Jon Sumby

In the past year, food riots have broken out in Morocco, Yemen, Mexico, Guinea, Mauritania, Senegal and Uzbekistan. After protests around Indonesia, Jakarta has increased public food subsidies. India has banned the export of rice except the high-quality basmati variety. Algeria and Saudi Arabia (the land of fabled oil wealth) have increased food subsidies. Argentina has put bans or protective tariffs on food staples like wheat and milk powder.
THE COST OF BASIC foodstuffs has risen by over 40% worldwide in the last few months, putting pressure on the UN’s World Food Program (WFP) which supplies food aid to 73 million people.

For the last eight months the WFP has been adjusting to the increasing costs but last week the executive director of the WFP, Josette Sheeran, warned that the aid program cannot afford to feed the people it helps and may have to ration food aid. At the moment this is a potential problem as the answer is money and last Friday the WFP convened a special meeting to try and raise the half-billion (in US dollars) that it needs to continue food aid. Sheeran also warned that it possible that the WFP cannot give food for disaster relief or famines that might happen over and above the usual WFP aid program. There have been individual responses, with the actor Drew Barrymore donating US$ one million to the WFP this week.

The inflationary price of food has been dramatic, with the international cost of wheat rising from US$3 four years ago to US$24 now, greatly outstripping the rise in the price of oil. There are several main factors for the problem the WFP is experiencing, described by Sheeran as coming together as a ‘perfect storm’. The chief reasons are: The rise of biofuels and the wealth they generate for the agricultural industry, which has been shifting from food crops to biofuel production; global warming which is reducing water supplies, arable land, and increasing drought losses to agriculture; the increasing cost of oil, both for food production and transport.

Although the WFP will probably be able to raise the extra US$500 million it needs at the moment to keep supplying food to starving people, this is a problem that will not go away as all of these factors are not likely to disappear. Supplying basic food to people on the edge of starvation will become increasingly difficult.

Food rationing is beginning not only in poor nations but also in countries that are considered prosperous. The WFP executive director Josette Sheeran commented that, ‘Even middle-class, urban people in countries such as Indonesia, Yemen, and Mexico are increasingly being priced out of the food market or forced to sacrifice education and healthcare.’

In Iraq, the Government has been scaling back the food aid program for the past few months and intends to end it by June for all but the neediest families. Pakistan has reintroduced rationing for the first time in two decades. Russia has frozen the price of milk, bread, eggs and cooking oil for six months and Thailand is also planning a freeze on food staples.

In the past year, food riots have broken out in Morocco, Yemen, Mexico, Guinea, Mauritania, Senegal and Uzbekistan. After protests around Indonesia, Jakarta has increased public food subsidies. India has banned the export of rice except the high-quality basmati variety. Algeria and Saudi Arabia (the land of fabled oil wealth) have increased food subsidies. Argentina has put bans or protective tariffs on food staples like wheat and milk powder.

Because of the cost the USA has already decided to cut back food aid programs delivered by the USAID agency. The most wealthy and carbon polluting nation on Earth is cutting food supplies to some of the world’s poorest nations.

Australia is no longer immune. We have enjoyed low food prices with a strong economy and dollar-value. Australia is a wealthy, comfortably middle-class, society but even here food pressure is growing. Last year had the lowest harvest of rice since 1920, despite the ‘green revolution’ and scientific agriculture. The Government expects milk prices to rise until 2009. For the first time in Australia’s history we may have to import grain (barley in this case) and market analysts are forecasting steep rises in the cost of basic foods over the next year.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the consumer price index (CPI) has risen 14.8% in the last five years. Over the same period the price of fruit has risen by 27.8%, the price of dairy by 23.6%, the price of meat by 13.7% and the price of bread and cereals by 17.5%.

Internationally, in the past twelve months, the commodity price for wheat has risen by 68%, for dairy by 38% and for canola by 54%, according to the National Farmers Federation–Westpac (NFF-W) commodities index. The price spiral and commodities indices ‘shows no sign of abating’ according to the NFF-W commodity report. These rises will be passed on to consumers as producers feel the inflationary pressure.

The issue of cropland for food or biofuel will grow in the next few years. The global production of biofuels has doubled in the last seven years to 72.7 billion litres. The United States, just one nation, has a 2022 biofuel production target of 163.6 billion litres which is more than twice the current total global biofuel production and will require an enormous conversion of cropland to fuel production. This is despite recent research showing that biofuel is not greenhouse negative and actually increases carbon emissions by between 17 and 420 times.

Food wastage is another concern. More than one quarter of edible food produced in Australia is wasted, thrown away, every year. In the UK, 20 million tonnes of edible food is thrown away each year. This is equivalent to half the entire WFP food aid program to Africa. We live in a luxurious, wasteful, consumer society. Australia is a meat nation, which is probably the most costly and wasteful way of using cropland to grow food.

Recent research says that the world has entered ecological overshoot; we are in the time where we are using more resources than the Earth’s ecosystems can continue to supply and this has probably been the case since the 1980s. One measure of consumption is what is called the ‘ecological footprint’. The US has an ecological footprint of over nine hectares per person; Australia has a footprint of over six hectares per person, while a Burmese peasant has less than one hectare. Averaged across the world every person has an ecological footprint of about two hectares, which indicates that we are living on a biological deficit a situation that will become more critical as world population grows.

UPDATE
–From the BBC:

“‘This is not a short-term bubble and will definitely continue. The assessment is that we are facing high food prices at least for the next couple of years’ – Josette Sheeran WFP Executive director
Miss Sheeran said global food reserves were at their lowest level in 30 years – with enough to cover the need for emergency deliveries for 53 days, compared with 169 days in 2007.
The WFP says countries where price rises are expected to have a most direct impact include Zimbabwe, Eritrea, Haiti, Djibouti, the Gambia, Tajikistan, Togo, Chad, Benin, Burma, Cameroon, Niger, Senegal, Yemen and Cuba.
Areas where the WFP is already seeing an impact include:
– Afghanistan: 2.5 million people in Afghanistan cannot afford the price of wheat, which rose more than 60% in 2007
– Bangladesh: The price of rice has risen 25% to 30% over the last three months. In 2007, the price rose about 70%.
– El Salvador: Rural communities are buying 50% less food than they did 18 months ago with the same amount of money. This means their nutritional intake, on an already poor diet, is cut by half.
– Anger over rising food prices have already led to riots in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Senegal and Morocco.’ – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/7281686.stm

The BBC is planning a special day of coverage of this issue on Tuesday 11 March, online, on radio and on TV.

Ecological overshoot:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/99/14/9266

Ecological footprint:
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=footprint_overview

Australian food wastage:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/How-our-greed-costs-millions-every-year/2005/05/07/1115422849473.html

UK food wastage:
http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=17489

US cuts food aid
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23305038-1702,00.html