Summing up the casual side of the global food crisis, one last cause would be financial speculation in the international food market. In financial speculators that expected a large rate of return of food products removed trillions of dollars from mortgage bonds and equities, and invested them into food and resources Feb 26, · Essay on World Food Crisis! Socrates said that the best sauce for food is hunger. Today, as in the age of Socrates, there is no lack of hunger sauce. There is widespread concern about the relationship between population and food supply throughout the world. Numerous actions have been proposed. Jean Mayer, the famed nutritionist, holds that a 10 per cent Estimated Reading Time: 6 mins Dec 10, · Food Crisis Essay. In the present day world the crisis of food in the whole world has become a burning problem. It is essential that mainly in is connected with the countries of the third world, which are located on the African continent: “This series explores the causes and effects of the world’s worst food crisis since the s. A complex combination of poor
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Governments and international institutions have become accomplices, when not co-profiteers, in a productivist, unsustainable and privatized food system. 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, essay on food crisis.
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. 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.
The food crisis situation seen in andwith 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 million hungry, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization FAO.
But in fact, the current food crisis is already affecting directly or indirectly half of the population worldwide, more than three billion people Holt-Giménez, 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.
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.
These uprisings remind us of what happened in the s and s in the countries of essay on food crisis 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, essay on food crisis 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 s, while the population on a global essay on food crisis has only doubled GRAIN, a.
Never in history has there been so much food as today. 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 essay on food crisis 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 s all mean that today countries depend fully on volatile world grain markets Hernandez Navarro, ; Holt-Giménez, 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, essay on food crisis.
Authors such as Jacques BerthelotEric Toussaint a and Alejandro Nadalamong 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. The increase in the price of oil, which doubled in and 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, essay on food crisis, 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. We can imagine the situation in the countries of the South. 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.
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, essay on food crisis, institutional investors banks, essay on food crisis, 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-Giménez, Today it is estimated that a significant part of financial investment in the agricultural sector has a speculative character.
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. 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.
The Green Revolution had negative collateral consequences for many poor and medium peasants and for long-term food security. dismantling traditional agricultural and food systems which guaranteed food security. In the 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 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, essay on food crisis, housing and infrastructure. Devaluation of the national currency was forced, essay on food crisis, 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, a. 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 essay on food crisis 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 WTOestablished inconsolidated 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 GATTthe General Agreement on Trade in Services GATS and the Agreement on Trade-Related 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, essay on food crisis. US and European agricultural subsidies, directed mainly towards the agri-food industry, essay on food crisis, obliterate the small local producer. It is estimated that 3.
The case of Haiti is revealing. 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. They lost their jobs and fled to the cities.
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, essay on food crisis. Several days of riots in the poorest country in Latin America, essay on food crisis the adult diet is 1, calories less than the required average according to the UN World Food Programmeessay on food crisis, 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 essay on food crisis the population lives on less than two dollars a day, essay on food crisis, and more than half on less than a dollar a day, while life expectancy is 59 years. But, according to the US Agriculture Department, inessay on food crisis, Haiti was the third largest importer of US rice, essay on food crisis subsidized by the US Government by billions of dollars per year, essay on food crisis.
And who are the beneficiaries? Between andfor example, a single producer, Riceland Foods Inc. According to the Washington Post inthe US government paid at least 1. Mexico, the cradle of maize, is another textbook example of the wrenching away of food sovereignty. 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 Augustthe 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 essay on food crisis 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, essay on food crisis, contraction of public spending, dismantling of the state credit system, subsidies to agricultural inputs and guaranteed prices, essay on food crisis an end to state services in collection, marketing, warehousing and insurance of harvests, among other things Vivas, a; Bello, [9].
This coup, essay on food crisis, as noted by Walden Bellofollowed another which was even more significant: the entry into force on January essay on food crisis, 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, ; Patel, It is estimated that a total of 1.
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, essay on food crisis, 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 Houtart.
In the Philippines, the neoliberal economic restructuring of the state in the s 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 The logic of the free market has condemned these countries into a spiral of domination and misery.
The consequences of the global food crisis have their echo in the countries of the North. In the course of 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, essay on food crisis, while the prices of foodstuffs grew incessantly.
In Januarythousands of stock breeders demonstrated in Madrid, at the initiative of the Coordination essay on food crisis 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 ofsmall and medium-sized farms unable to translate the increase in production costs into sale prices EFE, Jan 24, Mass distributors through supermarkets, hypermarkets, and discount chains are those who benefit most at the expense of the producer and the consumer.
During the protest, the fishers, who had come from all over the state, essay on food crisis, gave away twenty thousand fish kilos of fresh fish. 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. It is obvious is that the effects of food crisis at both ends of the planet are hardly comparable.
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 essay on food crisis 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.
Not surprising when, for example, the consumer price index rose by 4. A trend repeated year after year DOE. 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.
The big commercial distributors also boosted their margins. The main supermarket chain in Essay on food crisis Britain, Tesco, essay on food crisis, declared an increase of The annual report by the US supermarket chain Safeway showed that net income rose by
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Dec 10, · Food Crisis Essay. In the present day world the crisis of food in the whole world has become a burning problem. It is essential that mainly in is connected with the countries of the third world, which are located on the African continent: “This series explores the causes and effects of the world’s worst food crisis since the s. A complex combination of poor Summing up the casual side of the global food crisis, one last cause would be financial speculation in the international food market. In financial speculators that expected a large rate of return of food products removed trillions of dollars from mortgage bonds and equities, and invested them into food and resources As this essay has outlined, global food crisis is becoming one of the most severe issues nowadays. Food crisis spread widely due to three main factors: increasing world population, extreme weather and widely used biofuels. These factors Estimated Reading Time: 6 mins
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