Food and hunger

African farmers’ movements and civil society groups have rejected the G8’s New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition as part of a “new wave of colonialism” targeting their food systems for corporate profit.

The warning comes in a statement sent to G8 leaders today (3 June 2013) in advance of the ‘hunger summit’ to be hosted by David Cameron in London on 8 June, which will include a meeting of the New Alliance.

United Nations Photo

The New Alliance was launched by the G8 in May 2012 as a private sector investment platform for multinational corporations seeking to penetrate agricultural markets in Africa. Six African governments have already signed up to the initiative, with four more expected to join at the London hunger summit this week.

The African civil society statement notes: “Africa is seen as a possible new frontier to make profits, with an eye on land, food and biofuels in particular.” It notes that “blatant land grabs” backed by G8 powers such as the...

Strange as it sounds, the latest advocate of strict limits on food speculation is none other than the chief executive of one of Germany’s biggest banks - and one that's been profiting from it. In a letter sent earlier this week to Foodwatch, one of WDM’s German allies, Lars Hille of DZ Bank speaks out in support of regulation of the agricultural commodity markets as well as announcing his own bank’s withdrawal from the practice.

Credit: flickr.com/Awfulknitter

The move brings the total number of European banks who have responded to public pressure on the issue, with statements that they are reducing, suspending or withdrawing their involvement in food speculation, to eleven. While some of the announcements may have been more of a PR exercise (we turned up at Barclays’ AGM this year to make it clear that...

If you walk down the high-street you will find them. Even though they are mostly associated with the City of London, they are present in towns and cities across the UK. Banks speculating on food are present from town centres to government corridors – and so we must be, if we want to challenge them.

Food speculation has been identified as a key cause of hunger as it drives up food prices, making food inaccessible to the world’s poorest while making profits for the world’s richest.

Thousands of people have already taken action to help bankers quit their addiction to gambling on food, through our five step programme.

With our campaign we have pushed Barclays, one of the biggest speculators in food, to admit the damaging effects and pull out of some types of speculation. However, the bank still continues to facilitate speculation by pension funds and other financial players. If we want to curb food speculation, we need to campaign where the banks are – from the corridors of power in Brussels to your local high-street. There is an urgent need for tough EU regulation on food speculation, and...

Yesterday was the Barclays AGM in London. Together with two of my colleagues I went inside to ask the board of directors why they continue to help institutional investors to speculate on food, even though they are well aware that this pushes prices up and forces people into hunger.

The AGM is hosted at the grandiose Royal Festival Hall in central London. After passing the initial airport-like security checks and registering our questions we queue up in front of the big hall. The nearest security guard informs us that a protest is taking place outside the venue.

A group of World Development Movement campaigners are outside dressed up as blue Barclays eagles. Both shareholders and journalists will have to pass them to get in here.

We are some of the first people to get into the grand hall where the AGM will take place. We want to make sure that we get an opportunity to ask our questions. While we wait for the ‘show’ to start, I get a text informing us that since yesterday almost 1,500 people have emailed Antony Jenkins, Barclays’ CEO, in the last 24 hours asking him to withdraw completely...

Campaigners from the World Development Movement will protest at Barclays’ AGM tomorrow, accusing the bank of contributing to global hunger through gambling on food prices.

Protests at Barclays' 2012 AGM.

Where: Entrance to the Barclays AGM, Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, London SE1 8XX

When: 10.30-11.30am, Thursday 25 April

Two suited, blue masked Barclays ‘eagles’ on Barclays bikes, carrying loaves of bread, will join protestors holding placards reading, ‘Barclays banks on hunger’.

Barclays announced in February that it was partially withdrawing from speculating on food prices, with chief executive Antony Jenkins saying the practice was “not compatible with our purpose”. But the bank continues to make money from enabling other financial players, including pension funds, to speculate on food.

Banks and hedge funds have been pouring millions of pounds of speculative money into agricultural commodity markets, pushing food prices beyond the reach of millions of people. Legislation to tackle speculation is on the table at the EU, but the UK...

Tomorrow, 17 April, is international peasant struggle day. This day is for celebrating peasant and small farmer movements across the world, each one fighting for a food system that respects human rights rather than making them subservient to private profit. This day has been heralded by the international food sovereignty movement as a day to take action and raise awareness about the problems with, and alternatives to, a corporate-run and over-industrialised food system.

Currently, however, it is still food security that holds the main stage when it comes to national and international research and policy-making. The food security banner remains as the undertone to the IF campaign , the latest major joint NGO action on food, and has made its place onto most social science syllabuses and the agendas of countless policy centres.  

Harmful chemical fertilisers are key to food security - Photo credit: soil science

At the World Food Summit in 1996, food security was defined as "when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe...

During the last couple of weeks WDM supporters from all over the country have written to their local newspapers as part of the Bankers Anonymous campaign. As a result, readers’ letters about food speculation have been published across the UK sending a strong message that food is for eating, not for bankers’ profit. This is helping to increase the pressure on MPs and MEPs to support new tougher European regulations to help bankers beat their habit of gambling on hunger.

In the Bradford Telegraph and Argus Heather Grinter writes, "High food prices are a serious problem across the world. People on lower incomes in the UK are having to cut back their weekly grocery shopping, while in poorer countries high food prices can be a matter of life and death."

And in the ...

On 10 February, WDM helped organise the first regional food sovereignty meeting in the south west. Food sovereignty advocates that the people who produce, distribute and consume food at the centre of decisions on food systems and policies, rather than the demands of markets and corporations that they believe have come to dominate the global food system. 

This was the first big meeting since the national gathering at OrganicLea on the outskirts of London last July, and it aimed to strengthen regional networks of the food sovereignty movement and make national planning more accessible to people outside of London.

The meeting attracted over 40 people from across the South West, which is testament to the vibrant community food networks alive in the region. There was a lot of energy to coordinate actions, public education materials and events in the South West, including a festival in the summer of 2014 (either in the South West or nationally). There was also an idea to start working on a regional food charter.

It was also agreed to plan an action for 17 April to tie in with the...

Barclays, which announced an end to its speculation on food on Tuesday, made up to an estimated £278 million from the trade in 2012. The figure brings the bank’s total revenue from food speculation from 2010 to 2012 to an estimated three quarters of a billion pounds.

The bank has pulled out of speculative deals with hedge funds. Campaigners welcome this move but are disappointed by its decision to continue selling investment products that allow other financial players, like pension funds, to speculate.

The £278 million figure was released today by the World Development Movement, which is calling for regulation to prevent banks betting on food prices and contributing to the global hunger crisis.

Barclays has been the leading UK player in speculating on food. Goldman Sachs is widely recognised as the world leader.

Barclays’ withdrawal follows announcements in 2012 by several German, Austrian and Scandinavian banks that they would reduce or suspend trading in food commodity markets. But German giant Deutsche Bank, one of the banks indicating a withdrawal, has since returned to speculating on food.

Legislation to curb speculation is on the table at the EU, but the UK government has so far...

Barclays chief Antony Jenkins announced today that the bank would stop speculating on food, saying the practice is “not compatible with our purpose”. It is unclear whether the bank will continue to broker speculative deals for its clients. Campaigners have renewed calls for tough regulation to prevent speculation fuelling price spikes and contributing to the global hunger crisis.

Jenkins announced the move today as part of the bank’s strategic review. He said the end to the bank’s trading in agricultural commodities for speculative purposes was an example of Barclays “putting its words into action”. He told UK MPs last week that he would build a “socially useful” bank and “shred situations where we're short-termist, too aggressive and too self-centred.” But Jenkins made no commitment to change the bank’s speculation on other commodities, such as oil, which has a knock-on impact on food prices.

World Development Movement campaigners protesting outside Barclays' 2012 AGM

Until now, Barclays has been the leading UK bank involved in speculation on food including staples like wheat, maize and soy. The bank...

Goldman Sachs made up to an estimated £251 million (US$400 million) in 2012 from speculating on food including wheat, maize and soy, prompting campaigners to accuse the bank of contributing to a growing global food crisis.

Goldman Sachs is recognised as the leading global player in financial speculation on food and other commodities, and created the first commodity index funds which allow huge amounts of money to be gambled on prices.

Anti-poverty campaign group the World Development Movement released the estimate today following the publication of Goldman Sachs’ 2012 results. The group is calling for tough rules to curb financial speculation on food, to prevent banks and hedge funds driving up prices.

The US has passed legislation to limit speculation, but the controls have not been implemented due to a legal challenge from Wall Street spearheaded by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, of which Goldman Sachs is a leading member. Similar legislation is on the table at the EU, but the UK government has so far opposed effective controls. Goldman Sachs has lobbied against controls in both the US and the EU.

Christine Haigh, campaigner at the World Development Movement, said today:...

If you overdid it a bit on sweet treats over the festive period, you might have decided to go easy on them for a while. But campaigners in Cambodia are calling for more decisive action as land grabbing for industrial sugarcane plantations has been robbing communities of their land, homes and livelihoods.

Two million hectares - 12 per cent of the country’s landmass – have now been granted to private companies for industrial agriculture, with sugarcane one of the leading crops. At least 75,000 hectares of land have granted to private companies for industrial sugarcane production, with over 12,000 people estimated to have been affected by human rights abuses and environmental damage caused by the companies involved.

When the companies involved have arrived, local people’s homes and harvests have been burned down. The majority of people affected have land-based livelihoods, so the loss of land has pushed families into poverty, leaving them unable to afford school costs or hospital births for their children. The land that has...

Yesterday, Rich Ricci, the appropriately-named chief executive of Barclays' corporate and investment arm, told the parliamentary commission on banking standards that the bank was thinking of pulling out of agricultural commodities trading.

With Barclays being the biggest UK player in food speculation, and among the top handful globally, we’ve certainly been making sure that that they feel the heat for their role in contributing to the food price spikes that spell hunger and poverty for the world’s poorest people.

In January, following our nomination, Barclays won the global Public Eye award for the world’s worst company as a result of their role on food speculation. In April, shareholders at their AGM were greeted by WDM campaigners dressed as eagles, and in September the bank hit the headlines when the Independent published figures based...

Global food prices are soaring, pushing many more of the world's poorest people into hunger.

Financial speculators are rushing to cash-in on rising prices. Experts predict that betting on the cost of food will push prices through the roof, as it did in 2008 and 2011.

On Friday I was privileged to join five well-informed WDM supporters from the Tunbridge Wells constituency for an important meeting. The group were going to see their MP, Greg Clark, who also happens to be financial secretary to the treasury - the minister with responsibility for regulating food speculation.

With just two weeks to go until finance ministers from the 27 EU member states discuss their position on new regulation to curb financial speculation on food and other commodities, they were intent on making sure he heard that the public is angry about the way banks are allowed to gamble on food prices, and want to see the UK back tough rules to limit their involvement in the markets.

The constituents were given a fair if short hearing, and had chance to hand over a copy of our photo petition, containing messages from hundreds of people who want to see the UK government support action on food speculation.

But we ended the meeting with work still to do. Not only did he leave us with...

A vote in the European parliament today failed to remove loopholes in new regulation to prevent banks driving up food prices through financial speculation.

MEPs voted in favour of limits to speculation, but allowed loopholes to remain which risk rendering the new rules ineffective.

Campaigners in the UK sent more than 14,000 messages to their MEPs this week, asking them to stop food speculation by banks and hedge funds pushing food prices beyond the reach of millions of the world’s poorest people.

World Development Movement campaigner Christine Haigh said:

Watertight regulation is essential if we are to stop excessive speculation fuelling devastating food price spikes. If it remains in its current form, the controls will be too weak to properly tackle speculation. Now it’s down to George Osborne and his fellow finance ministers to back strict rules.

George Osborne and other European finance ministers are due to vote on the proposed regulation on 13 November.

More detail

If the amendments to remove the loopholes had been passed, they would have:

• Ensured that the limits apply to all commodity contracts, for their full duration,...

This week, ahead of World Food Day, the International Food Policy Research Institute and Concern Worldwide launched the 2012 Global Hunger Index (GHI). The index is there to categorise countries in relation to the number of undernourished people that live within them in an attempt to make their governments more accountable, guide international agencies to the key areas of the world and to track the trends of world hunger over time.

The countries that trail at the bottom of this report are Burundi, Eritrea and Haiti, whilst another 45 have a situation which is either serious or alarming. The index highlights the scale of what is still to be done in terms of world hunger as well as underlining Concern’s key policy directions that the developing world need to consider to work towards what they call ‘sustainable food security’. The report largely blames the prevalence of severe and extreme hunger on a mixture of poor policies, food price volatility, energy and water availability, land grabbing, biofuel production, increased urbanisation and a changing climate. 

The...

Last week, the Guardian newspaper published a letter from the World Development Movement’s director Deborah Doane which raised concerns about the suitability of Sharon Bowles MEP, candidate for the new governor of the Bank of England, because of what we see as her support for ‘light touch’ regulation of the financial sector. 

Sharon Bowles replied via the Guardian noting that a member of her staff has met with a World Development Movement (WDM) staff member, and that she doesn’t have sufficient time in her diary to entertain all meetings that are requested of her. 

While she is correct that a member of her staff has met with a WDM staff member in Brussels, we would like to stress why we felt this was inadequate. First, we are a movement-based democratic organisation, with 16,000 members and supporters, alongside a network of over 50 local groups. Members of 11 of our local groups* in the south east of England, where Ms Bowles has her constituency, have contacted her a number of times in the past year about food speculation. This is an issue on which Ms Bowles...

A costumed Lady Luck and a croupier in black tie, with a roulette wheel and giant playing cards, protested in front of the Tory party conference in Birmingham this morning, calling on George Osborne to stop bankers driving up food prices through financial speculation.

Ahead of the Chancellor’s keynote speech, campaigners asked him to back European regulation to curb financial speculation in commodity markets. Speculation is fuelling price volatility and pushing food prices beyond the reach of millions of people in developing countries.

 
George Osborne is due to meet his European counterparts on Tuesday 13 November to agree on the new legislation. The UK government has attempted to block effective controls on speculation.
 
World Development Movement campaigner Christine Haigh said: “We brought Lady Luck to the Conservative party conference to highlight the fact that banks and hedge funds are essentially gambling on food prices. Steep price spikes fuelled by speculation make the weekly shop more expensive for families in the UK, and for the poorest people in developing countries...

Last night we projected images from our supporters onto the Tory party conference, calling for bankers to stop betting on food.

For the past month we've been collecting as many photos as possible from members of the UK public holding up messages to George Osborne to regulate food speculation. We've had a great response with hundreds of photos and last night we projected those messages onto the Tory party conference:

The Tory party conference starts today and so we know that George Osborne is in town. By projecting messages on the conference venue and on surrounding buildings we are hoping that he feels the mounting public pressure for him to support new EU proposals to clamp down on excessive speculation.

We started off at the NIA, opposite the Tory conference venue:

...

Campaigners from WDM were joined today by Friends of the Earth Europe, Campact and SOS Faim to spell out ‘Stop food speculation’ using hundreds of pots and pans in front of the European parliament building.

The 925 pots and pans used represented the 925 million people facing hunger worldwide. The protest comes on the day of a key vote by MEPs on proposals to prevent banks and financial investors driving up food prices through financial speculation.

MEPs are voting today on a raft of proposed financial reforms known as MiFID (the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive). WDM is calling for strict rules to stop speculation driving food price increases and price volatility. 

Campaigners handed over a petition with over 100,000 signatures from across Europe on Wednesday to the lead MEP for the legislation, German Markus Ferber, and lead MEPs from the other main political groups.

The World Development Movement’s director Deborah Doane said: “We are experiencing the third food price spike in five years, and each one forces millions of people into poverty and hunger....

What do you want to see change to deliver a better food system? That’s what European citizens were asked recently – and the results have been impressive.

With the issues raised including fair prices for farmers, action to tackle food speculation and an end to food waste, and key decisions due to be taken by European decision-makers in the coming weeks, we wanted to make sure these demands didn’t go unheard.

We joined up with the organisers of the Good Food March, a pan-European initiative calling for a better European food system, to deliver some of the hundreds of images submitted by people across Europe onto the walls of the European parliament and the surrounding buildings. The results certainly turned a few heads in the city centre this evening, and will hopefully provide a talking point for those in the Brussels bubble as the...

With much of the UK captivated by the Olympics last week, the anniversary of the riots that rocked cities across England last summer received little attention. While it is to be welcomed that violence on such a scale has not been seen in the UK again since, in recent weeks various commentators have suggested that more disorder is likely, as young people report continued anger and disenfranchisement.

It’s perhaps unsurprising, given the social and economic conditions inner city communities across the country are facing. As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently showed, five years on from the financial crisis, which was caused by the reckless behaviour of some of the richest people on the planet, it is the poor who are paying the heaviest price through cuts to publis services and benefits, while bankers continue to reward themselves with bonuses bigger than many people will be paid for a lifetime of hard work.

Recent analysis of findings of...

The hunger summit that took place on Sunday was the UK government's attempt to address the issue of malnutrition among the world's poorest people. Its aim was to alleviate the suffering of the 'bottom billion' by securing commitments to reduce the rate of stunting among the world’s poorest children between now and the next Olympics in 2016.

With changes in production, consumption and the climate prompting greater concern for food security in the coming years for countries both impoverished and affluent, it is great news that the UK government is paying attention to this issue. However despite well evidenced and strong proposals for tackling hunger being put forward by the food sovereignty movement, for the most part the government's focus is on techno-fixes, such as scientific innovations in the food industry, and the role of the private sector.

But is this really the answer for the 'bottom billion', or is it instead an opportunity for large companies to develop hi-tech intensive farming techniques to tailor to foreign demand?

On Sunday, David Cameron will attempt to capitalise on the international presence in London for the Olympics to convene a ‘hunger summit’ – but campaigners have warned that the prime minister’s big business approach ‘risks entrenching the root causes of hunger’.

Political and business leaders and humanitarian groups at the summit are expected to announce a new target to reduce child malnutrition by the next Olympic Games in Rio in 2016. Former England football captain David Beckham has presented a letter to David Cameron urging him to tackle deprivation of essential nutrients early in a child’s life, which causes stunted growth.

The World Development Movement’s food campaigner Amy Horton said today:

“It’s great that David Cameron is using the Olympics to focus attention on the need to reverse the rising incidence of child malnutrition. But by promoting the role of big business in developing countries’ food markets, his approach risks entrenching the root causes of hunger.  

“Increasing the power of multinational companies over the world’s food is not going to improve child nutrition. Instead of corporate land grabs, we need local control over the resources on which food production depends. We need governments to be able to regulate international...

WDM food campaigner Amy Horton writes in the Guardian today that in the context of a major drought in the US, food speculators are driving up cereal prices, underlining the inherent vulnerability of a system in urgent need of reform. She notes that:

Biofuels – which last year swallowed almost 40% of the US maize harvest – have also been highlighted as part of the problem. In the US, pressure is growing to abandon targets for biofuels in car fuel. Livestock farmers are warning they won't be able to afford to feed their animals.

This is all well and good. But missing from the lineup have been financial speculators, who have piled back into the market. Want to know what a brewing food crisis looks like to them? Last week, US hedge fund manager Peter Sorrentino, commented: "It's like a big money tap has been turned on."

By June, markets in food derivatives were awash with $89bn in speculative cash. That figure is courtesy of Barclays, the UK's top food speculator, which earlier this year highlighted speculation as a "key driver" of rising prices.

Read the full article on...

Today 2,500 dairy farmers descended on Westminster to express their outrage at cuts in milk prices paid by the processing companies. Six companies control 93 per cent of UK dairy processing, giving them huge power. Farms are crashing out of business in a “market place that does not work and is not fair,” said the NFU’s deputy president. “I have never seen such frustration… Enough is enough.” 

The mood could not have been more different from another gathering of food producers that took place this week – the first for the UK food sovereignty movement. “I am so incredibly fired up! It really was the best activist gathering I've ever been involved in, with some concrete results, lots of like minded thinking, and loads of energy,” said one farmer from a Dorset co-op.

I joined over 100 growers, co-operative workers, researchers, campaigners and activists to help build the food sovereignty movement here in the UK. (Click here to see a word cloud showing some of the...

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Last week we launched our exposé of the Financial Services Authority (FSA) – UK's supposedly 'independent' regulator of the financial services sector. We revealed how the FSA – funded by the banks and staffed by ex-bankers – acts as a lobby arm for the banks. It’s a classic case of 'regulatory capture' where an industry watchdog, created to act in the public interest, instead promotes the interests of the businesses it's supposed to regulate.

Its mis-directed influence undermines the public interest especially in the area of winning new rules to tackle food speculation. The FSA's influence has pervaded into every level of EU decision making on financial reform through staff secondment and the lobbying of MEPs. The City of London want to continue betting on food without any restrictions and FSA has been working behind the scenes to forward this agenda.

We wanted to expose the FSA but also hold it to account. So alongside our report we launched an online action to get people to email Adair Turner, chair of the FSA, and then to follow up with a phone call. The FSA is not widely known by the public and so is not used to direct public...

European proposals for the regulation of the commodity markets are inadequate to prevent excessive speculation from contributing to food price spikes, according to a new report released today.

Proposals discussed yesterday by the European parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) committee rely on a system of ‘position management’ or ‘position checks’ to prevent market manipulation and excessive speculation from distorting commodity prices. But the report, from the World Development Movement, argues that the proposals are doomed to failure and that a system of position limits is essential.

Financial speculation on the commodity markets is fuelling price volatility and contributing to price spikes, increasing food bills for consumers and driving up hunger and poverty.

The report, ‘Back to fundamentals’, shows that:

• Position limits are the international norm for regulating the commodity markets.

• Position limits have a track record of success - US markets functioned effectively for...

Participants arrive at the camp built specially for the Food Sovereignty Forum in 2007, in Selingue, Mali (Photo: Donkeycart)

Food sovereignty is about the right of peoples to define their own food systems. 

Advocates of food sovereignty puts the people who produce, distribute and consume food at the centre of decisions on food systems and policies, rather than the demands of markets and corporations that they believe have come to dominate the global food system. This movement is advocated by a number of farmers, peasants, pastoralists, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples, women, rural youth and environmental organizations.

The 6 pillars of food sovereignty:

1. Focuses on food for people: The right to food which is healthy and culturally appropriate is the basic legal demand underpinning food sovereignty. Guaranteeing it requires policies which support diversified food production in each region and country. Food is not simply another commodity to be traded or speculated on for profit.
2. Values food providers: Many smallholder farmers suffer violence, marginalisation and...

Ahead of the Rio+20 summit, Asian social movements have put together this statement on the fake Green Economy being pushed at the talks. It also outlines what they will be calling for at the summit.

Fight for Our Future! No Price on Nature!
 
We are movements and organizations from Asia, waging struggles on various fronts and arenas to defend our rights, resist policies and projects that cause harm and destruction, and to fight for immediate priorities and demands, as well as profound transformation of our societies.
 
We envision a social and economic system:

• that is aimed at providing for the needs of people and aspirations for a humane, empowering and liberating life in a manner that respects the earth’s capacity to regenerate, and to sustain life based on the integrity of natural systems;

• that is based on and promotes equity, parity, solidarity and mutual respect among people and nations regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, capabilities and class;

• that promotes sharing of land, water, forests, atmosphere, eco-systems and territories  based on the principles of stewardship and not private ownership, and the rights of all people to equitable and responsible...

11 October 2011

Dear G20 Finance Ministers,

We write to you ahead of the October meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers to urge you to commit with your counterparts to take effective action to curb excessive speculation on food commodities. Excessive financial speculation is contributing to increasing volatility and record high food prices, exacerbating global hunger and poverty.

While there are many pressures on food prices, fundamental changes in supply and demand cannot fully account for the dramatic price fluctuations that have occurred in recent years.

In June, a report for the G20 by international organisations including the IMF and the OECD noted that “too much speculation can cause frequent and erratic price changes” in futures markets. Evidence suggests that financial speculators are less likely to make trading decisions based on information regarding supply and demand and are more prone to herding behaviours than commercial traders. Excessive speculation undermines the price discovery function of futures markets, driving real prices away from levels determined by supply and demand.

The High Level Panel of Experts on food security for the Committee on World Food ...

Shareholders attending the Barclays AGM in London on Friday were greeted by the World Development Movement’s two ‘evil eagle’ bankers on Barclays bikes as they entered the meeting, and our chants of ‘one two three four, Bank on hunger no more!’, and ‘speculation means starvation, what we need is regulation!’. Catchy, huh?

Our Barclays eagles were popular with the crowd of press photographers, and their pictures appeared in London’s Evening Standard that afternoon and most of the national papers the next day. As the AGM began, our policy officer Christine spoke live on the BBC News Channel about how speculation by banks like Barclays contributes to food price spikes.

Inside the meeting, Barclays’ CEO Bob Diamond was at pains to emphasise his call for banks to be ‘better citizens’. But two of our campaigners were there to challenge him, asking how Barclays could be a good citizen when its involvement in food speculation is fuelling hunger and poverty...