture. The UK must be braver and speak up to stop European policies destroying wildlife and human lives in Africa and elsewhere.
Martin Harper
Conservation director, RSPB
• We get biofuels; Africa gets Oxfam and Lampedusa gets the corpses. A new take on the Atlantic triangle of trinkets, slaves and sugar. Brilliant.
John Pelling
Kedington, Suffolk