My visits a couple weeks ago to Garifuna communities where Adelante works got me thinking about the global food crisis, and so I wrote a blog the struggles of local women to make ends meet nested within these global challenges. Since then, it seems I’m seeing news stories about the global food crisis everywhere. Several prominent international figures – such as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, the heads of the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, and several heads of state, including Bush – have spoken about a global food crisis, and the urgency need to address the crisis.

This week, the global food crisis is the cover story for The Economist, with several articles dedicated to the topic. While these articles enthusiastically adhere to The Economists’ usual political and economic stance, they clearly outline the urgency and gravity of the situation.

One article, The New Face of Hunger, quotes the head of the International Food Policy Research Institute as saying that “[w]orld agriculture has entered a new, unsustainable and politically risky period.” Food crises, unfortunately, are not new. What is different this time is the scale and magnitude of the crisis. Usually crises are localised, and only affect those already on the margins. This one is international, and affecting a much larger portion of the world’s population.

The Economist article goes on to describe some of the dramatic consequences of rising prices around the world: “In Haiti, protesters chanting ‘We’re hungry’ forced the prime minister to resign; 24 people were killed in riots in Cameroon; Egypt’s president ordered the army to start baking bread; the Philippines made hoarding rice punishable by life imprisonment.”

The article also puts forward some scary forecasts. With rising food prices, the spending power of people who buy their own food may decrease by 20% - which is a conservative estimate and in some regions prices are increasing even more. This means that the number of people living on less than 1$ a day – the definition of absolute poverty – and those living on 1$ to 2$ a day, currently a staggering 1 billion and 1.5 billion respectively, will likely increase considerably. Robert Zeollick, the president of the World Bank, has said that inflation could push 100 million people back into poverty, which would wipe out many of the gains the poorest have made in recent years.

Responses to this global crisis are not obvious, straight-forward or easy to come by. Rising prices are not just affecting individuals and families: aid agencies that send emergency food supplies are also affected, and can’t buy the same amount of food for the same amount of money. The Economist says that the World Food Program needs an extra $700 million just to distribute the same amount of food as last year. To me, this seems to suggest that the usual response of Western countries and their representative international organizations – to throw money at the crisis – won’t work too well. As prices rise and the crisis worsens, more and more money will be needed to confront the situation – making resolutions less and less attainable. Furthermore food aid is not all that is required. The Economist quotes the head of the UN’s World Food Program: “For the middle classes [an increase in food prices] means cutting out medical care. For those on $2 a day, it means cutting out meat and taking the children out of school. For those on $1 a day, it means cutting out meat and vegetables and eating only cereals. And for those on 50 cents a day, it means total disaster.”

This crisis has really demonstrated to me the inter-connections and dynamism of the world and its challenges. We can’t talk about the food crisis without talking about biofuels, the price of oil, and the disparity between the richest and the poorest – among many other issues. The causes to this crisis are many and complex, and it seems to me that responses need to confront these causes (and not only their consequences) must be equally multi-faceted and broad.

References:

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=11050146

The Silent Tsunami, April 17

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11049284

The New Face of Hunger, April 17