On the Table: Global Food Security

Prices for staple foods are more volatile than ever. In the middle of a global recession, will politicians and executives address the problem?

A man carries bread in front of riot police during a protest in Cairo. In 2007, food shortages and high prices caused tensions in Mexico, India, and elsewhere (Photo: Reuters)

Food prices have been on the decline for decades, but the tide has now turned. While farmers and producers profit from the price hikes, consumers all over the world are seeing a growing share of their income go towards buying simple staple foods.

Prices for wheat and corn reached record highs in 2007, while global food reserves reached a 25-year low. The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation reported food price inflation reached 18 percent in China that year, 13 percent in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10 percent or more in Latin America, Russia, and India. Wheat doubled in price, and rice was 20-percent more expensive.

Those rises in food prices, which continued into 2008, led to riots in many countries over food shortages. Prices have since come off their peaks but hunger still stalks the poor.

The reasons for high prices are many. Milk prices have spiked in China, for example, because a growing middle class is discovering lattes and other dairy goodies. Indians must endure higher costs for rice because of higher gas prices and transportation costs. And the rising cost of tortillas and many other corn-based products can be pinned at least partly on a booming U.S. ethanol fuel industry, which now consumes about a fifth of the U.S. corn harvest each year.

Perfect storm

"Food reserves have been hit by a 'perfect storm' of factors, including the switch to biofuels, drought in Australia, floods in the UK, a badly affected wheat crop in Canada, many factors have contributed," said Sylvia Lee, co-author of the World Economic Forum's Global Risks 2008 report.

Picture Gallery (click on the photo to begin)

Eight global risks that will shape the next years (Photo: Reuters)

Global food security found its way onto that year's report's shortlist of four major, emerging risks, but it ultimately took a backseat to more immediate issues, such as the U.S. recession, tumbling financial markets, and geopolitical tensions.

Concerns over food prices, however, go beyond relatively short-term economic problems like the credit crunch. The UN predicts that world population will grow to around 9 billion people by mid-century, and with it the demand for food. Global warming will also become a driving factor.

"The combined effects of erratic weather linked to climate change, increased energy and input prices, growing demand in emerging markets like China and India, and increased demand for biofuels is pushing food prices up and poor people will suffer most," says Barbara Stocking, director of the development and relief organization, Oxfam, in Great Britain.

"Increasingly intense droughts, floods and hurricanes, are ruining lives and livelihoods around the world, from India to Indonesia, West Africa to the Caribbean," says Stocking. "The changing climate means that people in many areas no longer know what to plant, or when."

This has led countries like China, South Korea and some Gulf states to start buying up fertile land overseas, primarily in Africa, on which to grow food for export back to their growing populations. Ethiopia and the Sudan are two countries marketing their land despite the many local people who go hungry.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, has warned against developing a “neo-colonial” agricultural system.

Francesco Tubiello at Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research, also sees climate change as amplifying the fundamental causes of food insecurity.

"The key, underlying factors for hunger in the future are independent of climate change, and related more directly to population growth and low socio-economic capacity," says Tubiello. "Climate change will superimpose itself - mainly through increased aridity and heat stress in areas that are at the margin of production - to an already battered region."

Let them eat onions

Tubiello, a lead author on last year's UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment, believes the biggest impacts of global warming on food security may not come for another few decades. But he does not rule out earlier problems.

"Things may get considerably worse earlier, possibly as soon as the next decade, if things like frequency of extreme climate events on the climate side, and competition for bioenergy and food demand from China and India on the economic side, grow steadily," he says.

In 2007, food issues boiled over in some the world's richest countries. Unease over pasta prices led to a one-day strike in Italy, while the Russian government felt compelled to control runaway staple food prices with a price freezes ahead of parliamentary elections in December. Britain and the United States also saw food prices increase by an average of 4 percent - an unusually high annual spike for both countries.

While few politicians in industrialized countries are likely to miss any meals, awareness about the backlash of staple prices may give them food for thought. If not, their Indian colleagues could remind them what happened in Delhi a decade ago, when the price of onions, crucial for the nation's beloved curry dishes, rose six-fold. The ruling party was ousted in the next state elections.

editor: Valdis Wish
last updated: August 31, 2009