The 22-page report, prepared with input and reflections from Development and Peace partners in the countries where it works in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, provides a Christian reflection on food and hunger, highlighting catholic social teaching on the issue. The report calls for a serious overhaul of the system that has led to the current global food crisis.

Despite the 2000 pledge by world leaders to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty by 2015, it is projected that 100 million people worldwide are on the verge of joining the 860 million people who go hungry every day.

Food System in Crisis: Hunger and the Pursuit of Profit documents the roots of the current situation, starting from the Asian Green Revolution which encouraged over-reliance on chemical inputs for agriculture and the production of cash crops to be sold on global markets.The situation was later compounded by structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on heavily indebted countries in the Global South. The programs prohibited these countries from investing in agriculture and local food production, promoting instead development of large agribusiness projects. Senegalese partner the Réseau africain pour le développement intégré, illustrates how SAPs affected food production and contributed to sky-rocketing prices of basic foods in Sénégal.

This situation was later compounded by the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture, by which all partners trade by the same rules. The so-called "level playing field" is compared by Sri Lankan partner Sarath Fernando to "putting a tiger and a rabbit in the same arena."

Against this backdrop of systematic diminishment of agricultural production for local consumption, “the number of hungry people grows, but profits have never been higher,” the report states. It points a finger at speculative investment in grains futures, and underlines high recent profits of agribusiness multinationals. The growing use of more and more land throughout the world to produce corn and palm oil to be converted into fuel for transport was the last straw.

Citing the Quebec Assembly of Bishops, the report says: "It is imperative to bring agriculture back to its primary and basic function: to nourish local and national communities." The report announces Development and Peace’s support for food sovereignty, the concept drawn up by global small scale farmers’ group Via Campesina. In policy terms, the enactment of food sovereignty amounts to taking the preferential option for the poor, the philosophy which is at the core of its work.

Food sovereignty would mean "rebuilding local and national food economies ...no longer treating food as a commodity, but as the fundamental right that it is."

"It would mean taking food and agriculture policy out of trade and international financial institution agreements and putting it into the hands of people who produce and need food."

The report concludes with a pledge by Development and Peace to "work so that the global food production system recognizes that the human right to food of each woman, man and child on the planet has to become the first and foremost priority."

	Food System in Crisis: Hunger and the Pursuit of Profit

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