Warfare: Food Supply/Access

[Stan]

The rapid rise in food prices could push 100 million people in poor countries deeper into poverty, World Bank head, Robert Zoellick, has said.

So, we have a new deal coming, but no money to fund it ?

The World Bank and the IMF have held a weekend of meetings that addressed rising food and energy prices as well as the credit crisis upsetting global financial markets. Zoellick's proposal for a "new deal" to tackle the international food crisis was endorsed by the World Bank's steering committee of finance and development ministers at a meeting in Washington.

He also urged wealthy donor countries to quickly fill the World Food Programme's estimated $500m (£250m) funding shortfall.

Some intriguing video links such as this police raid in the Philippines at a warehouse suspected of hoarding rice. Doesn't appear to be much of a rice shortage, the rice is just not getting to anyone.

Then finally this tidbit:There is no rice shortage,

and the country’s rice supply is stable enough to last for 57 days, said Philippine Department of Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap. If there’s no rice shortage, why is rice price abnormally high?

[Jedburgh]

In reference to the Argentine issue and others, two weeks ago The Economist published this brief piece on the impacts of export restrictions:

In the past two weeks Cambodia, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Argentina, Ukraine and Thailand have taken the easy option, restricting food exports in an attempt to shore up domestic supplies.

Such curbs may be politically expedient, but they are economically self-defeating. They demotivate farmers, push them into growing the wrong crops and jeopardise their future access to markets. Moreover, the restrictions on supply send prices even higher on world markets.....

....Because of export quotas, Ukrainian growers, after harvesting more than they could sell at home, were forced to toss $100m-worth of rotten grain into the Black Sea earlier this year—just when world markets were desperate for supply. The measures can also be counter-productive, forcing growers to switch into new crops to avoid the export curbs. That can make local food shortages even worse.....

Another piece is the same issue states that, "...most pundits, agree that the world now has plenty of food: last year saw a record cereal harvest. And the investments spurred by today's high prices promise even more food in future. Even if one allows for rising demand from Asia's middle classes, the real challenge is not the volume of food available; it is the problem of food being in the wrong place and at a price the poorest cannot afford.".

[Tom Odom]

Another piece is the same issue states that, "...most pundits, agree that the world now has plenty of food: last year saw a record cereal harvest. And the investments spurred by today's high prices promise even more food in future. Even if one allows for rising demand from Asia's middle classes, the real challenge is not the volume of food available; it is the problem of food being in the wrong place and at a price the poorest cannot afford.".

Ted,

Once upon a time I was married to a USAID officer who worked PL480 (Food for Peace) in Sudan and again in Haiti. The above point was widely in play in 1984 during the Sudanese drought of that period (which by the way was every bit as bad as the drought in Ethiopia; it just did not get the coverage as the Sudanese government clamped down on access). The same held true in the 1990s with Haiti; food was available if someone could pay for it and if the population at risk could either pay for it or get someone else to do the same.

There was a glib SOB on CNN this morning--I forget his name--and he had written a book on food. They had coverage on the screen about the Haiti food riots and this guy said we have to help the poor countries produce more food. I almost threw my cup at at the screen; we (the West)--despite all the BS spouted about using assistance to maintain dependency--have been trying to do just that since WWII. (Does anyone really think the US wants Haiti as a dependant?) Haiti is a stellar example; one only has to look at overhead imagery and see what has happened to Haiti to understand why they might not be such great farmers.

My point in this ramble/rant is two fold:

A. Saying we have food, we just need to move it is to me much like saying we need to readjust post-colonial borders to reduce ethnic warfare. It sounds simple because it is in its heart simplistic. It completely ignores reality as in political and/or economic reality.

B. Saying we need to help the Third World develop food production is another simple statement that is simplistic. They know how to produce food in Sudan. They know how to produce food in Ethiopia. What they do not know how to do is adjust their political, economic, and social structures to the reality of the Sudan or Ethiopia. The Haitians ar another matter; the oldest black republic and the second oldest repblic in the Western Hemipshere, Haiti is very much the longest running crisis. At some stage, the Haitians either fix it or nature will. Nature is a harsh task master. Nature coupled with political/ethnic agendas is devastatingly cruel.

best

Tom

[marct]

Hi Tom,

A. Saying we have food, we just need to move it is to me much like saying we need to readjust post-colonial borders to reduce ethnic warfare. It sounds simple because it is in its heart simplistic. It completely ignores reality as in political and/or economic reality.

I'm often amazed at how many people forget that "reality", at least in the sense of operational social reality, is layered. Years ago I read a science fiction book that gave me a really great way of looking at it (David's Sling by Marc Steigler if I remember correctly) - for any given action, the first question is "is it technically feasible?" (i.e. can we do it?), followed (in order) by "is it economically feasible?" (i.e. can we afford to do it?") followed by "is it politically feasible" (i.e. do we want to do it?").

The constant focus on production is, in many ways, a hangover from old worn-out Marxist economics. Production this, production that, but no freakin' consideration of distribution (a point that Karl Polanyi made which got him excommunicated from Orthodox Marxism). A lot of Orthodox capitalist economists make the same mistake, but at the level of money as an accountancy measure (they confuse the accountancy value of a crop with the supply and demand ["needs"] value of a crop).

To make matters worse, and Zimbabwe is an excellent example of this, the hierarchy of questions is actually in a reverse order of "power"!

B. Saying we need to help the Third World develop food production is another simple statement that is simplistic. They know how to produce food in Sudan. They know how to produce food in Ethiopia. What they do not know how to do is adjust their political, economic, and social structures to the reality of the Sudan or Ethiopia. The Haitians ar another matter; the oldest black republic and the second oldest repblic in the Western Hemipshere, Haiti is very much the longest running crisis. At some stage, the Haitians either fix it or nature will. Nature is a harsh task master. Nature coupled with political/ethnic agendas is devastatingly cruel.

Charles Darwin beats Adam Smith any day of the week !

Tom, you are absolutely correct when you say that these cultures know how to produce food. A lot of the crises in food production stem from socio-cultural changes imposed on them during the past 150 years. Consider, for example, the effects of introducing late Victorian public sanitation measures in Nigeria and, at the same time, stopping clan feuds (massive increase in birth rates and decrease in death rates). Adapting to changes like that is a long and hard process, especially when your agriculture has been set towards one or more forms of mono-cropping for export.