In Peru, I witnessed first hand
how the increased costs of food, fuel and fertiliser are having a massive impact on farmers and poor families. I was meant to be there to talk to people about the impact of climate change, but it
doesn’t take long for the conversation to turn to rising prices.
Ricardo
“Prices are too high now,” says Ricardo Cordova, 61, a rice farmer in the Morropon district of Piura, in north
west Peru. “Fertiliser has gone up 200 per cent. We invest more, but we harvest less. We get paid very low prices for our rice but pesticides and fertiliser are too expensive to improve the
quality.”Farmers like Ricardo, who gets 20 Nuevos Soles [£3.50] for a day’s work, are suffering the effects of the global rise in food prices, exacerbated by local
problems such as droughts, crop diseases, and increasingly intense rains which cause mudslides and landslips.“The price of food has risen 100 per cent,” he tells me. “20
Nuevos Soles is not enough to feed our families. It is 8.50 Nuevos Soles [£1.60] for a litre of cooking oil, and just a few months ago it was 3.50 [70p].”As he takes a rest
from his work, Ricardo vents his anger at the situation. He’s furious that his homeland is able to produce so many different crops and vegetables, yet they are too expensive to buy in the
shops.“We produce potatoes and onions, yet these are the products we can’t afford to buy. And we can’t even buy milk or pasta because it’s too expensive. We’re
not happy with the government. The price of rice has risen but so have the investments, and the government has imported cheap rice.”It’s a story being repeated the world over, and
Ricardo despairs. “A family has 6 or 8 members, what can we get them with 20 Soles? I have a wife and children, I should be able to feed them, I am responsible for them. I’m very concerned
about the future.” More from the Oxfam Press Office at http://www.oxfam.org.uk/news
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
