Capitalism is the food crisis

The Prime Minister says that there is "no one single answer" to tackling the problem, which is a truism.

The only thing more certain is that he will fight shy of real solutions to end the spectres of malnutrition and famine.

Global food production and supply are dominated by transnational capitalist companies dominated by the bottom line.

Profits for them override human priorities, which is why they, governments in their parent states and the international financial and trading agencies insist on market forces dictating the availability of food.

The Cameron government's focus on supplying food aid and high-energy biscuits when crises erupt is little better than providing sticking-plaster solutions for chronic ailments.

It may save some lives in the short term but does nothing to rectify conditions that guarantee repeated crises in the future.

The poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, 24 of which account for 80 per cent of the world's children of stunted physical development, must not be condemned to dependence on charity supplies from the advanced capitalist countries.

Charity donations, especially the grain handouts supplied from the reserves of countries such as the US, often do more harm than good whereas finance made available to purchase local or regional produce would be less disruptive to existing suppliers.

The problem centres on the governments of the advanced world seeing overseas food crises through the prism of the needs of their own producers rather than those of the poorest countries and their most vulnerable people.

Cameron's conservative coalition government approach to economic crisis at home mirrors the failure of neoliberalism to come to grips with the relentless hardships elsewhere in the world.

His administration countenances no alternative to the private sector and the profit motive as the twin motors to kick-start the economy even though all evidence indicates the failure of this approach.

The Con-Dem government is resolute in its efforts to cut pay, pensions, benefits and public services to force people to find jobs that don't exist and to accept a worse standard of living, with a safety net pitched ever lower so as to forestall mass penury.

That is the domestic equivalent of the high-nutrition biscuits and emergency food aid offered to the world's 170 million malnourished children.

Contrast it to the "missions" set up by the Chavez government in Venezuela, which mark the initial steps in setting up a coherent welfare system, together with subsidised essential items in state shops.

Compare it with the approach taken in China where government investment was directed into production in order to raise hundreds of millions of people from chronic poverty.

China's distinctive approach to bilateral economic and developmental relations with an increasing number of African countries and the growing determination of regional bodies such as Mercosur in south America to reject restriction to IMF-imposed structural adjustment policies give encouragement that the charity handout approach is not set in stone.

Cameron's hunger summit will not be short of emotional rhetoric and moist eyes, but it will fail even to mention the capitalist stranglehold on farming and food distribution that underlies the constantly recurring nutritional crises.

Politicians of Cameron's stamp cannot be part of the solution because they epitomise the political problem.