Betting on Famine

Starred review from April 29, 2013
During his 2000–2008 tenure as U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food, Zeigler (The Swiss, the Gold and the Dead) traveled worldwide to understand hunger and the international policies that he believes cause it (including those that promote the use of crops for biofuels). In this devastating book, he describes the horrors of food insecurity, the callousness of “crusaders of neoliberalism” who control food and land access, and the individuals and grassroots organizations fighting for subsistence farmers and the right to food. Interspersed with statistics and policy critiques are vivid depictions of victims of this crisis, giving readers a visceral sense of the reality of the “mass destruction” caused by hunger and malnutrition. Zeigler criticizes biofuels, speculation, and land grabs, as well as corrupt politicians and organizations that influence the global commodities market, such as the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. Zeigler’s scathing criticism of multinational corporations and U.S. policy, his heartrending descriptions of diseases caused by hunger, his disdain for capitalism and unapologetic alignment with socialists, and his descriptions of poverty may be a rude awakening for American readers. Agent: Georges Borchardt Inc.

June 15, 2013
Ziegler (co-author: The Fight for the Right to Food, 2011, etc.), the former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (2000-2008), points to the principles of the Atlantic Charter and Franklin Roosevelt's Four Freedoms as possible solutions to world hunger, malnutrition and starvation. The author shows that the absolute numbers of the world's hungry have increased even while the proportion of the total population has fallen. He singles out the effect on the world's food supply of multitrillion-dollar financial bailouts, speculation and the destructive effects of free trade-related dumping of food products into hungry countries. Ziegler details how government-subsidized worldwide production of biofuels contributes to world hunger. This production results in the burning of hundreds of millions of tons of food products annually, which could otherwise be eaten, while depleting groundwater supplies and soils and spreading deforestation. The author insists that biofuel formulation is counterproductive to its stated purpose since it contributes to global warming and increases the release of carbon dioxide. Ziegler traces the idea of a right to food ("certainly the one most constantly violated on our planet") back to World War II. Freeing populations from want, including hunger, was one of the foundations of the Atlantic Charter, the program to defeat Hitlerism. "Hunger" policy, based on the Hitler regime's division of occupied Europe's populations into four categories--well-fed, underfed, hungry and starving--was at the core of Nazism and its program of genocide. Ziegler's historical perspective adds an important dimension to his argument. For him, food shortages are artificial, the result of human political choices, not the workings of nature. A powerfully written argument for a change of course and priorities.

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