FOOD CRISIS

OUTLINE:
Introduction
Definition Of Food Crisis
Food Security Status In Pakistan
Unavailability Of Food
Instability Of Food Supplies
Low Access To Food
Incidence Of Food Poverty
Income Inequality
Inequity Of Food Distribution
Causes Of Food Crisis
Devastating floods In Pakistan
Global Wheat Crisis
Land Related Problems
Inefficient And Ineffective Use Of Irrigation Water
Use Of Low Quality Seed
Improper Use Of Fertilizers
CreditFinancial Limitations
Inter-regional Inequity
Poor Rural Infrastructure
Overpopulation And Food Inflation
Impacts of Food Crisis On Society
Growing Militancy
Security Threat
Socio-political Instability
Extraordinary BehaviourSelling Of Kidneys, Suicides etc.
Poverty
Child Labour
Illiteracy
Suggestions
Conclusion
ESSAY:
Food is the basic need and right of all the human beings. It is the responsibility of a state to
provide the masses with food and other basic needs. Pakistan is an agricultural country.
Agricultural sector, being the second biggest sector and employing almost 45% labour
force, is an asset for our country. This sector has been instrumental not only in feeding the

local people but also exporting the food commodities to the other countries. When the basic
necessities and needs are met people divert all their energies towards the betterment of the
country. But, the people entangled in the crises of basic commodities of life are indifferent
of the progress of the country. Along with other crises, Pakistan also suffers from food crisis
which is quite unfortunate and shocking. People have to stand in queues for hours for
getting a bag of flour. Sugar is getting out of their reach. It is quite unacceptable for an
agriculture country like ours to face the shortages in food commodities like wheat, rice,
sugar, vegetables etc. Hoarding coupled with hike in the prices in global as well as local
markets are depriving poor people of food. Recent floods also gave a serious blow to our
agriculture sector which further aggravated the situation. Nevertheless the mismanagement
in this sector matters a lot in terms of shortage of food. Land related problems, water
mismanagement, use of low quality seed are playing havoc with our precious sector of
agriculture and causing food crisis.
Food crisis can be defined as When all the people at all times do not have physical and
economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet the dietary needs and food
for performance of an active and healthy life.
Food availability is the first and foremost important factor for food security. But it is
declining in Pakistan. It is the responsibility of the Food Department to ensure food
availability. Unfortunately, it has failed in controlling prices, black-marketing and hoarding
of essential commodities. Owing to mishandling of essential food commodities by food
department and hoarding by big dealers, panic is being created. It is also casting a shadow
and negative effect on the access of food by the population.
Per capita availability of food items alone is not a reliable gauge of the food security
situation. Available food if not in the socio-economic access of the general masses, cannot
make a society food secure. There are a number of factors that restrict the access to food
for millions of poor people in Pakistan. First, production and distribution systems are
inequitable, second, low income coupled with a higher rate of unemployment and third an
important factor affecting access to food is poor governance.
Agriculture sector plays a very vital role for ensuring stability of food supplies. Any shortfall
in the production of food crops causes problem. Such problem is met through imports. But
the country is facing a chronic problem of payment deficit and foreign exchange problem.
So such steps cannot assure supplies of food all the year and all over the
country. Incidences of unstable food supplies are very frequent in our country. The
short availability of supply of some basic food items (i.e. Atta) is very common in Pakistan
which affects stability of food supplies.
More than half of the population of Pakistan lives below poverty line. Government, instead
of supplying free food grains, keeps on raising food prices irrespective of the plight of the
poor masses. Due to unprecedented hikes in the prices, the food is getting out of the reach
of the masses. This is culminating in the food poverty in Pakistan.
In Pakistan income inequality is not only high but is also increasing. Such inequality in
land holding and income is reducing the purchasing power of the people. The people who
toil all the day round do not earn enough to have a safe and secure food. There is great
income gap between the rich and the poor. The poor who work hard all the day long hardly

afford two times meal while the people who are unaware what the hard work is possess all
the luxuries of life. Inequity in food distribution is another major issue of concern related to
food security in Pakistan.
Many factors contribute to the dramatic increase in food prices. At the international
level, it is because of the expansion in biofuel and the record increase in oil prices. In
Pakistan, it is due to distortionary policy responses leading to a long decline in agricultural
investment resulting in limited capacity to produce more food.
The devastating floods in Pakistan, which have killed around 1,500 and displaced nearly
20 million, have also adversely impacted the food supply chains. Nearly 17 million acres of
cultivated cropland has been lost to floods while the loss of livestock could also be in
millions. The loss of crops from floods alone can cause huge spikes in the price of necessary
food items because of uncertainty in the supply of grains, livestock, etc. At the same time,
almost 75 per cent of those affected by floods are the ones who relied on agriculture for
sustenance.
Another reason behind high food prices, especially wheat, is the global wheat crisis which
has caused the wheat prices to increase by 90 per cent since June 2010.The drought in
Russia has contributed to severe wheat shortages leading Russia to ban all wheat exports.
Compounding this even further is the loss of wheat crop in China and India due to monsoon
rains.
Pakistan has a very productive land and has a great potential for the production of food
crops. Most of the land is under cultivation and more could be cultivated. But unfortunately,
theland related problems like depleting soil fertility, soil erosion, water logging and
salinity are badly reducing our food crops production capacity.
Out of the total cultivated land about 80% is irrigate through canal water, while the
remaining is rain fed. Due to ineffective and inefficient use of irrigation water has
created problems. Along with it, mismanagement of available water resources has deprived
provinces of their legitimate share and has adversely affected agriculture yield.
Use of improved seed is one of the important factors in crop productivity enhancement. But
sadly, the use of low quality seed by illiterate and inexperienced farmers reduces the
productions. It is a great hurdle in the way of attaining the targeted food crop productions.
Hence it further adds to the shortage of food.
Proper use of organic and inorganic fertilizers is also critical for maintaining soil fertility to
enhance agriculture productivity. The current use of plant nutrients is not only
imbalanced and inadequate but also inefficient as well.
Due to financial limitations, the small farmers are largely dependent on credit to procure
agriculture inputs. Financial constraints limit the farmers capacity to fully utilize the
cultivable land. Limited utilization of cultivable land is aggravating the availability of food
situation.
There are severe inequalities between the districts of the same provinces. In spite of
adequate food production at the national level severe food shortages have been

experienced. These shortages pose a grave threat to food security in the country.
Rural infrastructure and human resources development are necessary for public goods and
ensuring food security. Lack of rural roads, electricity, drinking water and
educational and health facilities add to food insecurity.
Growing population is also aggravating the status of food insecurity in Pakistan. Due to
various hurdles the production of food crops does not commensurate with the growing
number of people in the country. This imbalance is compelling people especially the poor to
reduce their intake of food. Population increase coupled with low investment has
exasperated the food insecurity situation.
Last but not least, energy crisis is further contributing in food insecurity. Owing to short
supply of electricity, many industries have been and are being closed, rendering thousands
of poor people unemployed. Unemployment reduces earning and in turn purchasing power
of the people. Low purchasing power coupled with increasing food prices are making even a
one-time meal hard to afford for the poor.
It is often said, Food insecurity anywhere, threatens peace everywhere. Food insecurity
may cause unrest or even political instability. Persistent food insecurity may cause conflicts,
civil wars and can threaten the overall peace of community, society, nation or world
depending on the extent and spectrum of hunger and poverty.
Food insecurity is the major cause of militancy and violence. In Pakistan some
extremist forces are exploiting the feelings of lower and lower middle class food insecure
people. They are motivating their unemployed youth to commit heinous crimes such as
suicide attacks against innocent people.
Compromised security at individual level compromises the security at nation, regional and
global level. Food insecurity heightens the potential for conflicts, which translate into
a security threat. Individual cases of relative hunger, marginalization and poverty can turn
into collective deprivation. This deprivation when gets an identity crisis, be it creed,
genders, class or nationality, always leads to class conflict and ultimately to violence.
Hunger is such a force which provokes people to rebel against the state. When the basic
needs of the masses are not met they turn against the state and tend to destabilize the
socio-political fabric of the country. A county which fails to deliver its masses is bound
to face instability. Allegiance from the masses towards the country becomes a daydream.
Such circumstances affect regional as well as global security.
High prevalence of food insecurity leads to intensified extraordinary behaviour of
individuals. This extraordinary behaviour includes selling of kidneys, selling of children and
suicides. This situation results in large numbers of individuals who might get to any lengths
in sheer desperation and frustration. Many of them commit suicide to end their misery.
Others kill their dependents, to whom they cannot even afford to prove a square meal.
Another impact of food inflation and food crisis is that the poor people have to spend more
than 80% of their meagre income on food items. It leaves behind not much for them to
have other amenities of life. They even cannot afford education and health

facilities. Increasing poverty is directly linked with food inflation which makes it hard for
the poor masses to make their both ends meet.
In the grim situation poor people send their children at work in an early age. Instead of
equipping their young ones with education, they send them to work to keep the stove of
their family lit. Child labour is not only wasting our precious talent but also dragging the
young children into the swamp of crime. It is further resulting in other social problems.
As mentioned earlier that after spending on food, there leaves nothing for the poor people
spend on the education of their children. This adds to illiteracy. Illiteracy begets social evils.
Education means to alleviate poverty and cause social change. Low standard of education in
our country is casting a shadow on the prospects of our country. People entangled in
financial woes do not consider education important.
The food price increases have led to an alarming situation that the world is reaching a
danger point where soaring food prices could lead to political instability. This is a time to
move from talk to action. This is a time to make the right policy choices that may ensure
food is accessible to the most vulnerable in Pakistan and simultaneously helping producers
to raise their output and increase their income. Here are some suggestions:
The situation requires a paradigm change where individual hunger be perceived as a
national security threat. Such a paradigm shift would result in greater resources being
channelled to improve food security.
National Food Security Strategy (NFSS) should be chalked out to address the issues of
food insecurity in Pakistan.
Productivity levels should be improved through investment in research, extension, and
communication and irrigation infrastructure.
Climate change is a certain phenomenon affecting the global temperature and rainfall
pattern. Sustained investments in agricultural research to develop new varieties that are
better adapted to the changing climate are need of the day.
The impact of increased food prices should be passed on to growers, by controlling the
prices of inputs and ensuring that important inputs are available in time.
Districts classified as extremely food insecure or food insecure should be targeted with
special production programmes in order to bring them at par with other districts.
The agriculture sector is heavily dependent on canal irrigation in Pakistan. There is a need
to make sustainable plans for the conservation and efficient use of water.
A food security analysis should be undertaken on a regular basis, at least after every two
years.
Strengthening the social safety nets, the process of identification of food insecure people,
and process of delivery of social safety benefits is a must to ensure access to food for an
extremely food insecure population.
In order to reduce regional disparity among provinces regarding prices of food
commodities, the Federal Government should play a vital role. A revolving fund for food
deficit provinces, especially for wheat procurement by provinces, should be established.
Good governance is essential to ensure that food is accessible to the people.
It is observed that the conflict-hit areas throughout the world including the FATA region
are the most food insecure regions. It is strongly suggested that assuring food security
should be adapted as a peace building strategy in these areas.

It can be concluded that the vision without action is daydream and action without vision is
pastime. The government of Pakistan must deal with this issue on war footing. Unless this
basic need food is left unmet, the people cannot divert their energies and loyalties
towards the country. People uncertain of how and where their next meal will come from can
never be patriotic. It is time that the government of Pakistan and its international partners
step up activities that not only strengthen livelihood, assets and activities but also address
domestic governance issue. Without addressing the governance problems issue of socioeconomic justice that leads both to food insecurity as well as militancy cannot be addressed.
The international community should start investing in developing the social and human
capital of the chronically food insecure people of the Federally Administered Tribal Area
(FATA), Baluchistan as well as Khaibar Pakhtunkhwas conflict hit people. This would not
only directly aid those harmed because of the ongoing military operation, but go some way
towards fostering a more stable environment.

Food Insecurity in Pakistan

Outline
1. Preambulary remarks
2. Overview
3. Causes
i. Land degradation and desertification
ii.
Waterlogging problems
iii. Inefficient and insufficient use of irrigation of water
iv.
Global wheat crisis
v.
Use of low quality seed
vi.
Adulteration
vii. Improper use of fertilizers
viii.
Income inequity
ix. Black marketing
x.
Hoarding and price hike
xi. Financial limitations
xii.
Decline in agricultural investment
xiii. Lethargic role of Agricultural Development Bank
xiv.
Inter-regional inequality
xv.
Poor rural infrastructure
xvi.
Overpopulation and food inflation
xvii. Poor disaster management
xviii.
Conflicts
xix. Global food prices
xx.
Droughts
xxi. Climatic changes
xxii.
Low grain reserves
xxiii. High oil prices
xxiv. Diversion of cereals to agro fuels
xxv.
Food sovereignty
xxvi.
4. Impacts
i. Growing militancy
ii.
Security threat
iii. Socio-political instability
iv.
Indifference to the progress of the country
v.
Rebellious attitude of people
vi.
Extraordinary behavior
vii. Poverty

viii.
Child labor
ix. Illiteracy
x.
Malnutrition
xi.
5. Mitigation measures
i. Prioritization with futuristic approach
ii.
Development of national food security strategy
iii. Periodical food security analysis
iv.
Good governance
v.
Reduced regional disparity
vi.
Check on price hike
vii. Agricultural investment
viii.
Efficient disaster management
ix. Food security as the peace building strategy
x.
6. Recapitulation

Preambulary Remarks
Population explosion occurs if the number of people in a group exceeds the carrying
capacity of the region occupied by that group. It demonstrates a relationship between population
and the environment. It is possible for very sparsely populated areas to be overpopulated if the
area has a meager or nonexistent capability to sustain life.
Population is considered as an asset for a country. But it turns to be a burden when
increases uncontrollably especially for developing countries.
Malthus stated that in the race between increasing population and increasing production,
population must eventually win.
Population growth is a complex issue that directly or indirectly impacts all aspects of our
lives and the conditions under which we live from the environment and global stability to
women's health and empowerment. Population control or population welfare, if you want to
be genteel is the buzzword today.

Overview
Since the end of Black Death, around the year 1350, population is growing continuously.
But in the last 50 year, an exponential increase can be observed. It is due to the medical
advancements and increase in agricultural productivity. As of May 19, 2015 the worlds human
population is estimated to be 7.245 billion by the United States Census Bureau and over 7 billion
by the United Nations. Most contemporary estimates for the carrying capacity of the Earth under
existing conditions are between 4 billion and 6 billion.
The problem of over-population becomes even more serious in context of the developing
countries like Pakistan. The population boom has not only resulted in an economic upheaval in
developing countries rather it is also the primary cause of environmental degradation. The
biological threat of ever increasing population has ushered in an era of shortage of safe drinking
water, diminishing forest resources, climate change due to depletion of ozone layer among other
things.

Causes
The root causes for overpopulation are multifaceted and complex. From a historical
perspective, technological revolutions have coincided with population explosions. There have
been three major technological revolutions: the tool making revolution, the agricultural
revolution and the industrial revolution. All of these allowed humans more access to food.

Significant increases in human population occur whenever the birth rate exceeds the
death rate for extended periods of time. Increase in births is observed due to improved
sanitation, child immunization and advancements in medicine.
Illiteracy is the major cause of overpopulation. Those lacking education fail to understand
the need to prevent excessive growth of population. They are unable to understand the harmful
effects that overpopulation has. Lack of family planning is commonly seen in the illiterate lot of
the world. In Pakistans rural areas, there is a trend of large families and due to the lack of
awareness and proper knowledge people go on producing more and more children.
Thanks to science for its contribution, on one hand it is saving the lives of people but if
we look it on other hand it is playing a negative role to population growth.
Along with it, the rapid growth in population can be attributes to the custom of early
marriages in our society. More than half of the population of Pakistan lives in rural areas. In rural
areas, due to ignorance, people have a conservative approach. They prefer early age marriages
for their children. They do so to prevent them from indulging in immoral activities. Child marriage
not only affects the health of the couple but also the child they give birth to.
The trend of polygamy is also responsible for this problem. Polygamy is the most common
in our rural areas. In rural areas people prefer to have more than one wife at a time. This
inclination of people further aggravates the situation of population in the country. Likewise,
improper usage of contraceptive method has contributed negatively.
Preference of male child over female infant has deteriorated the existing situation of
backward countries. Again the religious zeal, inculcated into the minds of illiterate class at the
hands of pseudo orthodox contributes very harmful effects on ever increasing population. The
one of the reason described by these orthodox not to interfere in the work of creator.
The failure of proper implementation of governments Population Planning Policies is the
major cause of population growth. Many policies have been formulated up till now. But none of
them has produced the desired results.
There are many challenges to population planning implementation in Pakistan. In
Pakistan, the cultural and religious institutions consider family planning a very wrong deed. This
misinterpretation by religious scholars is the primary reason why many areas of Pakistan are still
devoid of family planning centers. Misconception, rumors and false propaganda about family
planning practices are also among the common reasons.

Impacts
Inadequate fresh water for drinking as well as sewage treatment and effluent discharge
which causes the usage of energy expensive desalination to solve the problem of water
shortages.
It results in the depletion of natural resources especially fossil fuels. The ever increased
pollution is the outcome of population explosion which also creates hazardous health issues.
Deforestation and loss of ecosystems that valuably contribute to the global atmospheric
oxygen are the impacts of population explosion. It is estimated that about eight million hectares
of forest are lost each year. Deforestation becomes a cause in atmospheric composition and
consequent global warming.
One of the major cause of population explosion is the loss of arable land and an increase
in desertification. People having smaller farms have no other choice but to mitigate in hope for
better life. This leads to urbanization, which itself is a major social problem.
In tropical forests, shifting cultivators use the slash-and-burn techniques which reduces
the habitat and results in the mass species extinction. It is a sort of swidden-fallow agriculture.
Mass species extinctions from reduced habitat in tropical forests due to slash-and-burn
techniques that sometimes are practiced by shifting cultivators, especially in countries with
rapidly expanding rural populations.
High rates of infant mortality are associated with poverty. Rich countries with high
population densities have low rates of infant mortality.
Intensive factory farming is adopted to support large populations. But it results in human
threats including the evolution and spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria diseases, excessive air
and water pollution, and new viruses that infect humans.
There is an increased chance of the emergence of new epidemics and pandemics. The
poor are more likely to be exposed to infectious diseases.
Starvation, malnutrition are the afflictions of population growth with ill health and dietdeficiency diseases.
Overpopulation has contributed towards an increase in a number of social evils, like
lawlessness, crime and corruption. The fight over resources has divided the society into groups
i.e. one who possess all and the other who fight for its mere survival. Elevated crime rates are
observed due to drug cartels and increased theft by people stealing resources to survive
Overpopulation has also contributed to the unhygienic living conditions for many based
upon water resource depletion, discharge of raw sewage and solid waste disposal.

Conflict over scarce resources and crowding, leading to increased levels of warfare. Laws
regulate interactions between humans. It was even speculated by Aldous Huxley in 1958 that
democracy is threatened due to overpopulation, and could give rise to totalitarian style
governments.

Mitigation Measures
Despite the adverse effects of rapidly growing population, the government of Pakistan
can mitigate these effects and can achieve control on population.
Family planning facilities be made a part of health facilities. There should be a greater role
for local and provincial governments. Role of NGOs and doctors in disbursement of Aid received
for family planning should be increased. Males should be urged to cooperate more. Status of
women be raised in society as done by present government by giving more seats in assemblies.
A combination of government regulation and technological innovation causes pollution
to decline substantially, even as the population continues to grow. Deforestation and
desertification can be reversed by adopting property rights, and this policy is successful.
Unhygienic living conditions can be reduced by the adoption of sewers. Better health and
educational facilities be provided for women. Issue to be taken as a nation crisis.
Overpopulation is an insidious, chronic, long term situation that has been in the making
for generations. Like hypertension, it doesn't kill you directly; instead, it raises all other risk
factors and lowers the quality of life.
The Modernization of agriculture through farm mechanization, proper management of
land and water resources, improved varieties of seeds, taking plant protection measures and use
of fertilizers can increase the agricultural productivity manifold. The rise in the income of the
farmers will raise their standard of living and help in reducing the birth rate indirectly.
The government should help and encourage the people living in rural and urban areas to
set up small, medium and large scale industries. The setting up of industrial states, the provision
of fiscal incentives etc. create conditions for rapid industrialization in the country The
engagement of surplus labor force in industries and other gainful employments raises their
standard of living and motivates the workers to restrict the size of the family.
More than 70% of the people are living in rural areas. The government should provide
credit and know-how to the dating up these and other industries will discourage the migration
of farmers from countryside to cities, provide them employment at home, raise their income
level and will help in the reduction of birth rate indirectly.
The family planning programmer all over the world is considered an effective measure in
controlling population explosion. The public information programmers arousing consciousness

and explaining the usefulness of family planning among people have helped in restricting the rate
of growth of population. The establishment of family planning centers, the research ventures
have played an effective role in limiting the size of family. Role of media be encouraged especially
in rural areas. Government programs should involve Ulemas and NGOs.
In the 1970s, Gerard O'Neill suggested building space habitats that could support 30,000
times the carrying capacity of Earth using just the asteroid belt and that the Solar System as a
whole could sustain current population growth rates for a thousand years. Freeman Dyson, in
1999, favors the Kuiper belt as the future home of humanity, suggesting this could happen within
a few centuries. Although it is a futuristic approach yet it is the need of the hour.

Population Welfare Program

In 1953, the Family Planning Association of Pakistan (Non-Government Organization)
initiated few clinics to provide family planning services. During the second plan period (1960-65)
the Population Welfare Programme was started by the Ministry of Health but the programme did
not show adequate progress.
Finally an autonomous Family Planning Council was created in 1965 to run the
programme independently. At that time the annual crude birth rate was around 45 per thousand
and death rate was around 18 per thousand whereas the net growth rate was 2.7 per cent per
annum. The overall execution and entire funding of this Program is the responsibility of the
Federal Government.
The Ministry of Population Welfare is the main executing agency of the national program
while implementation of field activities is the responsibility of the Population Welfare
Departments in each of the four Provinces of Pakistan.

Overpopulation is a blessing in disguise

Despite all odds, overpopulation is maintaining a healthy growth rate and this is mainly
because of strong export and remittance earning. This huge earning has not only fattened our
foreign reserves but also helped us to have a favorable balance of payment. The architects of this
achievement are our people, who went abroad as unskilled and semi-skilled workers.
At present, unskilled and semi-skilled people are working abroad. If these people were all skilled
like nurses, electricians, drivers, medical assistants or professionals like doctors, engineers,
lawyers, IT specialists, etc. just imagine what impact it would have had on our foreign exchange
earnings.
This overpopulation, all of a sudden, will appear to be a blessing in disguise if we can take
a right action. Many developed countries have a negative population growth rate and

overpopulated countries like Bangladesh can fill that gap. They are already filling this gap by
recruiting people from other countries but not many from our country.
Overpopulation is a blessing in disguise because there are many young people that can
contribute their fresh and brilliant ideas besides energy to the country. Their contributions might
help the thriving country to develop. If their body and mind's strength are fully utilized, it is
inevitably sure that poverty issue is able to curb as the country's economy grew rapidly.
To sum up, overpopulation might gave many advantages yet I believed the negative
impacts cannot be counterbalanced by its benefits in the future. Overpopulation needs to be
addressed to people so that wise steps can be taken before its too late.

Recapitulation
Pakistan today is standing at the crossroads. What is need of the hour is vision and sincere
leadership that could transform dreams into reality. The problem of population has started to
haunt us and unless we tackle it pragmatically our dream of bright and glorious future will just
remain a pious wish. It needs a multi-pronged attack with overpopulation. A strong Pakistan
should be our first priority. If we have to make certain hard decisions for its accomplishment no
one should hesitate to lead and pull the trigger. Indeed, Pakistan comes first even before our
personal vested interests.
But
With the commencement of the new millennium the population welfare programme has
also taken a new turn. This turn in policy is a shift from the focus on fertility towards a more
comprehensive approach of integrating family planning with reproductive health and also
addressing wider range of concerns, especially economic status, education and gender equality.
One of the major achievements of the Cairo Conference has been the recognition of the need to
empower women, both as being highly important in itself and as a key to improving the quality
of life for everyone. It also emphasizes that men have a key role to play in bringing about gender
equality, in fostering women's full participation in development and in improving women's
reproductive health.

Global Food Crisis 2008

Food prices have been rising for a while. In some countries this has resulted in food riots and in the
case of Haiti where food prices increased by 50-100%, the Prime Minister was forced out of office.
Elsewhere people have been killed, and many more injured. While media reports have been
concentrating on the immediate causes, the deeper issues and causes have not been discussed as
much.

Rising Food Prices

Reporting for the Institute for Food and Development Policy (also known as Food First), Eric HoltGimnez and Loren Peabody summarized the rises:

The World Bank reports that global food prices rose 83% over the last three years and the FAO cites a 45%
increase in their world food price index during just the past nine months. The Economists comparable index
stands at its highest point since it was originally formulated in 1845. As of March 2008, average world wheat
prices were 130% above their level a year earlier, soy prices were 87% higher, rice had climbed 74%, and
maize was up 31%.

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

Food Prices Or Overpopulation?

Holt-Gimnez and Peabody summarize the issue quite well:

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 overpopulation argument seems like an obvious one, but when considering who consumes what,
in what quantities and whether much use of resources are actually productive or not suggests that
there may be other issues, though overpopulation concerns could become real at some point.

For example,

A lot of land goes into producing products that could be considered unnecessary or excessive in their
production (e.g. tobacco, sugar, beef, biofuels, urbanization, etc).

Some 80% of the worlds production is consumed by the wealthiest 20% of the world suggesting an
inequality in resource use due to social, economic and political reasons, and perhaps less because of
Malthusian concerns about population sizes outstripping resource availability in most cases.

Furthermore, while many go hungry an equally large number are considered obese.

These aspects are discussed in more depth on this sites sections on consumption, hunger and
population and poverty and hunger.

Causes: Short Term Issues And Long Term Fundamental Problems

How has this recent crisis reached this point? As Holt-Gimnez and Peabody note, there have been
angry demonstrations against high food prices in countries that formerly had food surpluses.

Immediate Factors For The Food Crisis

A number of immediate factors include the following:

Droughts in major wheat-producing countries in 2005-06

Low grain reserves (according to Holt-Gimnez and Peabody, we have less than 54 days worth,
globally)

High oil prices

A doubling of per-capita meat consumption in some developing countries

Diversion of 5% of the worlds cereals to agrofuels.

The above range of issues have been the subject of much mainstream media attention. For example, there has
been some debate as to how much of an impact the recent rise in biofuels has actually contributed to the rising
prices.

Rich Countries Wrongly Play Down Impact Of Biofuels

The US and some European countries have often insisted that the impact of biofuels on the food crisis has been
small. It seems that this claim has been self-serving, because of interests in the biofuel industry. Yet, based on
the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far,

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%far more than previously estimatedaccording to a
confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than
3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have
turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported
oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid
embarrassing President George Bush.

Aditya Chakrabortty, Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis; Internal World Bank study delivers blow to
plant energy drive, The Guardian, July 4, 2008

Rich countries have attempted instead to blame demand from rising poorer countries as a bigger cause.

President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World
Bank study disputes that: Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in
global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases.

Aditya Chakrabortty, Secret report: biofuel caused food crisis; Internal World Bank study delivers blow to
plant energy drive, The Guardian, July 4, 2008

The report mentions the following ways in which biofuels have distorted food markets:

Grain has been diverted away from food, to fuel; (Over a third of US corn is now used to produce
ethanol; about half of vegetable oils in the EU goes towards the production of biodiesel);

Farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production;

The rise in biofuels has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

The World Bank has also estimated that an additional 100 million more people have been driven into hunger
because of the rising food prices. Another institute, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)
estimates that 30% of the increase in the prices of the major grains is due to biofuels. In other words, biofuels
may be responsible for some 30-75 million additional people being driven into hunger.

With such large numbers of destruction, it is understandable why politically the US and EU may wish to
publicly minimize the impact of biofuels.

Deeper, Long Term Causes Of The Food Crisis

However, as Holt-Gimnez and Peabody importantly add, all these causes are only the proximate causes of
food price inflation. These factors do not explain whyin an increasingly productive and affluent global food
systemnext year up to one billion people will likely go hungry. To solve the problem of hunger, we need to
address the root cause of the food crisis: the corporate monopolization of the worlds food systems.

What the authors are alluding to is the following:

The dominance of the richer nations and companies in the international arena has had a tremendous impact on
agriculture, which, for many poor countries forms one of the main sources of income. A combination of unfair
trade agreements, concentrated ownership of major food production, dominance (through control and influence
in institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and the World Trade Organisation) has meant that poor countries
have seen their ability to determine their own food security policies severely undermined.
Policies such as structural adjustment demanded by these institutions meant most developing countries had to
not only cut back on health and education, but food stamps and other support for the very poor. Trade barriers
and other support mechanisms for local industry were also often required to be removed, allowing foreign
companies to more easily compete, often being at an advantage as they would typically be larger
multinationals with more resources and experiences.

By comparison, richer countries have hardly reduced their barriers in return. In addition, most poor
countries were strongly encouraged to concentrate more on exporting cash crops to earn foreign
exchange in order to pay of debts. This resulting reduction in biodiversity of crops and related
ecosystems meant worsening environments and clearing more land or increasing fertilizer use to try
and make up for this.

Increasing poverty and inequality thus fueled corruption making the problem even worse.Food
dumping (while calling it aid) by wealthy nations onto poor countries, falling commodity prices (when
many poor countries had to compete against each other to sell primarily to the rich), vast agricultural
subsidies in North America and Europe (outdoing the foreign aid they sent, many time over) have all
combined to have various effects such as forcing farmers out of business and into city slums.
Meanwhile, crop biodiversity dwindled during the promise of the Green Revolution, which also
increased chemical input, environmental degradation and felling of forests to bring more land into
production.

Food security has reduced as a result and many countries are less able to do things if they want to.
Holt-Gimnez and Peabody are worth quoting again, this time on the impacts of concentrated
ownership:

The expansion of industrial agri-foods crippled food production in the Global South and emptied the
countryside of valuable human resources. But as long as cheap, subsidized grain from the industrial north kept
flowing, the agri-foods complex grew, consolidating control of the worlds food systems in the hands of fewer
and fewer grain, seed, chemical and petroleum companies. Today three companies, Archer Daniels Midland,
Cargill, and Bunge control the worlds grain trade. Chemical giant Monsanto controls three-fifths of seed
production. Unsurprisingly, in the last quarter of 2007, even as the world food crisis was breaking, Archer
Daniels Midlands profits jumped 20%, Monsanto 45%, and Cargill 60%. Recent speculation with food
commodities has created another dangerous boom. After buying up grains and grain futures, traders are
hoarding, withholding stocks and further inflating prices.

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
Genetically modified foods also increasingly came to be seen as a technical savior. If it worked, food
could be grown with higher yields and in places where natural conditions are usually unfavorable.
With increasing threats of climate change, it would seem this technology is potentially more
important.

Yet, environmentalists from rich countries have raised concerns about the effect on nature if some
GM varieties cross-breed with natural varieties, the effect on other aspects of biodversity etc.
Technically, some have found that promised high yields are not always the case.

From developing countries the concern has been the ownership of this technology, typically private
companies from rich countries. They have attempted to patent resources that developing countries
have long used freely and tried to use techniques such as preventing farmers from keeping seeds for
future years (which they naturally do) through terminator technology (which would appear to go
against the claim of addressing world hunger).

These concerns go to the heart of food security and accountability to their own citizenry. In addition,
what such technologies will not address, however, are the political, economic, social and
environmental root causes and choices that govern what is grown, why, how it is priced, and why
even when there is enough food, so many cannot afford it.

As professor Richard Robbins notes, food is a commodity:

To understand why people go hungry you must stop thinking about food as something farmers grow for others
to eat, and begin thinking about it as something companies produce for other people to buy.

Food is a commodity.

Much of the best agricultural land in the world is used to grow commodities such as cotton, sisal,
tea, tobacco, sugar cane, and cocoa, items which are non-food products or are marginally
nutritious, but for which there is a large market.

Millions of acres of potentially productive farmland is used to pasture cattle, an extremely

inefficient use of land, water and energy, but one for which there is a market in wealthy countries.

More than half the grain grown in the United States (requiring half the water used in the U.S.) is
fed to livestock, grain that would feed far more people than would the livestock to which it is
fed.

The problem, of course, is that people who dont have enough money to buy food (and more than one billion
people earn less than $1.00 a day), simply dont count in the food equation.

In other words, if you dont have the money to buy food, no one is going to grow it for you.

Put yet another way, you would not expect The Gap to manufacture clothes, Adidas to manufacture
sneakers, or IBM to provide computers for those people earning $1.00 a day or less; likewise, you
would not expect ADM (Supermarket to the World) to produce food for them.

 What this means is that ending hunger requires doing away with poverty, or, at the very least, ensuring that
people have enough money or the means to acquire it, to buy, and hence create a market demand for food.

Richard H. Robbins, Readings on Poverty, Hunger, and Economic Development

More Information
The above is a gross oversimplification and these deeper issues and causes have been discussed on
this web site for a long time. Rather than attempting to explain those all again here, as well as the
above links, refer to this sites Food and Agriculture Issues section for a series of articles covering these
aspects.
Eric Holt-Gimnez and Loren Peabody, mentioned above, also provide a useful summary at From
Food Rebellions to Food Sovereignty: Urgent call to fix a broken food system, Institute for Food and
Development Policy, May 16, 2008
For their July 20 broadcast, Radio Adelaide interviewed me about the food crisis and world hunger. The
previous link includes a 20 minute recording of that interview (though it is listed under the August 10, 2008
broadcast).
Image credits: Cornfield in the Evening, courtesy of Michel Mayerle

http://www.globalissues.org/article/758/global-food-crisis-2008

Causes, consequences and alternatives

The current food model is from top to bottom subject to a high
company concentration, being monopolized by a series of
transnational agribusiness interests that place their own
economic interests above the good of the public and the
community.
Today, the food system no longer responds to the nutritional needs of people, nor to sustainable
production based on respect for the environment, but is based on a model rooted in a capitalist
logic of seeking the maximum profit, optimization of costs and exploitation of the labour force
in each of its productive sectors. Common goods such as water, seeds, land, which for centuries
have belonged to communities, have been privatized, robbed from the people and converted into
exchange currency at the mercy of the highest bidder.
Faced with this scenario, governments and international institutions have bent to the designs of
the transnational corporations and have become accomplices, when not co- profiteers, in a
productivist, unsustainable and privatized food system. The alleged "concern" of these
governments and institutions (G8, World Trade Organization, World Bank and so on) at the
increase in the price of the staple foods and its impact on the most disadvantaged populations
of the Southern countries [1] only reveals their deep hypocrisy with respect to an agricultural and
food model that brings them important economic benefits. A model which is in turn used as an
imperialist instrument of political, economic and social control by the major economic powers of
the North, the United States and the European Union (as well as their agro-alimentary
multinationals) with respect to the countries of the global South.

Food crisis
The food crisis situation seen in 2007 and 2008, with a sharp increase in basic food prices
highlights the extreme vulnerability of the current agricultural and food model.

A food crisis which has left after another 925 million hungry, according to the United Nations
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). As its director-general Jacques Diouf puts it: "the
number of people suffering from malnutrition before the rise in the price of food in 2007 was
850 million. In that year alone it increased by 75 million to reach 925 million" [2] A figure that
will rise to 1.2 billion hungry in 2017, according to the US Department of Agriculture (ETC Group
2008). But in fact, the current food crisis is already affecting directly or indirectly half of the
population worldwide, more than three billion people (Holt-Gimnez, 2008).
And the price of food hasnt stopped going up. According to the FAO food price index there was
an increase of 12% from 2005 to 2006, 24% in 2007, and a rise of about 50% in January and July
2008. Figures from the World Bank point in the same direction: prices have increased 83 % in the
last three years. Grains and other staples which are eaten by broad strata of the population
especially in the countries of the global South (wheat, soy, vegetable oils, rice and so on) have
undergone the most significant increases. The cost of wheat has gone up by 130%, soya by 87%,
rice 74% and maize 31% (Holt-Gimnez and Peabody, 2008) [3]. . In spite of the good estimates
for cereal production, the FAO estimates that prices will remain high in the coming years, and as
a result, the poor countries in the main will continue to suffer the effects of the food crisis [4] .
Taking this data into account, it is not surprising that there have been hunger riots in the
countries of the South, as it is precisely the basic commodities that feed the poor which have
experienced the biggest price rises. In such countries as Haiti, Pakistan, Mozambique, Bolivia,
Morocco, Mexico, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh and Niger people have gone onto the street
to say: "Enough" in riots that have left dozens of people dead and wounded. These uprisings
remind us of what happened in the 1980s and 1990s in the countries of the South in reaction to
structural adjustment policies imposed by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The
causes, once again, are rising prices for food, transportation and public services, that worsen the
living conditions of the majority of the peoples of these countries and make their struggle for
daily survival more difficult. History repeats itself and neo-liberal policies still leave millions
hungry.
But the problem today is not the lack of food, but the inability to gain access to it. In fact,
throughout the world cereal production has tripled since the 1960s, while the population on a
global scale has only doubled (GRAIN, 2008a). Never in history has there been so much food as
today. But for millions of people in the countries of the global South who spend 50-60% of their

income to purchase food, a figure that can rise to 80% in the poorest countries, the increase in
the price of food has made it impossible to gain access to it [5].

Short term causes

There are conjunctural reasons which have been given and which partially explain this dramatic
increase of prices in recent years: droughts and other meteorological phenomena linked to
climate change in producer countries like China, Bangladesh and Australia, that have affected
crops and will continue impacting on food production; the increased consumption of meat,
especially in the countries of Latin America and Asia, due to a change in eating habits (following
the model of Western consumption) and a resulting multiplication of facilities for the fattening of
livestock; imports of cereals by countries which were until now self-sufficient like India, Vietnam
and China, due to the loss of cultivated land; the fall in grain reserves in national systems that
were dismantled in the late 1990s all mean that today countries depend fully on volatile world
grain markets (Hernandez Navarro, 2008; Holt-Gimnez, 2008). All this helps explain in part the
causes that have led us to the situation of food crisis but these are partial arguments, which have
sometimes been used to divert attention from the underlying causes. Authors such as Jacques
Berthelot (2008), Eric Toussaint (2008a) and Alejandro Nadal (2008), among others, have
challenged some of these arguments.
From my point of view, there are two short-term causes which have been determinant in rising
food prices and should be highlighted: the increase in the price of oil, which would have had an
effect directly or indirectly, and growing speculative investment in raw materials. Both factors
have finally unbalanced an agri-food system which was extremely fragile. Lets go into detail.
The increase in the price of oil, which doubled in 2007 and 2008 and caused a big rise in the
price of fertilizers and transport related to the food system, has resulted in increasing investment
in the production of alternative fuels such as those of plant origin. Governments in the United
States, the European Union, Brazil and others have subsidized production of agro-fuels in
response to the scarcity of oil and global warming. But this green fuel production comes into
direct competition with the production of food. To give just one example, in 2007 in the United
States 20% of the total cereal harvest was used to produce ethanol and it is calculated in the next
decade that this figure will reach 33%. We can imagine the situation in the countries of the South.

In April 2008, the FAO recognized that in the short term, it is highly likely that the rapid
expansion of green fuels worldwide will have a significant impact on Latin American agriculture
(Reuters, 15/04/08)." And the diversion of 5% of world cereal production to the production of
agro-fuels leads directly to the increase in the price of grains. To the extent that cereals such as
maize, wheat, soy or beet have been diverted to agro-fuels, the supply of cereals on the market
has fallen and consequently prices have increased. According to various sources, the impact has
been greater or lesser, but always key: the US Department of Agriculture believes that agro-fuels
have generated an increase in the price of grains of between 5 and 20%; the International Food
Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) considers that the figure is around 30% while a World Bank report
says that the production of agro-fuels would have led to an increase of 75% in the price of grains
(Holt-Gimnez, 2008).
Another conjunctural cause to be taken very much into account as a generator of this rise in
prices has been the growing speculative investment in raw materials since the crash in the dotcom
and real estate markets. After the collapse of the high risk mortgage market in the United States,
institutional investors (banks, insurance companies, investment funds and so on) and others have
sought safer and more cost-effective places to invest their money. To the extent that food prices
have risen, they will direct their capital to the futures market pushing the price of grains upwards
and further worsening food price inflation (Holt-Gimnez, 2008).
Today it is estimated that a significant part of financial investment in the agricultural sector has
a speculative character. According to the most conservative data, this figure would be 55% of the
total, a volume which increases as the liberalization of agricultural production deepens. Note,
also, the study by Lehman Brothers indicating that from the year 2003 the index of speculation
in raw materials (integrated at 30% for agricultural materials) increased by 1,900% (Garca, 2008a).

Structural causes
Beyond these short-term elements, there are underlying reasons that explain the current deep
food crisis. The neoliberal policies applied indiscriminately in the course of the last thirty years
on a planetary scale (trade liberalisation at all costs, payment of the foreign debt for the countries
of the South, privatization of public services and goods and so on) as well as a model of
agriculture and food at the service of a capitalist logic bear the primary responsibility for this

situation. In fact, we have a deeper systemic problem with a global food model which is extremely
vulnerable to economic, ecological and social shocks.
As Eric Holt-Gimnez (2008) puts it, the economic development policies driven by the countries
of the North from the 1960s onwards (the Green Revolution, structural adjustment programmes,
regional free trade treaties, the World Trade Organization and agricultural subsidies in the North)
have led to the destruction of food systems.
Between the 1960s and 90s, the so-called "green revolution", promoted by various international
institutions and agricultural research centres, took place, with the "theoretical" objective of
modernizing agriculture in non-industrialized countries. Early results in Mexico and,
subsequently, in south-east Asia were spectacular from the point of view of production per
hectare, but this increase in land yield did not have a direct impact on the reduction of hunger in
the world. Thus, although world agricultural production increased by 11 %, the number of hungry
people in the world also rose by 11 per cent, from 536 million to 597 (Reichmann, 2003) [6].
As Rosset, Collins and Moore Lapp (2000) put it: "the increase in production which was at the
centre of the green revolution was not enough to relieve hunger because it does not alter the
concentration of economic power, access to land or purchasing power... the number of people
who are hungry can be reduced only by redistributing purchasing power and resources among
those who are malnourished... if the poor have no money to buy food, increased production will
solve nothing".
The Green Revolution had negative collateral consequences for many poor and medium peasants
and for long-term food security. Specifically, the process increased the power of agribusiness
corporations in the market chain, caused the loss of 90% of agro and bio diversity, massively
reduced water levels, increased salinisation and soil erosion, and displaced millions of peasants
from the countryside to the slums of the city, while . dismantling traditional agricultural and food
systems which guaranteed food security.
In the 1980 and 90s, the systematic application of structural adjustment programmes [7] in the
countries of the South by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, so that they could pay
the foreign debt, aggravated further the already difficult living conditions of the greater part of
the population in these countries. The programmes had as their main focus the subordination of

the economy of the country to the payment of debt by applying the maxim "export more and
spend less".
The shock measures imposed by these programmes consisted of forcing the governments of the
South to withdraw subsidies to commodities such as bread, rice, milk and sugar and a drastic
reduction in public spending on education, health, housing and infrastructure. Devaluation of the
national currency was forced, making products cheaper to export, but reducing the purchasing
power of the domestic population while interest rates were increased in order to attract foreign
capital with high rates of remuneration, generating a speculative spiral. Ultimately, a series of
measures which led to the most extreme poverty for the peoples of these countries (Vivas,
2008a).
At the trade level, the programmes promoted exports to boost foreign currency reserves,
increasing monocultures for export and reducing agriculture for local consumption with a
consequent negative impact on food security and dependence on international markets. Thus
customs barriers were dismantled, facilitating the entry of highly subsidized products from the
United States and Europe which sold below their cost price, at a price lower than local products,
destroying local production and agriculture, while economies were fully opened to the
investments, products and services of the multinationals. The massive privatization of public
enterprises, mostly to the benefit of Northern multinationals, was widespread. Such policies had
a direct impact on local agricultural production and food security, leaving these countries at the
mercy of the market, the interests of transnational corporations and the international institutions
promoting these policies.
The World Trade Organization (WTO), established in 1995, consolidated the policies of structural
adjustment programmes by means of international treaties, subjecting national laws to its
designs. Trade agreements administered by the WTO like the General Agreement on Trade and
Tariffs (GATT), the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Agreement on TradeRelated Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) further consolidated the control of the
countries of the North over the economies of the South.
The WTO policies forced developing countries to eliminate tariffs on imports, end protection for
and subsidies to small producers and open their borders to the products of transnational
corporations while the markets of the North remained highly protected. In the same way, regional

treaties like the and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) Central America Free Trade
Agreement (CAFTA) deepened trade liberalization, leading to bankruptcy for the farmers of the
South and making them dependent on food imports from the countries of the North.
US and European agricultural subsidies, directed mainly towards the agri-food industry, obliterate
the small local producer. This support to agribusiness accounts for a quarter of the value of
agricultural production in the US and 40% in the European Union (Holt-Gimnez, 2008). In the
Spanish state, the main recipients of this aid are the larger holdings: seven producers, including
the Duchess of Alba, are the biggest beneficiaries of the European Unions common agricultural
policy. It is estimated that 3.2% of major producers in Spain receive 40% of this direct aid
(Intermn Oxfam, 2005), while family holdings, supporting rural areas in Europe and millions of
farmers in South, have virtually no support and suffer from the unfair competition of these highly
subsidized products.

From exporting countries to importers

These "development" policies driven by international institutions with the blessing of the
respective governments and at the service of the transnational corporations have ended up with
a local and sustainable production system being replaced by a model of intensive industrial food
production subject to capitalist interests that have led to current situation of crisis and food
insecurity.
The countries of the South that until forty years ago were self-sufficient and even had agricultural
surpluses amounting to billions of dollars today have become fully dependent on the international
market and import an average of $11,000 million in food annually [8]. . As noted by Eric HoltGimnez (2008): The increased food deficit in the South reflects the increase in food surpluses
and expansion of the market in the industrial North as well as its agro-industrial complex. In
the 1960s, for example, Africa exported $1,300 million in food, today the continent imports 25%
of its food.

The cases of Haiti and Mexico

The case of Haiti is revealing. As Bill Quigley (2008) puts it, up until thirty years ago this country
produced all the rice needed to feed its population, but in the middle of the 1980s, faced with a

situation of acute economic crisis (when the Haitian dictator Jean Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier left
the country, emptying its coffers), it began lending from the International Monetary Fund. A spiral
of "domination" began that took the country deeper into political and economic dependency on
the international financial institutions and, in particular in relation to the United States.
For these loans, Haiti is was forced to apply a series of structural adjustment policies and trade
liberalization with the reduction of tariffs protecting the production of crops, including rice. This
opening allowed the indiscriminate entry of subsidized US rice sold far below the price at which
local farmers could produce it. As explained by Bill Quigley (2008) quoting the Haitian priest
Gerard Jean-Juste: "during the 1980s, imported rice entered the country at a price much lower
than that at which our farmers could produce it. They lost their jobs and fled to the cities. After
a few years of cheap imported rice, local production dropped miserably". A fact which led to the
most absolute misery for Haitian peasants who, unable to compete with this rice, abandoned their
crops. Today, Haiti has become one of the main importers of US rice.
Accordingly, when in April 2008, the price of rice, beans, and fruit rose by more than 50% in Haiti;
this made access to them impossible for most of the population. Several days of riots in the
poorest country in Latin America, where the adult diet is 1,640 calories (640 less than the required
average according to the UN World Food Programme), highlighted the extent of the tragedy. Faced
with the impossibility of buying food, they eat tortillas made of mud with salt.
What interest could the US have in the Haitian rice market when it is the poorest country in Latin
America? In Haiti, 78 per cent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day, and more
than half on less than a dollar a day, while life expectancy is 59 years. But, according to the US
Agriculture Department, in 2008, Haiti was the third largest importer of US rice, highly subsidized
by the US Government by billions of dollars per year. And who are the beneficiaries? Between
1995 and 2006, for example, a single producer, Riceland Foods Inc., received $500 million in
grants. According to the Washington Post in 2006, the US government paid at least 1.3 billion
dollars in grants since 2000 to individuals who had never grown anything including 490,000
dollars to a Houston surgeon who had purchased a field near a locality that once had cultivated
rice (Quigley 2008). With regard to tariffs, the United States sets a direct tariff barrier from 3% to
24% of rice imports, exactly the same protection it demanded that Haiti abandon in the 1980s
and 90s.

Mexico, the cradle of maize, is another textbook example of the wrenching away of food
sovereignty. The tortilla crisis at the beginning of 2007, with the abrupt increase in prices by
60%, due to the rise in the cost of maize, the basic component of the tortilla, placed Mexico on
the edge of economic crisis and led to global alarm. The US government subsidies to the
production of agro-fuels meant that producing maize for ethanol was more profitable than food
production and consequently pushed its price up.
But the tortilla crisis, like the food crisis today, has deeper roots and cannot be understood
without analyzing the impact of free market policies imposed by the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and Washington in recent years that converted Mexico into an importing
economy dependent on the United States for maize.
In August 1982, the Mexican government declared itself bankrupt to repay its foreign debt, but
the situation of social and economic crisis forced the government to indebt itself with commercial
banks and international institutions. In exchange for the funds provided to service its debt, the
IMF and World Bank imposed on Mexico a series of conditions under a structural adjustment
programme: opening of markets, elimination of tariffs and state regulations, contraction of public
spending, dismantling of the state credit system, subsidies to agricultural inputs and guaranteed
prices, and an end to state services in collection, marketing, warehousing and insurance of
harvests, among other things (Vivas, 2008a; Bello, 2008) [9].
This coup, as noted by Walden Bello (2008), followed another which was even more significant:
the entry into force on January 1, 1994 of the North American Free Trade Treaty (NAFTA) that
resulted in a massive influx of highly subsidized US maize, flooding markets, undercutting local
maize prices and plunging the sector into a deep crisis.
With the closure of the state agency for marketing maize, the distribution of maize in Mexico,
both US and indigenous, was in the hands of a few transnationals like Cargill and Maseca, who
had an immense power to speculate with commercial trends. This monopoly sector allows means,
for example, that a substantial rise in international maize prices is not translated into significantly
higher prices for small local producers (Bello, 2008; Patel, 2008). This situation has generated
the massive abandonment of the Mexican countryside by small producers of maize and rice and
stock breeders who cannot compete with the subsidized US products and flee to the "planet of
slums" (Davis 2008). It is estimated that a total of 1.3 million peasants had abandoned the

countryside eight years after the entry into force of NAFTA, a significant number of them
emigrating to the United States (Polaski, 2004).
But the cases of Haiti and Mexico are extrapolated to many other countries of the South, where
the systematic application of neoliberal policies in recent years has not only finished off a system
agricultural production, farming and indigenous food production but also any type of protection
and support to communities, industries and public services. Following these same mantras in Sri
Lanka, for example, the World Bank proposed ending the production of rice, a traditional crop for
more than two thousand years and the basis of local food production, because it was cheaper to
import it from Vietnam or Thailand (2006 Houtart). In the Philippines, the neoliberal economic
restructuring of the state in the 1990s transformed a net exporter of food into the largest
importer of rice in the world, buying annually on the international market between one and two
million of tons of rice to supply domestic demand (Bello 2008). The logic of the free market has
condemned these countries into a spiral of domination and misery.

Impact in the North

The consequences of the global food crisis have their echo in the countries of the North. In the
course of 2008 farmers, fishers, hauliers, livestock breeders and others took to the streets due
to the increase in the cost of fuel and raw materials and to demand fair remuneration for their
produce, while the prices of foodstuffs grew incessantly.
In January 2008, thousands of stock breeders demonstrated in Madrid, at the initiative of the
Coordination of Organizations of Farmers and Stockbreeders (COAG) to demand concrete
solutions to the crisis in the sector. COAG pointed out that the main problem was the rise in the
price of feed and the trend to lower prices at source. A situation that endangered the viability of
400,000 small and medium-sized farms unable to translate the increase in production costs into
sale prices (EFE, Jan 24, 2008).
At the beginning of May 2008, some 9,000 farmers and ranchers demonstrated in Madrid to
demand that the government introduce a new law on trade margins that limited the difference
between the price paid at origin and the price of sale to the public, today averaging up to 400%.
Mass distributors through supermarkets, hypermarkets, and discount chains are those who
benefit most at the expense of the producer and the consumer.

At the end of that May, about 7,000 fishers gathered before the Environment Ministry building in
Madrid to protest against higher fuel prices and lack of aid (petrol prices had risen by more than
320% in five years while the price of fish was constant). During the protest, the fishers, who had
come from all over the state, gave away twenty thousand fish kilos of fresh fish. The current
situation in the sector makes continuing to fish virtually unsustainable (Reuters, 30/05/08).
Hauliers also joined the protests, blocking motorways and roads, due to the rise in the price of
diesel fuel, which had already added 50% to their costs (El Mundo, 10/06/08). Examples could
continue.
At the same time, in recent years the prices of the products that are part of our food basket have
not stopped rising. In 2007, the price of milk increased by 26%, onions by 20%, sunflower oil by
34%, chicken by 16%., and this has been the trend for most foods, according to data provided by
the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce at the end of 2007, while the consumer price
index only reflects an increase of 4.1% in that same year.
It is obvious is that the effects of food crisis at both ends of the planet are hardly comparable. In
the North, we are only spending one 10 and 20% of our income to purchase food, while in the
South this figure rises to 50-60% and can even reach 80%. But this does not remove the
importance of noting the impact that this rise in prices has here, while the profits of the
multinationals continue to rise and the governments advocate greater economic liberalisation.
The situation gets worse every day. In the last ten years in the Spanish state almost ten farms a
day have disappeared and the active rural population has been reduced to 5.6% of the total, with
mostly older people remaining. With these figures, in the next fifteen years, Spain will have to
import 80% of the food needed to feed its population (Terra Foundation, 2006). Agricultural
incomes have fallen incessantly and today amount to 65% of average income. Not surprising
when, for example, the consumer price index rose by 4.2% in 2005, while the sale price of
agricultural products declined. A trend repeated year after year (2007 DOE). Source prices of
agricultural products have multiplied by up to eleven times and it is estimated that more than
60% of the final profit from the price of the product is focused on the last part of the chain, the
supermarket (2007 COAG).

Who gains?
The global food crisis benefits the multinationals that monopolize each one of the links in the
chain of production, processing and distribution of food. Indeed the economic benefits for the
major seed, fertilizer, marketing and processing multinationals in the food area and the retail
distribution chains have increased incessantly. It is a global agro-industrial complex that has
been growing for half a century, supported by public funds, international cooperation and
international agricultural development policies.
In 2007 the main seed companies, Monsanto and Du Pont, declared increased profits of 44% and
19% respectively for the previous year. The largest fertilizer companies, Potash Corp, Yara and
Sinochem saw profits grow by 72%, 44% and 95% between 2007 and 2006. The same happened
with the main food processers like Nestl with profits up by 7% in the same period. The big
commercial distributors also boosted their margins. The main supermarket chain in Great Britain,
Tesco, declared an increase of 12.3% in their profits in this period, while Carrefour and Wal-Mart
identified sales of food as their main source of income (GRAIN, 2008a; Vivas, 2008b). The 2007
annual report by the US supermarket chain Safeway showed that net income rose by 15.7%
between 2006 and 2007.
The key lies in the practice of these multinationals: selling large volumes with small margins and
supplying themselves directly from the producers. The increase in the price of cereals triggered,
according to GRAIN (2008b), "a fever in the world of big business for more control throughout
the food chain". The agribusiness multinationals and the retail distribution companies deepened
their control of the productive chain, especially through the direct trading of agricultural
production, with the aim of reducing procurement costs and guaranteeing profits.
The whole of the agri-food chain is subjected to a high business concentration. In the year 2007,
the value-added of mergers and acquisitions in the global food industry (including
manufacturers, distributors and sellers) was approximately $200 billion, double what it was in
2005. These mergers reflect the global trend upward in the creation of monopolies in the food
industry (ETC Group 2008).
If we start with the first link of the chain, seeds, we observe that ten of the largest global
companies (Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta, Bayer and so on) control half of their sales. It is a market

with a value of approximately 21 billion dollars a year, a relatively small sector compared to
pesticides or pharmaceuticals (ETC Group, 2005a), but we must bear in mind that this is the first
link in agri-food and, consequently, the risks its control involves for food safety. Intellectual
property laws giving companies exclusive rights over seeds have further stimulated business
concentration and have eroded the basic rights of farmers to maintenance of native seeds and
biodiversity. In fact, 82% of the market in commercial seeds throughout the World consists of
patented seeds (subject to exclusive monopolies such as intellectual property) (ETC Group 2008).
The seed industry is closely linked to that of pesticides. The bigger seed companies also dominate
the pesticides sector and, frequently, the development and marketing of both products is done
together. But in the pesticide industry monopoly is even higher and the ten largest firms control
84 per cent of the global market (ETC Group, 2005b).Mergers and acquisitions of companies have
the aim of achieving optimal economies of scale to compete on the world market. Agreements of
the technological cartel" type, for example, are increasing. In 2007, as the ETC Group (2008) has
noted, the worlds biggest seed company and biggest chemical company, Monsanto and BASF,
undertook a collaboration agreement in research and development to increase performance and
tolerance to drought in corn, cotton, rape and soy. These agreements allow companies to enjoy
all the benefits of oligopolist markets without anti-monopoly restrictions.
This same dynamic is observed in the big distribution sector with a high business concentration.
In Europe, between 1987 and 2005, the market share of the ten biggest multinationals has been
increasing and is currently 45% of the total, and it is predicted that this could reach 75% in the
next 10-15 years (IDEAS 2006). In countries like Sweden, three supermarket chains control about
95.1% of market share; and in countries like Denmark, Belgium, Spain, France, Netherlands, Great
Britain and Argentina, a few companies dominate 45-60% of the total (Garca and Rivera,
2007) [10]. Megamergers are the usual dynamic. The large corporations, with their matrix in
Western countries, absorb smaller chains worldwide ensuring their expansion internationally,
especially in the countries of the global South.
This monopoly and concentration allows strong control to determine what is eaten, at what price,
in what way, and how it is prepared and so on. In 2007 the worlds biggest company in terms of
sales revenues, according to the Fortune Global 500 list, was the retail multinational Wal-Mart
(number one in the list) [11], ahead of the oil and car giants like Exxon Mobile, Shell, British
Petroleum or Toyota. Further down, Carrefour (number 33), Tesco (number 51), Kroger (number

87), Royal Ahold (number 137), and Alcampo (number 139), among others. This retail distribution
model exerts a strong negative impact on the actors involved in the food chain: farmers,
suppliers, consumers, workers, and so on (Montagut and Vivas, 2008).

Institutional complicity
This set of multinationals that control each of the links of the agri-food chain have the explicit
support of the political elites and international institutions that prioritise the profits of these
companies over the nutritional needs of people and respect for the environment. A few
corporations rake in big profits thanks to a liberalized and deregulated agri-business model.
International institutions like the World Bank, WTO, IMF, FAO as well as the Alliance for the Green
Revolution in Africa, the government of the United States, the European Union and the big
multinationals in the sector say that the cause of the global food crisis lies in the lack of food
production. Number two at the FAO, Jos Mara Sumpsi made it very clear in saying it was a
problem of supply and demand due to increased consumption in emerging countries like India,
China or Brazil (El Pas, 21/04/08). The same line was taken by the Secretary-General of the
United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, at the FAOs high-level summit on food security held in Rome in
June 2008, claiming that it was necessary to increase food production by 50% while rejecting
constraints on the exports of countries affected by the crisis.
The results of the summit reflected the consensus reached between the United Nations, the World
Bank and the IMF to maintain economic and trade policies of South-North dependency and
support the agri-food multinationals. Recommendations in favour of greater openness of markets
in the South, subsidized imports of food to aid development and a new green revolution point in
this direction (Vivas, 2008c). And the "solutions" recommended by these bodies are the causes
of the current food crisis: further liberalization of international agricultural trade, introduction of
more technological and transgenic packages and so on.
As Eric Holt-Gimnez (2008) notes: "these measures simply strengthens the corporate status quo
that controls the food system". The solution cannot be freer trade because it has been
demonstrated that freer trade involves more hunger and less access to food. Nor it can be argued
that the problem today is the lack of food, never in history has there been a bigger production of

food in the world. There is not a crisis of production, but a total inability to access that production
for extensive sections of the population who cannot afford current prices.

Capitalism in crisis
The situation of acute food shortages exists in a context of a systemic crisis of capitalism with
multiple facets: economic, ecological, social, food, energy and so on. Capitalism has
demonstrated its inability to meet the basic needs of most of the worlds population (access to
food, housing, decent public health and education services) as well as its total incompatibility
with the maintenance of the ecosystem (growing loss of bio and agro diversity, increasing climate
change) (Antentas and Vivas, 2008). This has been more dramatic in the countries of the South,
which have been hardest hit by the food crisis, aggravating structural poverty they have
experienced for decades.
It is clear where what has for more than fifteen years been presented as a triumphant and
victorious ideology, as the only possible ideology, has in a relatively short time suffered a very
serious crisis of credibility and legitimacy. But even so, neo-liberal policies continue and intensify
in a framework of inter-imperialist global competition and tension between the imperialist
countries and the new emerging powers such as China and India.
In the current situation of ecological and social crisis, according to Reichmann (2008) three broad
phenomena converge: to) an anthropogenic climatic crisis, created by humans, as a result of
greenhouse effect gases. (b) an energy crisis due to our dependence on fossil fuels which today
is approaching dramatically toward its end. A dynamic which will shortly also affect natural gas
and coal (Fernndez Durn, 2008) c) a crisis of biodiversity with the disappearance of species of
animals and plants and the degradation of ecosystems that could lead to a "sixth megaextinction", the previous ones occurring by externally caused disturbances of the biosphere and
which would lead to an almost complete disappearance of life on the planet, this time resulting
from human activity. A situation which is attributable to the very poor insertion of human systems
in natural systems.

Industrial agriculture and climate change

The current model of agricultural production and industrial ranching contributes to deepening
the global ecological crisis with a direct impact on the generation of climate change. As the Stern
report (2006) states, agro-industry is one of the main sources of the generation of greenhouse
gases, ahead even of energy and transport. As the Garca report (2008b), based on that of Stern,
states, if we take the impact of deforestation (which generates 18% of greenhouse gases) and the
impact of the current agricultural and livestock model (which causes 14% of these gases), both
concepts together are responsible for 32% of greenhouse gases. A figure that can be attributed
certainly to the model of intensive and industrial agriculture which is primarily responsible for
climate change globally, ahead of the energy (24%) and transport (14%) sectors. These figures
highlight the strong impact of the current agricultural model on the erosion of the environment
and its contribution to the ecological crisis.
Not forgetting the elements that characterize this food production system: intensive, industrial,
involving extensive mileage, oil-dependent and so on. In detail. intensive because it is based on
an over-exploitation of soils and natural resources causing the release of greenhouse gases from
forests, crops and pasture. To place productivity ahead of care for the environment and the
regeneration of the land breaks the balance whereby soils capture and store carbon, contributing
to climate stability. Thus, this balance is broken and intensive farming ends up generating CO2
(Robert 2002).
Industrial because it consists of a mechanized production model with use of agrochemicals,
monoculture, and so on. The use of giant tractors to till the soil and process food certainly helps
the release of more CO2. The unavoidable chemical fertilizers in agriculture and modern ranching
generate a significant amount of nitrous oxide (NO2), one of the main sources of greenhouse gas
emissions. The use of these synthetic fertilizers on the land leads to a chemical reaction and the
release of NO2 (Garca, 2008b). Likewise, the burning of forests and jungles to create pasture or
monocultures seriously affects biodiversity and contributes to the massive release of carbon.
Oil dependent and involving extensive mileage because it is a delocalised production of goods in
search of cheaper labour and looser environmental laws. The food we eat travels thousands of
miles to get to our table with the consequent environmental effect in terms of fossil fuels used
for transport. It is calculated that most food today travels between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometres

before consumption, 25% more than in 1980. We face a totally untenable situation where, for
example, the energy used to send a few Almera lettuce to Holland is three times superior to that
used to cultivate them (Fundaci Terra, 2006). According to the British study Eating oil: food
supply in a changing climate (Jones, 2001) a typical British Sunday meal might involve
strawberries from California, blueberries from New Zealand, veal from Australia, potatoes from
Italy, beans from Thailand carrots from South Africa generating 650 times more emissions of
carbon due to transport than if the same meal had been made with locally grown food. An
irrational practice, given that much of the food imported is produced at the local level.
But food voyages do not only entail growing environmental pollution, but also induce
harmonisation and productive standardisation. For example, if until a few years ago in certain
regions of Europe hundreds of varieties of apple existed, today in a supermarket you may only
find ten types throughout the year. This has led to the abandonment of the cultivation of
indigenous varieties for those with a greater demand for big distribution in terms of
characteristics of colour, size and so on (Patel 2008). A situation that might be applied to many
other foods such as maize, tomatoes, potatoes and so on, where the commercial and productive
approach has predominated over what is ecological and sustainable.
This model, as well as its high use of oil, involves a strong dependence on fossil resources. As a
result, to the extent that the agricultural and ranching productive model depends heavily on oil,
the food and energy crises are intimately linked and the causes of the first are also responsible
for the second.

Financial crisis and food crisis

In the course of 2007 and 2008 the biggest international financial crisis since 1929 broke out.
The crisis of subprime mortgages in mid-2007 was one of its detonators, leading to historical
stock exchange collapses worldwide, numerous financial bankruptcies, constant unprecedented
interventions by central banks and government bailouts, an unprecedented deterioration of the
real economy that meant entry into recession for some of the worlds most industrialized
economies. As Toussaint (2008b) notes, "If there was no massive and concerted intervention by
the public authorities bringing aid to the thieving bankers, the current crisis would have already
acquired major proportions", and he adds that "this economic and financial crisis that has struck
the whole planet will increasingly affect the developing countries".

The financial and food crises are the result of the same policies of deregulation and have
supplemented each other. This liberalization of markets increased their vulnerability. With the
crisis of high risk mortgages in 2007 investors began to seek safer places to invest, like
agricultural products and oil. This led to the increase in the prices of food and agricultural
supplies, contributing to the situation of food crisis and pushing 2008 prices upward (HoltGimnez, 2008).
Despite the fact that the financial and economic crisis has led to a decrease in speculation in raw
materials and resulted in a reduction in their prices, this has not had a direct impact on the final
cost of food. According to Eric Holt-Gimnez the economic crisis has exacerbated the food crisis,
because governments and international institutions claim that there can be no more economic
resources to alleviate the situation of famine and the price of food in supermarkets has not fallen,
although they promote the sale of low-cost products through various mechanisms [12].
The financial and food crises have triggered what GRAIN (2008c) has called a "new world cycle of
appropriation of lands". The situation of food insecurity has led certain governments like Saudi
Arabia, Japan, Korea, Libya, Egypt, and other countries reliant on food imports to acquire
farmland in different parts of the world with the objective of producing food themselves for
domestic consumption. They are buying land in countries such as Cambodia and Sudan, where
there is a serious food crisis situation. In Sudan, the UN World Food Programme attempts to
supply food to 5.6 million refugees, while in Cambodia some hundred thousand families, a half
a million people, lack food.
But these Governments see the sale of land as an economic opportunity and as a way to get new
foreign investment.
Viewing business opportunities, the agri-food industry and private investors have followed a
similar dynamic. The purchase of agricultural land is regarded as a stable income option in a
situation of economic crisis. According to GRAIN (2008c): "in many parts of the world food prices
are high and land prices are low. And most of the solutions to the food crisis talk of extracting
more food from the land we have. And it is clear that it will be business that will have control of
the best lands, near available water supplies". So there is a growing privatization process and
concentration of fertile agricultural land to further threaten the worlds food security.

There are alternatives

But there are alternatives. Faced with the usurpation of natural resources, there is the argument
for food sovereignty: that communities control agricultural and food policies. Land, seeds, water
and soon have to be returned to farmers so that they can feed themselves and sell their products
to local communities, the surplus being assigned to fair international trade. We are talking about
practices that have been carried out for centuries and have guaranteed food security for broad
sections of the population through diversification of crops, care of the land, the use of water, the
creation of local markets and community food systems. The methods of production and
distribution of equitable and sustainable food supplies already exist, we only need the political
will to implement them (Vivas, 2008d) Furthermore, a comprehensive agrarian reform of the
ownership and production of land is necessary, together with nationalization of natural resources.
The restoration of agriculture into the hands of the peasantry will allow us to ensure universal
access to food. The results of a comprehensive international consultation that lasted four years
and involved more than 400 scientists, carried out for the International Assessment of
Agricultural Science and Technology in Development (IAASTD), a system of assessment set up by
the World Bank in partnership with the FAO, the UNDP, UNESCO, representatives of governments
and private, scientific, social institutions, concluded that agro-ecological production provides
income, food and money to the poor while generating a surplus for the market, being a better
guarantor of food security than transgenic production. In the same way, a study by the University
of Michigan concluded that agro-ecological farms are highly productive and able to guarantee
food security throughout the planet, contrary to industrialized agricultural production and free
trade (Holt-Gimnez, 2008).
And several studies show that peasant production on a small scale can yield a high performance
while using fewer fossil fuels, especially if food is marketed locally or regionally. As a result,
investment in household peasant production is the best guarantee of eradicating poverty and
hunger, and more so when of the of the worlds poorest people are small farmers (HoltGimnez, 2008).
Governments should support small-scale and sustainable production, not through mystification
of "small" or ancestral forms of production, but because it will allow us to regenerate soils, save
fuel, reduce global warming and achieve food sovereignty. Currently, we are dependent on the

international market and the interests of agro-industry and the food crisis is the result .As the
coordinator general of via Campesina, Henry Saragih, states, it is necessary for national
governments to give "absolute priority to domestic food production to reduce dependence on
international trade. Small farmers would have to be supported with the best prices for their
products and more stable markets to produce food for themselves and their communities, which
would mean an increase in investment in the production of food of peasant origin for local
marketing" [13].. Public policies must promote indigenous farming which is sustainable, organic,
free of pesticides, chemicals, and transgenics, and for products not cultivated locally to employ
fair trade instruments at the international level. It is necessary to protect agro-ecosystems and
biodiversity which are seriously threatened by the current model of agriculture.
Faced with neoliberal policies it is necessary to generate mechanisms of intervention and
regulation to stabilize market prices, control imports, set quotas, prohibit dumping and at times
of over production create specific reserves for times of food shortage. At the national level,
countries have to be sovereign to decide their degree of self-sufficiency in production and
prioritize the production of food for domestic consumption without external intervention.
Similarly, we must reject the policies imposed by the World Bank, IMF, WTO and bilateral and
regional free trade treaties as well as prohibiting financial speculation, trading in food futures
and the large scale production of agro-fuels for "green oil". It is necessary to put an end to
instruments of North-South domination like the payment of the foreign debt and fight the power
of agribusiness corporations.
Faced with the monopolistic nature of the production, processing and distribution of food we
must demand regulation and transparency along the chain of product marketing. The agroindustrial complex has very negative effects on all actors involved in the food chain: peasants,
workers, traders, suppliers, consumers. We need public policies to support small farmers in
ecological agriculture, neighbourhood trade, which defends the rights of workers, meanwhile
supporting an "alternative" consumption on the local market, agro-ecological consumption
cooperatives, short marketing circuits with a positive impact in the area and a direct relationship
with those who work the land.
There are moves towards a responsible consumption related to what we really need, as opposed
to a consumerism which is excessive, anti-ecological, unnecessary, superfluous and unfair,

promoted by the capitalist system (Sempere, 2009; Ballesteros, 2007). As Jorge Reichmann (2008)
says: "There are very strong socio-cultural elements such as this expansive culture of going
further that capitalism actively promotes, this emphasis on the unlimited nature of human wishes,
the transcendence of limits, the indefinite improvement of the human condition human
mistakenly identified with increased consumption of goods and services". Joaquim Sempere
(2007) points to some ways out of the current historical situation of collective waste of finite
natural resources, obliging us to move towards a "voluntary austerity", in spite of the difficulties
that this involves in individual deprivation for the sake of a general benefit, and adds: "the only
viable austerity for entire societies is imposed austerity" but the imposer should not be "an
authority external to society, but the collective will emerging from society itself through
decision-making mechanisms assumed as binding".
More than individual action, which has an important demonstration value and provides
consistency to our everyday practice, collective action is essential, breaking the myth that
individual actions by themselves generate structural change (Recio, 2006). In the area of
consumption, we can participate in consumer cooperatives of agro-ecological products that
usually operate at the neighbourhood level on the basis of self-managed work establishing direct
purchase relationships with the farmers and producers in our environment with the aim of
carrying out an ecological, solidarity-based consumption supporting local farmers.
But it is essential that this political action goes beyond the scope of consumption, to establish
partnerships between different sectors of society affected by capitalist globalization and act
politically. The situation of systemic crisis of capitalism, with its various facets: ecological,
financial, food, energy and so on makes this collective political action more necessary than ever.
Partnerships between farmers, workers, women, immigrants, young people and so on are a
prerequisite for progress towards that "other possible world" advocated by the social movements.
Political-social action with the aim of achieving real change in the political and economic
institutions towards a new model of development and sustainable social and ecological growth is
essential: it requires legislation prohibiting the cultivation and marketing of genetically modified
products, an end to the monopoly of mass distribution with regulation and transparency
throughout the chain of marketing and so on. A paradigm shift in the production, distribution
and consumption of food. It will only be possible within a broader political, economic and social

transformation and to achieve this is the creation of spaces of resistance, transformation and
collective political action is essential.

What creates food crises?

CAUSES OF HUNGER
There are many reasons why people cannot grow or buy enough food to feed their families. Most of
the reasons are caused by a combination of the issues below. A hunger crisis develops when
families experience these stresses for several years and run out of ways to cope, and governments
and aid agencies fail to intervene.
POVERTY
Ultimately, the main reason why most people are unable to feed themselves is not that food is
unavailable but they cannot afford it.
But poverty also reduces food output. Many African farmers produce small harvests because they
lack irrigation and fertilisers. Africa has the lowest fertiliser usage in the world a measure of how its
farmers are simply unable to afford the inputs used by their developed world counterparts.
NATURAL DISASTERS
The impact of natural disasters such as drought, flooding, hurricanes and earthquakes can vary
according to people's levels of poverty. Droughts tend to hit the poorest subsistence farmers much
harder than large commercial growers, who have access to better irrigation and more resilient seed
types.
Climate change is having an increased impact on food production as droughts and flooding become
more frequent and more severe.
Some experts say global warming may demolish people's ability to cope and push already
vulnerable families over the edge. Shrinking access to fertile land and water may trigger refugee
crises and conflicts.
Locusts are another problem farmers face. Swarms consisting of millions of locusts can decimate
large areas in a day. Governments control them using chemical sprays, but they can be difficult to
contain because of their spread.
They usually live in the deserts of Africa and Asia and, during a plague, locusts can spread to
dozens of countries. West Africa experienced a major infestation in 2004 and, in 1986-1989, a
plague began in Sudan and spread as far as India. In 1988, a swarm moved from West Africa to
the Caribbean in just ten days.
CONFLICTS
Conflict can drive people from their homes and away from their normal food supply, leave them
unable to afford food or simply stop them planting.

Other people may lose their incomes and therefore be unable to afford food. Food supplies may be
disrupted by fighting or deliberate blockade.
In many conflicts, warring parties are accused of blocking aid and commercial food deliveries
particularly to areas seen supporting rebels although this is against international humanitarian law.
In any case, war makes delivery of food much more difficult, particularly if aid workers are attacked
and supplies are looted.
GLOBAL FOOD PRICES
Rising global food prices affect people's ability to buy enough to feed their families.
Not surprisingly, the hardest hit are the poorest especially the urban poor, who can spend as much
as 80 percent of their income on food.
Countries most affected are those which need to import large amounts of food, often because of
failed harvests. Many governments introduce food subsidies or export restrictions to counter rising
costs, but some critics say these only exacerbate price rises on global markets.
In 2007 and 2008, the global price of basics like rice, wheat and maize soared, triggering riots in
many countries.
Prices are likely to become even more volatile in the next 20 years, experts say. Population growth,
demand for more varied diets in countries like China and India, and a growing market for biofuels are
putting pressure on limited resources like land and water. Climate change is affecting crop yields.
And foreign companies are taking over vast swathes of fertile farmland in poor countries to grow
food for export, potentially diminishing local farmers' access to land and food.
DISEASE
Disease can drive food shortages in a variety of ways.
The HIV/AIDS pandemic in southern Africa has contributed to food shortages both through killing
farmers, destroying critical local knowledge and pushing families deeper into poverty thereby often
cutting their ability to grow and produce food.
Antiretroviral drugs, which contain the effects of HIV, are less effective if people are malnourished.
They also produce much stronger hunger pangs, and some HIV-positive people stop taking the
medication during food crises because the hunger pangs became too painful.
Some other disease outbreaks, such as the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, also put pressure
on food supplies when people are afraid to deliver to affected areas, or because of travel restrictions.
COMPLEX EMERGENCIES

Almost all food crises contain a mixture of the above, with the different factors often combining to
produce a more powerful and serious emergency.
In 2010 and 2011, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia were almost equally affected by poor rains and crop
failure. But in Somalia, the impact of the drought was worsened by the lack of a functioning
government and by a conflict which impeded traditional drought coping strategies and made it
difficult for aid agencies to reach the most vulnerable. A famine was declared there in 2011, and an
estimated 260,000 people died.
The food crises that hit southern Africa in 2003 and 2005 were blamed on what aid workers called a
"triple threat" - the combined impact of poor growing weather, high HIV rates and deepening
poverty.
Two of the most famous famines of the last 50 years Biafra in Nigeria in the late 1960s and
Ethiopia in the 1980s were caused as much by politics and war as lack of rain.
Hundreds of thousands of people died in the short-lived breakaway state of Biafra in southeastern
Nigeria because food didn't reach them. And most observers agree that hundreds of thousands of
Ethiopians died when the effects of a two-year drought were drastically compounded by government
policies of collectivising farms and resettling ethnic groups seen as sympathetic to insurgents