The children in this photograph are not malnourished. They look healthy and happy. They have a future.
Many others suffer in the present and will never have a future.
Food speculators are cruelly gambling with their means of survival.
Support this petition to put an end to food speculation. A single gesture can help millions of innocent people.
Please support this petition. Together we can put an end to food speculation!

- - -

President Barack Obama, President Durão Barroso,

868 million people were hungry in 2010-2012 according to UN food agencies. An increase in prices is threatening food safety worldwide, resulting in one out of every eight people in the world being chronically undernourished. Speculation in food derivatives in Western markets is one of the factors behind the spike in prices and therefore to famine and malnourishment. We appeal to your compassion and humanity to alleviate the suffering of many by calling for stricter regulation on speculative trading on food derivatives in European and American markets.

Ever since the real estate bubble burst, traders have moved to speculate with staple commodities such as food. The result is that market transactions are no longer conditioned by supply and demand alone, but increasingly by a desire to obtain massive profits regardless of its impact on real food production and distribution. Investors are now hedging their bets on food derivatives such as futures, whereby buyers agree to buy from sellers at a particular pre agreed price at a set date. An unregulated food market is rife for speculators to create artificial bubbles that drive prices high, leaving those most vulnerable hungry, at risk of malnutrition and starvation. This was recognised by the 450 worldwide economists who in 2011 urged G20 leaders to establish position limits to cap the proportion of agricultural commodity derivatives markets that can be held by financial speculators.

Families in the West have been feeling the result of this spike in prices: in the last five years food prices have increased an average of 16% in the EU (as compared to a 2% inflation rate). An average European family will spend around 10% of their household income on food and has probably found it harder to balance the books lately. Compare this to the 50% spent on average in the poorest countries and you will begin to realise just how much more those with the lowest incomes suffer as a result of price increases. We cannot stand idly by as the poorest are pushed to the limits of their spending power to survive. Many will lose that struggle at the cost of their life.

Speculation with food derivatives is one of the factors behind the 2007-2008 and current food crises. We cannot stop droughts, we cannot stop fires, we cannot stop floods ruining our harvests, but we can stop this. We urge you to take decisive action to tighten regulation to curb this gamble at this expense of hunger worldwide. The lives of millions of families and our future depend on it.