Oxfam: Let’s act “quickly to fix things and make sure that everyone has enough to eat”

Pasta is the world’s favourite food, narrowly beating meat or rice dishes and pizza, a new global survey by Oxfam into the way the world eats today has revealed.

The results of the independent poll across 17 countries show the spread of Western diets across the world. Although national dishes are still popular – such as paella in Spain, schnitzel in Germany and biryani in India – pizza and pasta are now the favourite foods of many, with more than half of the countries (nine out of 17) listing one or both in their top three foods.
 

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu backs Oxfam's new global Grow campaign for a world without hunger

There are some problems so big and so entrenched it is easy to believe they will never be solved. Hunger is one of these problems.

I doubt if there is a single moment in our history when all human beings have had enough to eat. Even today, in a world where it is possible to communicate across thousands of miles at a touch of a button, eight million people face chronic food shortages in East Africa. Around the world close to 1 billion men, women and children will go to bed hungry tonight.  
 

Global food crisis looms as crop prices set to rocket

Oxfam has warned that average prices of staple crops will more than double in 20 years if urgent action is not taken to change the international food system, which is already failing to feed nearly a billion people a day.

New research published in Oxfam’s report, “Growing a Better Future”, forecasts that average international prices of key staples, such as maize, will increase by between 120 and 180 percent by 2030, with up to half of this increase due to climate change. The world’s poorest people, who spend up to 80 percent of their income on food, will be hit hardest.

Oxfam states that decades of steady progress in the fight against hunger is now being reversed as demand outpaces food production. Depleting natural resources, a scramble for fertile land and water, and the gathering pace of climate change is already making the situation worse.

Report reveals appalling living conditions of workers

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) in Brussels has published a new report uncovering the treatment of migrant workers in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

With 12 new football stadiums to be built for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, the ITUC will use the report to press FIFA and Qatar 2022 to improve the working conditions of migrant workers.

The report details the working and living conditions of the mainly Indian, Pakistani and Nepalese workers in the gleaming cities of Doha and Dubai. Including interviews with workers and human rights activists, the report describes the appalling living conditions of the workers in huge segregated mostly male townships.