food crisis
30 Apr 2008
The Silent Tsunami
The latest round of grain shortages and high food prices are threatening to plunge more than 100 million people into hunger
The latest round of grain shortages and high food prices are creating what the World Food Program has called a "silent tsunami", threatening to plunge more than 100 million people worldwide into hunger.Riots have already broken out in at least a dozen countries, including Egypt, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Yemen, Mexico and Haiti, where persistent food shortages saw the Senate dismiss the country's Prime Minister in an attempt to defuse widespread anger at food price hikes.
Last week thousands of garment workers in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, went on strike over spiralling prices. The price of rice, the staple Bangladeshi food, has increased by a third since a devastating cyclone last year. As a result, 30 million of the country's 150 million people are expected to go without daily meals.
Pakistan has reintroduced rationing, while Russia has frozen the price of milk, bread, eggs and cooking oil. Closer to Australia, Indonesia has increased public food subsidies, while a number of countries have banned exports of the staple food items.
It's clear that there's a serious problem here, and the Prime Minister knows it. On returning from his recent world tour, Kevin Rudd said he had discussed the food crisis with other world leaders. The question now was, he said, "How do we contribute to better food security around the world?"
Two weeks ago, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), a group of over 400 expert scientists, came up with some answers.
They called for far reaching changes in world farming to avert increasing regional food shortages, escalating prices and growing environmental problems. But while the reports received support from most of the 64 governments who voted on them, Australia - along with Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom - chose not to endorse the their findings.
The report's central message is that small-scale farmers and agro-ecological methods provide the way forward to avert the current food crisis, meet the needs of local communities and safeguard the environment. These conclusions were not reached lightly; they are the culmination of a three year global consultative process involving 900 participants and 110 countries, co-led by the UN and World Bank.
Unfortunately, in the absence of a statement from the Australian Government, which I have tried vainly to procure, it's impossible to know exactly what elements of the report Australia takes issue with.
We do know that the United States objected to the IAASTD's lack of support for the further industrialisation and globalisation of agriculture. At the urging of the agricultural biotechnology industry, the US also argued that the report was overstating the potential of organic and "ecological" agriculture, which the US did not believe was a viable solution for boosting global agricultural productivity.
In fact, the IAASTD's report states that while some biotechnologies are well accepted and play a vital role in feeding the world, genetically manipulated (GM) crops in particular are controversial because their benefits - and risks - are unclear.
The IAASTD concluded that private sector agricultural research and development hasn't done enough to produce solutions that benefit the poor, or the environment. It also pointed to the increasingly concentrated ownership of agricultural resources - likely to exacerbate food insecurity rather than reduce it.
It's impossible to know whether Australia shares the US's concerns or not. Either way, the Australian Government has a responsibility to speak for itself and should urgently set out its vision and policies for agriculture, both at home and abroad.
As a significant producer and exporter, Australia has a vital role to play in the future of the global agricultural sector, but its capacity to do so will only be damaged by its failure to be clear about where it stands.
Australia needs to formulate and announce its contribution to alleviating the current food crisis. In response to increasing food shortages and insecurity, the UN World Food Program (WFP) issued an "extraordinary emergency appeal" for $500 million last month, saying the money was needed by 1 May to avoid cutting rations to some of the world's most impoverished regions.
Last week, the UN warned that it will need to make "heartbreaking" choices about which countries should receive its emergency aid, unless governments donate more money. Although Australia has made small additional contributions of food aid to existing programs in East Timor, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe, it has not responded to the UN's appeal.
In the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya in March, I witnessed first hand the important contribution that Australian food aid makes to feeding some of the world's most vulnerable people. Home to over 170,000 people, most of whom have fled fighting in neighboring Somalia, Dadaab's refugees are entirely reliant on a fortnightly ration of maize, cooking oil and salt administered by the WFP.
As the number of hungry people grows, so does our responsibility to help, which is why Australia should be leading other nations by announcing an additional commitment of food aid in response to the current crisis.
But the Government also needs to do more. Progress in meeting the first of the Millennium Development Goals - the commitment to halve the number of hungry people by 2015 - has been disturbingly slow. To make matters worse, the current food shortage threatens to wipe out the modest progress made since the Millennium Development Summit in 2000.
Leading global efforts to get the Goal back on track is the perfect opportunity for Australia to exercise the sort of creative middle power diplomacy to which the Prime Minister aspires.
To begin, Australia should review and reissue its international food security strategy, which is now over four years old. Secondly, it should appoint a Special Ambassador for Food Security, who can help generate the international political will necessary to address the current situation and build longer term alliances.
Finally, we should convene a mini World Food Summit, the first of which was held almost 12 years ago, with the ambition of renewing international commitment to fighting hunger and ensuring that we meet the hunger related Millennium Development Goal in particular.
We have the answers to the Prime Minister's question of how to contribute to better food security, we just need someone to act on them.
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My old eyes are going, but I don’t think that there was mention of bio-fuel production, and the diversion of formerly food-growing land for better returns from bio-fuel crops, now that oil is fetching such high prices. As Jeffrey Sachs writes in this week’s Time magazine, this has been a really silly decision by governments, although probably an extremely sensible decision by profit-seeking farmers in the short run, until they also start tofind that the food on the supermarket shelves is hitting them as well.
We need to know how much net land has been taken out of food production and/or how much rainforest is being knocked down so that private car owners around the world can maintain their anti-social habits. As usual, it will be the poorest in the world who cop it first and foremost. To the wealthy, such as Australians generally, it is just an irritating matter of forking out a bit more for fuel and food, but for so much of the world it is going to be a matter of life or death. I guess we can be ‘radical, and complain about how much it is hitting out pocket. Or we can be ‘progressive’, and point out the dreadful effects that bio-fuel production is having on people other than ourselves.
How’s that for a differentiation between what it means to be ‘radical’ and to be ‘progressive’ ? A bit insipid ?
Joe
Joe, you are absolutely right. The diversion of land and food crops to produce biofuels is seriously misguided; the UN’s Special Raporteur on the Right to Food called it a crime against humanity. To make matters worse the expected environmental benefits in respect of carbon savings are now thought to have been massively overstated.
The destruction of old growth forests, including for instance the rainforests of Indonesia, to grow palm oil is also a major cause of large forest loss.
But using plants to fuel our cars isn’t the only misguided agricultural development driving global hunger and deforestation.
In the past 50 years, worldwide meat production has increased fivefold and consumption has soared. At any one time we share the planet with nearly 1bn pigs, 1.3bn cattle, 1.8bn sheep and goats and 15.4bn chickens: twice as many as there are humans to eat them.
Rather than increasing our capacity to feed people, the growth in meat production is a serious threat to food security. Growing plants to feed animals, rather than humans, uses more land and water to produce less protein than growing plants for direct human consumption.
To have any hope of feeding the planet and protecting the environment we need to prioritise the production of food for people and stop using plants to feed our seemingly insatiable appetite for meat and fuel.
Joseph O’Reilly
Not to mention the fact that so many animals (and us old fogeys as well) produce vast amounts of methane daily - just ask the wife.
Joe
I apologise for that stupid remark, there’s a time to be flippant, but this disaster deseves far more serious attention than that.
Should governments impose extra taxes on biofuel to discourage their production ? Should there be a quota on how much land can be used for it ? Or should producers be obliged to set aside so much land for food production in addition to what they use for biofuel production ?
As well, in relation to meat-eating, can governments use taxes or duties on inputs, to push the price up, or include it in the scope of the GST as a non-essential food ? But even without any government ingtervention, the extra costs of meat production (fuel, water, fertilisers, transport) may make it prohibitive to produce, and to buy.
The problem cannot be resolved with more government interference in the production of food because the problem, Joseph, is interference itself.
Africa, where starvation is the most widespread, devolved from a net food exporting continent to a net importer of food as each African country garvitated away from free market economies to socialist command economies.
Mozambique, for example, under a free market system, produced sufficient food to feed all of Africa! Today it relies on foreign food aid to stave off massive starvation! Hurrah for socialism.
Rhodesia devolved from a free market economy capable of producing Africa’s biggest food yields. Today’s socialist Utopia of Robert Mugabe is a nation of starving people reliant on international food grants to survive! Double Hurrah for Socialism.
Since the 16th century, and under a free market system, South Africa was always Africa’s most reliable exporter of food products. Think about that for a second Joseph, for over 500 years South Africa exported food under a free market economy every single year for over 500 years.
Now this year, 2008, under a socialist government, South Africa’s food production has been in such rapid decline that it will celebtrate the first year in it’s 600 year food exporting history where it will be incapable of producing enough to feed itself. South Africa’s socialist government will need to import foodstuffs for the first time in over half a millenium!
In Africa the socialist dream certainly is a hungry one and government intervention in the marketplace has cost the lives of millions through starvation.
Joseph, I put it to you that intervention in the marketplace by government, financiers and corporations is the biggest cause of starvation in the world today and that substituting food crops for energy crops is but a symptom of that problem.
We do not need more state control, we need rid of state intervention, a proper free market economy and we need to allow producers to participate, unhindered, in a free market to produce what they want to produce, when they want to produce it and in quantities of their own choice for a price which the market is willing to pay for it without the interference of government, bankers, financiers or little people in white coats scurrying about with clipboards paid for by taxpayers.
That last paragraph has me gasping, George - are YOU being flippant now ? It would be funny if it weren’t so dreadfully crazy, more of the disease t ocure the disease.
Absolutely crazy.
More of the same disease? The irony is that socilaism is the disease and increased socoialism will guarantee no solution is found!
Until recently food riots in the world were not well reported in English speaking countries. Even now the full impact of these riots are not close to being properly covered. Our media is itself a manifestation of our socilaism as it becomes more and more the typical controlled socialist propaganda tool!
With food prices exploding for the fat overfed population of the USA this lack of coverage had to change rapidly as cereals, grains and especially rice are flying off supermarket shelves at such speed that stores themselves have taken to rationing the products.
But this is not a free market supply problem because we have experienced RECORD crops this year! Wow! Record crops and the world experienced a food shortage? Huh?
These record crops which were brought to market means the free market system has made the adjustments, it has performed it’s function by increasing production to meet demand but even increased record crop yields has not stopped the world’s food riots! Why?
According to the "Ministry of Truth" - CNN, ABC et al, the problem is caused by crop-for-energy transfers. These days anything which CNN states as fact can be considered proof positive that the opposite must be true.
What we are not told is that the current crisis is the result of a MONETARY problem. Not a free market monetary problem, but a socialist monetary problem. One in which wealth is printed from nothing by the central Banks and where the cost and free movement of capital is controlled by Central Banks so that socialist governments may get to spend the proceeds of their productive citizens through the invisible tax of credit expansion and monetary inflation.
The world’s current food problem is simply a manifestation of the serious current global credit squeeze.
As governments desperately attempt to maintain their growing socialist policies and as Central Banks desperately try to preserve their socialist credit and paper money systems, what the world SHOULD witness today is that governments and Central Banks will CHOOSE famine to salvage their socialist paper money systems.
The track record of every starving socilaist state in the world will provide the reasons why this is so.
Just a few weeks ago the world’s GLOBAL banking system almost collapsed as the first major Commercial Bank since the Great Depression, Bear Sterns, blew up in a puff of smoke while Bush and the Fed committed some questionable acts to salvage the system at the cost of the American taxpayer.
Salvaging the banking elite at the cost of the working class is hardly the function of a free market system, this is socialism in it’s purest form.
The USA, UK, Canada, Japan and Australia have all reacted the same way. On April 18th and 19th, for example, the RBA committed over 1.1 billion dollars to salvaging the Australian banks, a fact which received very little coverage from the Australian branch of the "Ministry of Truth".
As every "western nation" prints more and more paper and increases liquidity (M3 growth is at world record highs!), they do so to salvage their monetary system at the COST of the free market system, not BECAUSE of it.
As this new "purchasing power" introduced into the system is not real money, not in the "free marekt sense", it is "money" in the socialist sense, this liquidity is used in an attempt to prevent the monetary system from melting down.
This new money has to go SOMEWHERE!. Where does it go? Simple, it goes into real goods, like gold, oil, copper and FOOD!!!
That is why even with record food crops the world is facing a world wide distortion of food prices, these high costs represent the premium we all pay in our increased food prices to fund the salvation of our socilaist money system which has captured the western world.
In a free market system the failed banks, like Northern Rock in UK and Bear Stearns in USA would simply be left to die and consumers would not be deprived access to food in exchange for their real money.
Since the gold price broke $400.00 per ounce it has been my contention here on NM that those of us who place our faith in paper money instead of gold, which is real money, will lose all our value. Today Gold has achieved more than 250% of that original price. Was I right?
The ultimate irony is that with every distortion which our socialist banking and monetary system attempts to introduce into the global markets, the demise of our system is brought closer and for those who have converted their "money" from paper to gold, all food products are just as cheap as they were 5 years ago, 10 years ago and even 1000 years ago.
If the starving rioters had refused the paper they were given for their wages and if they had insisted on payment in real money, such as gold, and not socilaist paper "money" there would be no food price crisis today!
Why? Because there is enough food to go around for those with REAL money and those who did not trust the crappy plastic and paper "beads" which socialist Western governments have forced their taxpayers to accept in return for hard work and salaried labour in their day to day transactions!
The Western World may have to go through the pain of learning what the starving nations of Africa, Asia and South America already know, which is that socialism and paper money lead to starvation and economic misery.
Keep your paper money and I will see you starving at your bankruptcy hearings. Convert to gold and silver and feed your family right through the coming economic crisis.
Ever heard of Zimbabwe?
"This is NOT a supply problem, harvests this year have hit record levels. It is exclusively a MONETARY problem - the latest and most potentially damaging (to the powers that be) manifestation of the credit squeeze."
"More important, it is a direct result of the desperate government and central bank actions which have been and are being taken to meet that squeeze. If the western politicians are not aware of that fact, the western central bankers and financial potentates are. No matter. If the choice has to be made between a famine and a financial collapse, their actions speak loud and clear. A famine it must be." - William Buckler.
If you don’t already read Bill Buckler George I consider him highly recommended reading.
I don’t post much on NM, but I do enjoy some of your posts.
Since NM published a few articles by Prof. Steven Keen, which is where I first read some of your views regarding precious metals, I have altered my own portfolio to include a large percentage of precious metals.
My financial advisers are more surprised than I am with the outcome. I appear to be their only client whose portfolio has survived and even prospered handsomely during the recent market turmoil and my advisers tell me they are finding new ways to attract more investors into the precious metals markets.
Thanks George.
George, much of the same disease, in this case, is more rampant and unregulated market forces. This has nothing to do with socialism, and more to do with everybody making a buck where they can regardless of any sense of social responsibility. People are going to die because of the free-for-all switch to bio-fuels, as food production is cut and as prices for the remaining food soar, out of the reach of the poorest quarter of humankind.
Let’s just keep a close check on the rate of production of staple foods, the destruction of forested areas and the incidence of death by starvation. To the extent that these happen, then your policy of rampant profit-taking is very likely to blame.
As for socialist countries, such as there are any, any more, if they could convert their crops to bio-fuel, or even boil down their grandmothers for bio-fuel, they would do so. The only thing stopping them is the likelihood of riots in their ‘peoples’ states’ and the end of the pretence of socialism.
Joe
"As for socialist countries, such as there are any, any more, if they could convert their crops to bio-fuel, or even boil down their grandmothers for bio-fuel, they would do so." - Well said Joe!!!
As you say, that is EXACTLY what your typical socialist state would do!
I must say, you really must have a very good understanding of the concept of socialism Joe! Well done!
George
To continue with this irrelevance, no I was criticising so-called socialist states, not socialism per se - that’s for another day, and in a more relevant discussion.
Let’s get back to the issue: the problem of the commons. Farmers see better profits in producing for beef and bio-fuel, to the neglect of lower-profit (at least for the time being) food production, which has pushed up prices far more than inflation (ask any shopper), in fact is its major cause. As long as oil producers (including OPEC) can get record prices for oil, substitutes like bio-fuel will pull producers into that market and out of food.
And rampant capitalism does not care a fig for Third World consumers; as they might say, paraphrasing Stalin, ‘how many SUVs do African peasants have ?’ And their cheer squad parrots similar crap about freedom of markets and how any form of regulation is pure socialism.
Joe
Here you go, George:
‘Philippines Cancels Rice Tender on Lack of Offers (Update3)
‘By Luzi Ann Javier
‘May 5 (Bloomberg) — The Philippines, the world’s biggest rice importer, canceled a tender to buy 675,000 metric tons after just one company submitted an offer, highlighting the tightness of supply in the global market after prices jumped to a record.
‘Vietnam Southern Food Corp. was the only company offering the grain, National Food Authority Deputy Administrator Vic Jarina said today. The authority will wait until the “market softens” before setting the date for another tender, Jarina said.
‘The Philippines failed to fill a tender last month, helping rice prices rise to a record in Chicago on April 24. Philippine Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said on May 2 that today’s planned purchase was intended to boost stockpiles and the country was prepared to reject offers if it deemed prices were too high.’
Let markets rule ? And if people can’t pay, stuff ‘em - is that it ?
Joe
No, of course you’re right Joe, we should send the military to those naughty greedy capitalist Vietnamese and force them to sell that rice at lower prices which the Philippines can afford, right? After all, it’s the Vietnamese farmers to blame for the starvation in the Philippines right?
They must be forced to accept the crappy socialist paper money we give them in exchange for that rice as well I suppose? And if the Vietnamese are stuck with tons of worthless pieces of our paper which will buy them bugger all, well, as you say, "stuff ‘em" - right?
You accept the worthless pieces of paper for your labour don’t you Joe? Even though it’s worth zilch after a few years, so why should everyone else not be fooled into being just as downright stupid - right Joe?
You really are confused Joe. You need a refresher on Political Economics 101.
Instead of imagining ways how to force the Vietnamese farmers to produce rice to export for nothing to the Philippines you should start by reading Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Second Edition, Montreal 2003.
Oh, and Joe, Capitalism is not so bad, you should try it, it keeps your family properly housed and fed. Try it some day, maybe buy a house or a farm or something and you will quickly come to realise that producing food for free is not as easy as you seem to think it is.
Well, it’s your right to rant, George, but I don’t really have a clue what you are ranting about. For the record:
* I don’t think that the Vietnamese people should be forced to sell their products to anybody;
* Actually, I don’t think that anyone should export their products for nothing; of course, the point is that at the moment, they will get even more ofthat worhtless money than they did a few months ago, for the same amount of product ! Isn’t the free market wonderful - for some?
* I don’t accept that, at the moment, all money is completely worthless - maybe next week, maybe gradually over the next ten or hundred years, but not today. I have bought things today, and the shopkeeper did not fling my crap money back in my face (at least, not today) or told me to give him goods instead and to stuff my worthless money up my arse;
* I don’t think that food is produced for free. It takes fertiliser, water, petrol, machinery, land, labour etc, all of which cost money, however defined.
Take your pills, George. Are you confusing me with somebody else ?
Joe