WORLD FOOD CRISIS

BY: VINCENZO BUSA TERM: 6BBA

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WORLD FOOD
CRISIS

MODERN CAUSES OF FOOD CRISIS
Food Prices remain high and vary every day. It has been like that since
the many food crisis that hit the world in the 21
st
century. (2005 Niger
food crisis, 2008 world food price crisis, 2010 Sahel famine and 2011
East Africa drought ). Today single governments cannot try to
eradicate this crisis. The whole world countries must commit to co-
ordinate between each other and put forward policies that enable the
part of the population that is most affected by the crisis.
Countries with high poverty and weak safety try often to increase food
subsidies, which are most of the time counterproductive. The families in
there high poverty countries tend to change their diet and eat less
healthy food, which lead to catastrophic results. The economy declines
and the population risk health issues in the long term. This may lead to
general lower productivity, higher mortality and lower learning
capacity.
Investment in Agriculture development to boost food productivity
should be a priority. Several worldwide partnerships should be done to
encourage this boost, If this crisis is not averted in the long run there
could be massive repercussions on the world population. Another factor
to take into consideration is the fact that the World population is
growing every year at an impressive rate. If solutions are not found, it
will get worst every year. Especially because countries with a high birth
rate are usually countries with a large poor population. In order to avoid
price growth, food production must outperform population growth,
which was around 1.2% per year. But there was a momentary drop in
food production development, wheat production during 2006 and 2007
was 4% lower than that in 2004 and 2005.
Another Factor to take into consideration is the possibility of future
disasters that may influence the output or productivity of food. Every
environmental disaster may have dramatic consequences. A possible
important environmental factor could be the rising level of the ozone
layer and Global Warming, Just watching the weather changes in most
part of the world, we see a new trend forming where the weather



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changes from its usual pattern (example it rains frequently in those days and its July). This affects
agriculture considerably.
Some other factors of the world food crisis are:
The increase in general demand for food. Production is increasing but the consumption of food is
outpacing the production at grows at a faster rate than production..
The increase in fuel price that leads to highest costs for agriculture inputs like fertilizers, higher costs of
production for crops that are commercially produced and higher transportation costs.
Droughts that affect many countries and lead to crisis ( such as the 2010 Sahel Famine and the 2011 East
Africa drought )
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has stated that worldwide grain reserves are at their lowest level
since 1960. Worldwide stocks of wheat, corn, barley and rice have decreased every year since 2001, with
the exception of 2004/2005. In consequence, we have been living off our reserves.
Grain production is diverted to produce biofuels that is a good alternative for fuel, but eliminates a good
source of food reserve.
Government price control and export bans have had big negative influences over worldwide food trade
and is still a big factor in the high price of food in our days.
Finally, While the food crisis seems to have appeared suddenly, this lack of investment in agriculture by
developed countries that relied too much on trade to make up for food deficit has consequences today.




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200708 WORLD FOOD PRICE CRISIS

The food crisis appeared to explode overnight, reinforcing fears that there are just too many people in
the world. But according to the FAO, with record grain harvests in 2007, there is more than enough
food in the world to feed everyoneat least 1.5 times current demand. In fact, over the last 20 years,
food production has risen steadily at over 2.0% a year, while the rate of population growth has dropped
to 1.14% a year. Population is not outstripping food supply. Were seeing more people hungry and at
greater numbers than before, says World Hunger Programs executive director Josette Sheeran,
There is food on the shelves but people are priced out of the market.- Eric Holt-Gimnez and
Loren Peabody, From Food Rebellions to Food Sovereignty: Urgent call to fix a broken food system,
Institute for Food and Development Policy, May 16, 2008
The last argument states a problem of overpopulation. While it is true that we are living in a world that
may be overpopulated ( and will be even more overpopulated every year ), it is not the primary factor
that led to the 2008 food price crisis. Some factors include: The unnecessary use of land to produce
products that could be potentially negligible especially during a worldwide food crisis such as tobacco
production, biofuel production or urbanization of land. The inequality of distribution of food, some recent
statistics show that almost 80 % of the worlds food production is consumed by the wealthiest which are
a minority in the world today. And in relation to the last argument, we can see an evident disparity when
we see high obesity levels in developed countries while developing countries have high rates of
malnourished population.
The main causes of the 2008 Global food crisis were:
The high fuel prices that affected agricultural costs.
The low worldwide grain reserves.
The growth of meat consumption in developing countries.
Droughts in some major grain producing or wheat producing countries in the past decade.
The diversion of cereals biofuels.


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There could be many other causes for the Global
food crisis, one of them could be the dominance and
monopolization of richer nations and their big
corporations that have a big impact on the
agriculture and that are in charge of so much assets
that they are basically a main source of income for
developing countries that have theirs assets. These
big corporations through concentrated ownership
and disruptive trade agreements does not give the
chance to poor developing countries to have food
security policies. A general idea could be to look at
the commodities market, If the prices of
commodities go higher, the corporations and
companies that are in that specific market that has a
growth in price will increase its revenue, but for a
normal citizen of any country, it only means that that product will cost more for him and decreases his
purchasing power, and this has a devastating effect towards the big part of the global population that
can only afford to eat barely.
SOLUTIONS ?
Today global population is rising by about 1 percent per year. Which is an extra Great-Britain
population to feed every ten years. By 2050 we could already see a global population of 10 billion. The
problem is that we cannot find more land to cultivate on, almost the entire worldwide cultivation land is
already being used. How do we
produce more then?
A possible solution that could be
seen as a last resort solution is to
finally embrace the Genetically
modified crops that is having such
a bad reputation today. To put it in
simple terms, they could enable
the production of crops that are
modified to suit a specific land that
may have a problem growing the
natural counterpart otherwise such
as the Golden Rice which is rich in Vitamin A or the different types of anti-fungal wheat. These GM
crops could increase production all over the world and could suit many type of agricultural land.
Another solution may be to finally unlock the potential of Africas agriculture. Today Africas agriculture,
in particular the Sub-Saharan agricultural sector, is underperforming because of lack of technology and
science involved, or also because of conflicts that affect trade and production. Today some
governments are trying to push science into agriculture to try and tackle problems and resolve them to
boost production. A big international aid could greatly benefit this trend and could unlock their potential.


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Agrofuel Trade and investment could be suspended to allow farmers to produce food rather than fuel.
Today the agrofuel business is growing and it is expanding, if it is not stopped then it could simply take
over land over land and decrease the general production of food.
CONCLUSIONTR
The best way to try and eradicate the food crisis is to follow a specific blueprint and adapt it to the local
agricultures. The use of science and technology, techonolgies can help boost production for farmers
who have low production because of the lack of good quality seeds, fertilizers and equipment. We must
also do a better job in distributing the food on the planet, there is enough food for the current population
but many are starving because the distribution of food is not homogeneous. Rich countries throw food
while poor countries cannot eat enough. Grain is also used to nourish cows, around 7 kg of grain is
needed to receive 1 kg of meat. 7 kg of grain can be a lot of food for people who do not have enough to
survive. We should also support local food systems that are considered as a buffer against global
markets volatility. If we produce more locally, we will not be at risk because we cannot import enough
food for example. Finally regulations should be strong and should emphasize on regulating the market
in a global scale and in an ethical way.