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Llewellyn
King
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April 14, 2008
No Easy Answers in the
Emerging World Food Crisis
Unexpectedly, the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
and the World Bank in Washington were dominated not by discussions of
the global credit crisis, but by another global crisis food.
While the poorest of the poor are hurting the most, a large swathe of
the population of Asia, and other parts of the world, can no longer
afford its daily bread or rice. In Egypt, Haiti and the Philippines,
there have already been riots amid rising food prices.
Commodity prices are at all-time historical highs, often three times
higher than they were a year ago. In much of the world stocks are at
their lowest levels in three decades, suggesting higher prices to come.
Particularly egregious is the price of rice, which is causing near
famine in Bangladesh, India and the Philippines.
Many factors have combined to produce a world food crisis that will not
be solved in a hurry, according to IMF and World Bank officials.
The two most identifiable sources of stress on world food supply are the
rapid growth in population and the high price of fuel. But there are
many others, including:
l
The new
prosperity of Asia has tempted farmers to feed the new taste of the
middle class for meat and luxury crops at the expense of staples.
l
American
and European farmers have diverted high-yield corn and soybean crops
from food to biofuels.
l
American
and European consumers have been reluctant to embrace bioengineering.
l
Agricultural land around the world that has been surrendered to other
uses, from housing estates to golf courses.
The global response to the newest crisis is neither easy nor clear.
Designating money to buy food for the poor could exacerbate the rise of
global food prices, and would not result in increased production. For
this, the world needs to put more land down to farming staple
commodities, and put less emphasis on consuming luxuries, such as meat
and milk.
The days when the rich countries of the United States and Europe were
fighting to take land out of agricultural production are gone. Remember
the butter and wheat mountains in the United States and the wine lake in
Europe? No more. Just in the United States, dairy products are rising in
price, wheat reserves are being depleted and corn is in short supply
because it is being diverted to ethanol production.
In
1943, the Rockefeller Foundation began funding a project to improve
agricultural production in Mexico, in order to stave off a collapse of
that country. Norman Borlaug, the Mexican Agriculture Project's chief
scientist, has come to be regarded as the father of the Green
Revolution.
The principles established in the foundation's project changed the
agricultural production landscape of the world. India, with its enormous
population, went from being a net importer of grain to an exporter. Also
Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines improved their food lots, moving
from precarious supply to reliable availability.
Countries that had suffered food deprivation during World War II,
notably Britain and Japan, endeavored to maintain domestic food security
through tariffs and subsidy, but gradually these fell to globalization.
The United States has gradually hived off its production of many fruits
and vegetables to external suppliers. Now, Chinese and Indian
middle-class tables are competing with American households for these
foods.
Interestingly, there was a Green Revolution that took place centuries
before the one in the 1940s: The Islamic Green Revolution between the 8th
and 13th Centuries. In that 500-year period, Muslim traders
brought crops, such as sorghum from Africa, to the Middle East and
Europe. And they opened the storehouses of crops from India, introducing
into their sphere of influence citrus, mangoes and cotton.
The world can feed its population of 6.7 billion, but not without a
revolution in land use. Like so much else, land use is highly political:
Free-marketers push for its highest cash value. Meanwhile, we can look
forward to possible food riots in many countries, including Bangladesh,
Indonesia and Pakistan. People who have nothing to lose will take their
hunger to the streets.
© 2008 North Star
Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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