The cost of basic food staples is skyrocketing around the globe. Billions of people who live on less than $2 a day are sliding into hunger and despair. Now more than ever, international entities and national governments must shift their agricultural policies toward sustainability, hunger prevention, and economic justice for farmers and farmworkers. Below, we invite you to help bring about real solutions by signing a petition, participating in a fast to show solidarity with the world's hungry, or learning more about the roots of the current crisis.

In this issue:

• Sign the Petition: Free Trade is Not the Answer to the Food Crisis
• Speculators and Traders Gambling on Food
• A People's State of Emergency
• Fasting for Food
• The Roots of the Crisis
• The World Food Crisis in the Palestinian Context: Rising Prices under Occupation and a Call to Action

Sign the Petition: Free Trade is Not the Answer to the Food Crisis

In response to the current food crisis, Grassroots International has worked with the Oakland Institute on a petition demanding that the United Nations and its Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) not use the crisis to push through more failed free trade policies. Such policies have exacerbated hunger worldwide by allowing among other things rich countries to dump their agricultural products on poorer ones that can't compete. Our petition urges the UN and FAO to instead put pressure on countries to:

• Increase cash contributions for food aid geared towards local food purchasing in hard-hit countries
• Develop sustainable agriculture systems through genuine agrarian reforms
• End speculation on food as a commodities in the global financial markets

Be a part of real solutions. Sign the petition here.

Speculators and Traders Gambling on Food

There's a scary betting game going on. Here's how it goes: Speculators bet that food prices go up (and drive them up in the process). If they're right, they reap a profit. If they're right, the price of food for families skyrockets.

Read on to learn what we can do to change the rules of this high-stakes gamble.

A People's State of Emergency

Farmers, fisherpeople, environmentalists, women's organizations, and consumers around the world have declared a "People's State of Emergency" as a result of rampant food price escalations. With the FAO Food Summit to take place in Rome at the time of this newsletter writing, the signers of this state of emergency have issued a declaration calling for "No More Failures-As-Usual!" The declaration notes that numerous social movements and non-governmental organizations worldwide have drawn up an action plan for the FAO that takes global agricultural policy down a more sustainable path. The coalition says governments and intergovernmental organizations attending the Rome Summit should be willing to discuss and consider this plan.

Grassroots International is proud to have signed this declaration.

Fasting for Food

Fasts have been used throughout history to demonstrate solidarity with a cause and to draw attention to a crisis. From May 23 to 25, our allies at Agricultural Missions, working with churches and other allied organizations, organized a fast to raise awareness of rising global food prices and to protest the governmental policies that have led to such price hikes. Agricultural Missions invites you and your organization to think about fasting as a way to respond to the current crisis.

"We encourage people to consider ... intensifying the dialogue about the root causes of this crisis," AMI writes on its web site. "We need help in linking local actions and analysis to raise awareness into a unifying platform with the power to shift public discourse on this issue. We encourage AMI board members and partners to fast and to organize local events to raise the various issues connected to the food crisis."

Another fast is planned for June 2 to 5, to coincide with the Rome Summit. You can read more on the AMI web site.

The Roots of the Crisis

It can be a bit dizzying. The interplay between commodity markets, governments, agribusinesses, and financial institutions such as the World Bank can at times be challenging to understand when it comes to food prices in your local store, yet the current food crisis can be traced to the relationships between these institutions and to many of their policies. Our allies at the Oakland Institute have written a lucid, 13-page policy brief summarizing the causes of the hike in world food prices and the solutions proposed by various international agencies. Most significantly, the Institute makes recommendations on how to keep the crisis from leading people into starvation. Click here to read the brief.

The World Food Crisis in the Palestinian Context: Rising Prices under Occupation and a Call to Action

As the heads of states meet with the Secretary General in Rome this week to discuss world food security in the light of climate change and bioenergy, Palestinians are experiencing a different dimension of the food crisis. Food is of the most basic of all human rights, and in much of Palestine, is being systematically denied to civilians.

Our partners in the West Bank and Gaza recently released a call to action in conjunction with an open letter to the organizers of the conference in Rome.