The Food Crisis

What the World
Is Hungering for
Amid world summits and disappointing aid policies, 850 million people face starvation. “There are too many people,” say some. But numerous factors are at work and often the most important are ignored. Take education...

by Paolo Perego

A supper with friends, the table is laid. The bell rings and all at once the number of guests doubles, but the amount of food on the table remains the same. You can raid the larder, but someone will still go hungry. A banal example, but it gives some idea of the way the newspapers have dealt with the global food crisis in recent months. Weeks of analysis, discussions, intervention, and then in many cases the hurried conclusion: there are too many of us flocking to the world table. “The blanket is too short,” wrote Giovanni Sartori in the Corriere della Sera,Italy’s leading daily newspaper, mounting his hobby horse yet again: overpopulation. Simple, isn’t it?
“No, it’s not a population problem,” retorts Dario Casati, Director of the Department of Economics and Agricultural Policy at the State University in Milan. “Undeniably, the situation is critical. But it’s partly a result of special factors. And the prospects are not completely hopeless, as some alarmists are claiming.”
Let’s try to get our ideas straight, starting from the facts. One indisputable fact emerged from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) summit in Rome in June. Around the world, over 850 million people (more than 2.5 times the population of America) are suffering from hunger caused by soaring prices and the shortfall in agricultural produce. To give some idea, according to the FAO, soybean prices have risen 87% in one year; rice, 74%; wheat, a whopping 130%. The Economist called it “the silent tsunami.” Bread riots in Egypt, deaths in fighting over rice in Haiti, and the rationing of food in Philippine restaurants are some of the details in the picture worldwide. “Since 2005, the demand for agricultural products for food use has outstripped worldwide supply,” observes Casati. A crisis long forecast, though it has materialized more rapidly than expected. Why?
On the demand side, some have tried to attribute the causes to the increase in the world population, from 4 billion in 1975 to 6.6 in 2006, with a forecasted 9 billion looming in 2050. This is the old theory of the eighteenth-century economist Thomas Malthus. But the problem is not just demographic. Development in countries like China and India has led to a change in the quality of their demand for food. For example, people are eating more meat. This means more agricultural produce is going into animal feed. It takes an estimated 4.5 lbs. of grain to produce a chicken in China. If consumption rises from 0.5 to 1 chicken per head per year, given that the country has a population of 1.3 billion, the demand for cereals will rise sharply. So, it’s not just a question of “how much” but also of “what” people are eating.
On the supply side, the question is even more complicated. Numerous factors are at work–agricultural policy first of all. Emilio Colombo, who teaches Economics at the Bicocca University in Milan, points out that there have been no substantial investments in agriculture worldwide over the past 30 years, with the productivity of land stagnating (see ilsussidiario.net). This contrasts with what happened in the second half of the twentieth century with the extensive use of farm machinery (250% between 1950 and 1984, for example). On the crest of that “green revolution” and with agricultural policies (above all in the USA and EU) that added incentives and regulations, in the 1980s production boomed to the point that prices sometimes collapsed. The result was a crisis in certain sectors, so much so that farmland was allowed to go out of cultivation and investments in research declined.

Garish colors
Food costs have also increased because of price hikes in raw materials, like oil, which have a knock-on effect on farm prices. The increase in the cost of crude oil ($10 a barrel in ’98; today, over $140) has not just jacked up production costs and therefore prices but has also led to more investment in other crops. For example, biofuels have long been fingered as one of the main causes of the crisis. Corn, soybean, or sugar cane are being used to produce biodiesel rather than food, and it shows. Then, farm output has dipped in some places, like Europe and Australia, because of poor seasons in recent years. And add uncurbed financial speculation in raw materials and you get the general picture–a picture usually painted in garish colors, even though “favorable harvests are forecast for 2008,” explains Casati, “and the ‘speculative bubble’ in the prices of raw materials is bound to burst sooner or later. Sharper demand could soon be matched by a rise in supply.” Given the causes, there remains the question: how to fight a crisis of this kind?
The question was raised at the last FAO summit, which was so disappointing that some observers raised serious doubts about the use of the UN agency, considered “a waste of money,” its hands tied by politics. “Be careful,” warns Casati. “The FAO’s existence is important, but clearly not sufficient. We need forms of local aid, not welfare.” It sounds like a complex prescription. But the FAO’s own figures show that the food shortages occur wherever agricultural productivity is low. In Africa, Central America, Eastern Europe, and Asia, low agricultural yields are often combined with misgovernment or war. Better policies are needed. Peace and stability are needed. And also needed are two fundamental ingredients all too often forgotten: new technologies and, above all, education. If we consider that the world’s available farmland is now close to being fully exploited, the only solution is to increase productivity by applying technology.

The decisive factor
In the past, it was farm machinery that increased productivity. Clearly, today the relevant technology has different names and uses different means. One is biotech crops: genetically modified organisms. The debate is under way, but perhaps it needs to be conducted on a less ideological basis.
The decisive factor, however, is the second: education. Without it, investments and technologies will fail. This was recently stressed by Alberto Piatti, Secretary General of AVSI, who presents facts and some concrete achievements at ilsussidiario.net. The examples include Haiti, one of the countries where the problem of food prices is most acute and where the Italian NGO has collaborated in the creation of an experimental farm. “This has enabled farmers to get three rice harvests instead of one and in some cases increase production fourfold.” Or Rwanda, where a center has been set up to fight malnutrition. Mothers are taught how to feed their babies and also how to raise livestock. They are given two head of cattle and then give back one of the calves born to them. “These examples show how we can cope effectively with the emergency by getting involved with local populations, through activities that affect their daily lives, so that people learn the culture of development in personal and family growth.”
We need to teach and take risks. The same thing happened in the Po River Valley in Italy centuries ago, recalls Piatti: “It was an unhealthy swampland. But the Benedictines turned it into the most fruitful region in the world. We can’t skip the stage of human freedom. Without it, we can transfer goods, technologies, and machinery. But people won’t grow.”