Transcripts For ALJAZ Counting The Cost 2020 Ep 18 20240713

Survive these historic sent back until the job only takes to beat. Special come out just. Carry this is counting the cost on aljazeera or look at the world of business economics this week famines of biblical proportions the coronavirus says and at the Global Economy and supply chains with nations under lockdown so what does it mean for food supplies. From the richest nation where low paid farm workers fear they could be victims of the pandemic to one of the poorest nations in bob way and its need for food aid. As italy and spain start the tentative process of lifting the lockdown can the European Union finalize a trillion plan to revive the economy. From Health Crisis to food prices the coronaviruses of ending the world as we know it United Nations World Food Program is warning of multiple famines of biblical proportions as tens of millions are plunged into starvation long before the pandemic the agency had been warning World Leaders that 2020 would bring the worst humanitarian crisis since world war 2 thats made 135000000 people face starvation and back and double to 265000000 by the end of the year it blames the perfect storm in yemen and syria natural disasters and changing weather patterns. At particular risk or refugees in informal workers for example its estimated that about 136000000 people in India Working in the non Agriculture Sector are at immediate risk of losing their jobs the World Food Programme has called for 365000000. 00 but only a quarter of that has been received so far with more than 2000000000. 00 people under lockdown supply chains have been disrupted and thats not just in the emerging and developing markets the rapid collapse of Economic Activity has led to more than 26000000 people applying for Unemployment Benefits and the United States when 7 americans rely on food banks before the pandemic it has now doubled or tripled according to Food Charities and yet farmers are destroying produce dumping milk and culling livestock despite Grocery Stores struggling to stock their shelves we have 2 reports from our correspondents in the richest nation and one of the poorest and a moment aljazeera is in zimbabwe where half the population needs food aid the 1st robber and also is in california looking at the plight of poorly paid essential workers who are crucial to getting food onto the nations tables. Strawberries are right dinning in the fields waiting to be picked but for farm workers like maria harvest time is a season of fear but. I am afraid of getting sick because if i dont recover i will die so i would leave for children in the all finance i am obviously afraid but i have to whack maria who is undocumented and asked that her surname not be used is one of an estimated 3000000. 00 farm workers in the us all are considered essential workers like doctors nurses and Law Enforcement but unlike them they are paid low wages have fewer Legal Protections and many lack protective gear on to seem to me the bottom line the last line think about them they dont think about. Any form workers as a group are already among the least healthy in Society Poverty lack of access to basic medical care high rates of diabetes hypertension and lung problems from exposure to pesticides means that farm workers are at high risk of becoming extremely ill or dying if they get corona virus a corona virus flare up among farm workers could spread like wildfire extremely difficult to prevent the spread if theres a theres a major outbreak in the agriculture industry even a good one outbreak among say one careless Farm Labor Contractor can cause an outbreak among the whole industry many farm operators do allow workers to practice social distancing for example by working alternate rows of crops but the pay structure discourages stringent hygiene and many workers are being paid piece 3. 00 per box a lot of strawberries they pick 20 seconds washing your hands can feel at this stage youre waiting in line during a break and want to get back out there in the fields to pick more california and a handful of other states have laws. Laws providing Unemployment Insurance and compensation for injuries on the job to farm workers all of the other states of the United States of america do not have Disability Insurance not have an insurance for workers like maria working from home obviously isnt an option and even staying home while sick is an impossible luxury but in a couple of in about im the only person in my family that is ending in income so if im me its either you or you dont age or that i have. They are essential workers putting food on the countrys tables every day yet somehow they remain invisible and vulnerable. 7 of the most of the struggling to put food on the table these women are grateful for any kind of assistance years of drought rising inflation and now coronavirus have seen food prices soar several families are now eating lists many say they know not much will change until a lockdown was dictions eased or scrapped in early may. Mean more good for us is killing people sure you tune in for that. We are not a doctor. So youre waiting for what were waiting for the troops to get finished after training to see what is going to happen next the World Food Program says half of the population needs food aid a Poverty Assessment done by the government and aid agencies last fall nearly 80 percent of families in urban areas are hungry the. Local 1000000 companies try to cope with whats available the pandemic has made it difficult to buy more grain from abroad. Some of this countrys only looked and its not export ban but what did seem to danny is that the infrastructure the whole system of exporting is not a bridge also and some of the ships that are pretty concerning this aid and also objected to quarantine of the station there so this is slowed down the. Position of one. Of the families in rural areas are also struggling the rains have been erratic many havent managed to grow much food now the global Health Crisis is making more families here vulnerable priority is given to the sick and the elderly and even here people are being courage to practice social distancing but masks and gloves and hand sanitizers are in short supply and thats the case all over the country. The unofficial Unemployment Rate is more than 80 percent most people live hand to mouth the government says vulnerable households will receive cash transfers over the next 3 months thats less than 10. 00 per person every month businesses have been told by the state not to increase the prices of basic commodities but in previous years whenever an official price freeze was imposed it led to panic buying shortages and even more frustration all rich nations have the financial muscle to see themselves through this crisis its the low income in developing nations that could see past economic gains disappear lets bring in max much for to discuss all this is the chief economist of the food and Agriculture Organization who joins us via skype from rome we appreciate your time so much what is your biggest fear about the ability to feed people during this crisis. Thank you very much for the kind invitation i want biggest fear is not thought of a lovely peaceful axis and what it is means food availability means that it is available in the markets and what we are seeing in the case of the staple commodities which are capital intensive on the exporting countries is a put is available and the logistical problems are starting to be resold and if you contrast that with exporter restrictions theyre moving backwards yesterday even didnt move backwards a lot of the work what in the case of price which will come down that market in the case of wheat and corn and soybeans in markets are ok because there is significant store significant stocks in every woodcarvers this year it probably means on the recession of how the recession as a consequence of the process of the equipment in lockdowns will affect the poorest economies on how much access to resources they will have to procure the food they need and this is but surely my need for anything could be importing countries like this more lines which are affected severely because of tourism production because of remittances reduction because of their network importers and because of climate they are very vulnerable and the same for subsaharan african countries which many of them are in crisis and they are being affected also because of oil the Oil Exporting Countries like nigeria chad. And also because their primary exporters of commodities that will lower their demand because of the economic recession in the developed countries so theres not a shortage of food is basically what youre saying the issues are much more complicated its not about not having enough its about being able to get it to the places where it needs to be. Exactly is able to have the income to be able to provide to get the food and of course there will be some logistical problems to deal with a political problem some high value commodity pressure somebody comes but the major concern is if you look at africa for example ok where we have the maturity of the crisis countries where where africa exports their commodities so basically exports of africa go to the lever to france to spain to the United States to germany and to the u. K. All those countries are facing significant recession so their demand for those commodities that they exported is them brevan it will be affected all the oil courting countries will reduce significantly their demand because of the low low all prices were facing the same for cotton if you look at the countries work on these exporters in africa because of mali for example the contracts on many of the contracts of cottons are cancelled because Companies Expect that their man corporate this will be lower so thats what makes the continent very been there because the revenue income from the activities the economy to even the primary exporting they do will be significantly affected by the recession so thats that were major concern right now how we greet their resilience to be able to cope with the slowdown of the economy which we dont know if it will be 12 months or more so that they when their economy is recovering theyre ok but that requires. Giving them support liquidity so that they can cope with those people who are 18 months opposition well theyre based pricing versus. Right now we only observe some price increases in the case of rice in the staple commodities which our expectation is that it will start to slow down and go to the regular levels because as i mentioned yesterday being mom is spoke the export restriction the quarter the congress and this is because rice is a very thin market so this is a race so this will be noticeable and the pressure for them all the other is the commodities prices very stable and in the case of the high value commodities we are observing in africa especially some increases in certain countries and mostly it is happening in countries with all the problems like in the case of sudan for example because of the conflict zones and the difficulties to move from difficult to for support coming so it is thats where the there is where we are observing some changes important changes in prices. But we need to see carefully because this cool increase in security but again the major concern is to be scraped all these farmers who have income remember they will be facing lower prices of what they sell and thats what we are concerned and thats one of the options we are trying to do in the case of africa is how we can celebrate into regional trade that way to create a new demand that will allow them to cope with this period of recession from the northern part of the world a lot of what youre describing is happening obviously because of these days lock downs that so many countries are having that that can either be described as drastic or necessary or about whatever the case they are what they are do you think that that enough politicians and leaders really understood what the effect of these lockdowns could be when it comes to the supply chain and it comes to food. I think that if you look at what happened 2 months ago when the locals this started nobody was talking about who the priority was which is correct these are both problem but i think that has changed specially people are not really concerned about food is becoming a priority sector or so so many countries are developing guidelines to assure that that the value chain is good for life which is where we have been talking significantly with every every person who we can sort of this is important i think we cannot see independently to each other there is no way you can have healthy you dont have a profit with this personally in the most rural populations so i think now we there is a big change in the way this is being seen and many quandaries are putting in place policies to the food as an essential sector but of course we need to keep that of measures in place in those that do so its not just the clearing of the social sector we need to be sure that the day workers are saved and that they have all the protective measures the social base the physical distance and the masks and the growth and if possible testing that will be the best option but we need to do or actually absolutely they are most certainly essential workers if we didnt know that before we certainly know it now max maturer the chief economist of the food and Agriculture Organization thank you very much there a pleasure now the spread of the virus among workers at Meat Processing plants has raised concerns of Food Shortages President Donald Trump passed an order to keep him open and that has been criticized by unions and some investors are latino hes executive director of ferry 20 trillion dollar Investor Group and managed to catch up with maria and asked why she thought trumps decision was sowing the seeds of future pandemics. We have seen diseases spread previously theres been studies in iowa theres been studies and pennsylvania and South Carolina that show that actually workers in these processing plants are 6 times more likely to encounter bacteria resistant to antibiotics for example such as m. R. S. A. So we are to have cases that show that these facilities are really just breeding grounds for all kinds of disease zoonotic or otherwise and so were very concerned at the trial order we absolutely think its an irresponsible measure at this juncture and these workers really shouldnt be given a death sentence to go back to her and we would actually claim that a meat shortage does not equal the sort of at this juncture. Grants or loans that is the debate at the European Union this nations heart is set by the crown of virus plan a route to recovery italy which has the 2nd highest death right behind the United States and also spain they want gratz its not difficult to see why loans would increase their debt burden italys debt currently stands at 130 percent of Gross Domestic Product its expected to rise to 160 percent due to the crisis european nations have spent more than 1. 8 trillion euros on tackling the pandemic but the economy is expected to contract by 7. 5 percent thats according to International Monetary fund the u. Has a great a one trillion euro fund to help nations but the details have been kicked into the long grass of summer. Right now we have a panel of experts together to talk for how the European Union is handling all of this join us from chisel hearses lorenzo could onya chief economist at Macro Advisors and via skype from madrid michael reed Senior Editor at the economist and gentlemen thank you both for joining me some to start with you lorenzo what do you make of the way the e. U. Is handling this crisis if you will keep in mind that you have been fortunate has a speed and see next Crisis Management back in 20082009 m. And b. 2011 and 2. 1 of 2 years who came up with the new execution of new tools to respond to the crisis today in a couple of months if actively to these arabia policy response in places so although the issue of responsible street is slow i think by now you know to be a nice if you shows have responded to a man appropriate way and michael also talk about spain as specifically slowly some of the lockdown restrictions are starting to be eased what kind of damage has been done to the economy there because of their criminal virus. Thats right the very stripped down way to find out the concept of the government announced a couple of days ago a gradual climb to the locks that are going to mix the months and the damage to the economy has already been. This morning because to just 6 institute released. Its estimate for the economy of the 1st quarter of this year and it reckons that their contract it by more than 5 percent i mean we would have to see what happens and how were treating the spec back to normal but the estimates for the contraction this year range from the realistic next 2 months range from 8 to 15 percent and i think its probably going to get around time to the 100 percent why why is spain being hit harder probably economically i think for 2 reasons one because the economys very dependent on foreign terrorism gnosticism 82000000 farmers. Who came to spend a lot of us. That industry accounts for time 12 percent of the economy as a whole not because of the restrictions and because of the closure of the old bortles which can only be defeated in their coordinated way most of what revenues will be lost this year and every other business that the economy has and wants a small and very Small Businesses and the fear is that quite a lot of women will be able to. Come walk in lawrence or thats a pretty catastrophic situation that hes describing there that that type of contraction so spain and italy are asking for grants they dont want to have to pay back loans do you think they will actually get grants. They would get some grants in other words. Keep in mind that the current policy response of the Recovery Fund is leading to the european budget the most pianos Financial Framework which would be scaled up probably double the contribution by countries and that will be used. To split the amount between the grants and loans and then the loan so it can be leveraged top and and achieve. In size grants can only be a small part of it so i think they would be grants for specific reasons within the european budget but i would not suspect a massive amount. Finally i have to say i fully agree with the other commentators that spain that would be absolutely hated easily would be highly it as well in many other countries but as we stand today its not clear which country would be affected the most because some maybe no the European Countries that seems to be less affected today. Given that they have very open economies open and through the global trade they my suffer at least as much as the European Countries so its not clear and sounds the who is going to have the most the values of the species should benefit from solely that is so low because i think that the at the end result might be different so and thats thats a great point actually that gets me to that the next topic that i wanted to approach michel specifically so germany and some other countries arent at least appear not to be as bad a shape as italy in spain and various other countries basically theyre saying were not necessarily all suffering the same we shouldnt necessarily have shared responsibility for the debt do you think the president that that type of sentiment is going to increase. Germany in europe and i dont think. Principle issue of. Can you have mutual i was attacked as its cold so cold corona homeschool no i dont think im going to shit. I mean this but his governments position has been not my idea would like to. Promote ones they already have a public that 95 percent of g. D. P. But i think they know theyre not going to get them so they put forward another argument which is that they want to see a big increase in the ribbon budget lawrence was mentioning and. They would get because of the nature of the impact so far a womans right we dont know what its going to look like in yemen but so far they would get quite also those farms from the budget because of the high structural unemployment and because of the impact on tourism for example you know what they are concerned about on the social scale say they want to see jews and. They want to see. A response on a scale all the shock sort of theyre worried about undershooting chart and 2nd. They point out recently enough not. Some countries are in a position to give much bigger a much bigger sums of money in aid to that businesses by germany than others you know they are doing that distorts the working of the european single mark so i dont think they intend to die in a dish uniforms but what they do want is a big response through the budget on top of the mechanisms through the European Central bank of the stability mechanism so one more question for you all are instead the Banking System how likely is it to stand up to all of this bad debt. This is a very good question i think. Let me 1st say that that i would use in a sense that the european and specifically the time banking sector. You know im in a much better position today to withstand the crisis than a few years ago was that because companies and banks are being recapitalized and and thats. Makes the system also laid on top of that i think of the policy response to buy the e. C. B. This time as being very appropriate in my view so basically easing Capital Requirements which makes the banks. A lot of sense at the moment because they allowed them to d stand credit with the economy and finally i think governments have introduced almost everywhere guarantees to support the lending to companies they said overall should pull the banks in a much better position to withstand the crisis said that you never to blame with the shaft contraction the economy with the inevitable default of some companies there will be an increase of nonperforming loans and that would be true for easily and many other countries so some banks will suffer inevitably ok that will be the final word on this gentlemen thank you so much for the conversation we appreciate it Lorenzo Daniel and michael ray thank you both. That is our show for this week get in touch with us any time you can tweet me at Rochelle Kerry please use the hash tag a j c t c when you do that drop us an email as well counting the cost of aljazeera that is our address there easy to find but there is more for you online that aljazeera dot com slash c. T. C. That will take you straight to our page there is individual reports links an entire episode for you to catch up on. Thats it for this edition of counting the cost im Richelle Carey from the entire team thanks for joining us the news on aljazeera is next. The zipper will during and disjointed days especially for the young male life chance because they cant go will say we have to be careful to not get sick and Oxford University study found the warnin 5 children and now afraid to leave their homes the sense of disorientation and confusion it would have been very understandable natural order reaction a lot of children in the past few weeks secure Mental Health units have been forced to discharge large numbers of patients there are children suffering from psychosis who believe the virus is a conspiracy others with eating disorders or histories of self harm we feared it were going to have a time bomb now this is building up to a nation Mental Health jenny the worlds attention is on controlling the virus for the recount list hidden victims even when the pandemic passes there will be many in desperate need of help. Stories of abuse in aged care homes in the west to shock the world but theres an alternative one to one he thinks those sending elderly loved ones to thailand to live out their data on aljazeera. Every generation has a higher purpose. Hours a day off. This is aljazeera. I dont recall if this is a news our life from day are coming up in the next 60 minutes march from their homes in malaysias capital a round up of hundreds of migrants amid fear of coronavirus. Back in public view after 3 weeks north koreas state t. V. Shows video of leader kim jong un after global speculation about his health