What's behind the world food crisis?

World food prices rapidly increased in late 2007 and early 2008, above all the prices of grains such as rice and wheat. As hungry people take to the streets, the press reporteded on food riots in Somalia, Haiti, Mexico, and Egypt, as well as other countries. President Bush is asking Congress for $770 million in food aid, and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will hold a conference on world food security in Rome next week.

What is the cause of the current food crisis? Dominique Baillard of Radio France Internationale surveys a number of commonly repeated theories in the May 2008 issue of Le Monde Diplomatique. Economic growth in emerging nations such as China, diversion of corn to ethanol production, and weather problems in Australia and other countries, have all affected the market. As prices of agricultural commodities become more volatile, speculators have entered as well, amplifying price swings.

Keith Bradsher and Andrew Martin of The New York Times point to cutbacks in agricultural research as the culprit. In their recounting, "during the food surpluses of recent decades, governments and development agencies lost focus on the importance of helping poor countries improve their agriculture." Yet, while focusing on the real damage done to agricultural research programs, their article mentions in passing the reason for this "lost focus". "Many poor countries, instead of developing their own agriculture, turned to the world market to buy cheap rice and wheat. In 1986, Agriculture Secretary John Block called the idea of developing countires feeding themselves 'an anachronism from a bygone era', saying they should just buy American." Since they leave the matter here, the NYT reader would think that the change to global agriculture was simply a result of market developments.

In "Manufacturing a Food Crisis," an article in the June 2 issue of The Nation, Walden Bello of Focus on the Global South gives the details on why developing countries "turned to the world market" in the 80s and 90s. They were forced to by the rich countries. The IMF and World Bank demanded Mexico "eliminate high tariffs, state regulations and government support institutions, which neoliberal doctrine identified as barriers to economic efficiency", and peasant production of corn was further assaulted in 1994 when NAFTA eliminated agricultural tariffs. "Mexico's status as a net food importer has now been firmly established." Similarly, the Philippines went from a rice exporter to a rice importer as a result of IMF-imposed economic restructuring and its membership in the WTO.

Bello points to resistance such as that of the government of Malawi, which supported peasant agriculture, as well as to peasant movements such as La Via Campesina. Peasants "are now leading the opposition to a capitalist industrial agriculture that would consign them to the dustbin of history .... With environmental crises multiplying, the social dysfunctions of urban-industrial life piling up and industrialized agriculture creating greater food insecurity, the farmers' movement increasingly has relevance not only to peasants but to everyone threatened by the catastrophic consequences of global capital's vision for organizing production, community and life itself."