A new era of food insecurity?

Survival

Volumn 51, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 71-98

  Dupont, Alan ^a   Thirlwell, Mark ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

^b Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 70449572711     PISSN: 00396338     EISSN: 14682699     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00396330903011511     Document Type: Article

References (95)

1. See United States Department of Agriculture, Food Security Assessment, 2007 (Washington DC: United States Department of Agriculture, July 2008). The FAO, using a different methodology, estimates that the number of chronically hungry people in the world in 2007 increased by 75 million over and above its estimate of 848m undernourished in 2003-05, bringing the total estimate of undernourished up to 923m in 2007. UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2008: High Food Prices and Food Security - Threats and Opportunities (Rome: FAO, October 2008).
2. Mark Thirlwell, 'Food and the Spectre of Malthus', Financial Times, 26 February 2008.
3. Cormac O Gráda, 'Making Famine History', Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 45, no. 1, March 2007, pp. 5-38.
4. World Bank, Double Jeopardy: Responding to High Food and Fuel Prices, Paper for G8 Hokkaido-Toyako Summit (Washington DC, World Bank, 2008).
5. Global per-capita food use of cereals seems to have peaked in the early 1990s, largely reflecting trends in China and India. See UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, World Agriculture: Towards 2030/2050 (Rome: FAO, 2006).
6. The geography of Asian consumption and production follows a north-west versus south-east divide, with wheat dominating the former and rice the latter. Asian Development Bank, Food Prices and Inflation in Developing Asia: Is Poverty Reduction Coming to an End? (Manila: Asian Development Bank, 2008).
7. Bob Davis and Douglas Belkin, 'Food Inflation, Riots Spark Worries for World Leaders', Wall Street Journal, 14 April 2008;
8. Maros Ivanic and Will Martin, Implications of Higher Global Food Prices for Poverty in Low Income Countries, Policy Research Working Paper no. 4594 (Washington DC: World Bank, April 2008).
9. Quoted in 'Price Surge Driving Some Countries Close to Tipping Point - IMF', IMF Survey Magazine, 2008.
10. Standard and Poor's, Is Food the New Oil? Credit Implications of the Unfolding Food-price Shock (New York: Standard and Poor's, 2008).
11. See, for example, OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017 (Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, 2008).
12. International Monetary Fund, Food and Fuel Prices - Recent Developments (Washington DC: International Monetary Fund, 2008).
13. FAO, World Agriculture: Towards 2030/2050.
14. Ivan Roberts, Phantipa Puangsumalee and Jammie Penm, 'Agricultural Trade - the Changing Environment for Trade Policy and Agricultural Prices', Australian Commodities, vol. 15, no. 1, March 2008, pp. 217-35.
15. Internatonal Monetary Fund, 'The Boom in Nonfuel Commodity Prices: Can it Last?', in World Economic Outlook: Financial Systems and Economic Cycles (Washington DC, International Monetary Fund, 2006).
16. OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017; OECD, Rising Food Prices: Causes and Consequences (Paris: OECD, 2008). For 1961-2008, significant nominal price increases (defined as years when the annual percentage change was above two standard deviations of the five preceding years) occurred in 1972-74, 1988, 1995 and the current experience. In real terms, significant price-event years are 1973, 1974, 2007 and 2008.
17. See FAO, Soaring Food Prices: Facts, Perspectives, Impacts and Actions Required, paper prepared for the High- Level Conference on World Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy, Rome, 3-5 June 2008 (Rome: FAO, April 2008).
18. It is important to note that for most consumers of food there is a distinction between the agricultural commodity price and the final food price. The former is only one of several factors influencing the latter, along with the costs added on by distribution (transport and storage), taxation and retail mark-ups. For example, farm-gate prices of agricultural commodities in many developed economies account on average for 25-35% of the final retail price. Typically, the higher the degree of processing, the lower the share of the raw commodity in the final price. In developing countries the lower share of processed goods tends to mean a closer link between commodity and food prices. OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017.
19. Based on the medium variant. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision (New York: United Nations, 2007).
20. Nikos Alexandratos, 'Countries with Rapid Population Growth and Resource Constraints: Issues of Food, Agriculture and Development', Population and Development Review, vol. 31, no. 2, June 2005, pp. 237-58.
21. FAO, World Agriculture: Towards 2030/2050.
22. Barry Popkin and Shu Wen Ng, 'The Nutrition Transition in High- and Low-income Countries: What are the Policy Lessons?', Agricultural Economics, vol. 37, no. s1, December 2007, pp. 199-211.
23. See the special article by Shahla Shapouri and Stacey Rosen in USDA, Food Security Assessment, 2007.
24. IMF, 'The Boom in Nonfuel Commodity Prices'.
25. Christopher L. Delgado, 'Rising Consumption of Meat and Milk has Created a New Food Revolution', Journal of Nutrition, vol. 133, no. 11, November 2003, pp. 3907S-10S.
26. Ronald Trostle, Global Agricultural Supply and Demand: Factors Contributing to the Recent Increase in Food Commodity Prices (Washington DC: United States Department of Agriculture, 2008).
27. Stephen King, Stuart Green and Philip Poole, Food Fight: The Global Food Crisis (London: HSBC Global Research, April 2008).
28. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division, World Urbanisation Prospects: The 2007 Revision (New York: United Nations, 2008).
29. James Hookway, 'Rice Hoarding Pressures Supplies', Wall Street Journal, 31 March 2008.
30. The US Congress approved subsidies for adding ethanol to gasoline following the first oil-price shock in the 1970s. Kimberley Elliot, Biofuels and the Food Crisis: A Survey of the Issues, Working Paper no. 151 (Washington DC: Center for Global Development, August 2008). Naylor and Falcon trace the links between ethanol and maize in the United States to 2005 environmental regulations aimed at eliminating methyl tertiary butyl ether (MBTE) as a gasoline additive because of health and environmental risks. Maize-based ethanol has since become the preferred substitute, and most of the ethanol produced in 2007 in the United States was used as an oxygenate in US fuel.
31. Rosamond L. Naylor and Walter P. Falcon, 'Our Daily Bread', Boston Review, September-October 2008.
32. William Coyle, 'The Future of Biofuels: A Global Perspective', Amber Waves, vol. 5, no. 5, November 2007, pp. 24-9.
33. See Focus B in World Bank, World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development (Washington DC: World Bank, 2007).
34. Cited in Jacques Diouf, 'The Current Food Crisis: Challenges and Opportunities for Agricultural Development', Address to the Conferencia Magistral, Havana, 21 July 2008.
35. Cited in Elliot, Biofuels and the Food Crisis.
36. Iain Macwhirter, 'The Trading Frenzy that Sent Prices Soaring', New Statesman, 17 April 2008.
37. Part of this rise represents increases in prices rather than inflows of new money. Saijel Kishan, 'Investment in Commodity Indexes Soars to $250 billion', Bloomberg.com, 1 May 2008.
38. Box 2.2 in OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017.
39. Javier Blas and Joanna Chung, 'The Usual Suspects: Are Financial Investors Driving Up the Cost of Commodities?' Financial Times, 7 July 2008.
40. See Box 5.1 in IMF, The Boom in Nonfuel Commodity Prices.
41. Martin Wolf, 'Food Crisis is a Chance to Reform Global Agriculture', Financial Times, 29 April 2008.
42. IMF, The Boom in Nonfuel Commodity Prices. Econometric estimates suggest that a fall in the US dollar increases US-dollar commodity prices with an elasticity of between 0.5 and 1.0. Cited in Donald Mitchell, A Note on Rising Food Prices (Washington DC: World Bank, April 2008) (mimeo).
43. Trostle, Global Agricultural Supply and Demand.
44. This despite the fact that hundreds of millions of people remained food insecure. However, they were too poor to afford more food, and hence stimulate demand. FAO, World Agriculture: Towards 2030/2050.
45. Alan Dupont, East Asia Imperilled: Transnational Challenges to Security (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
46. This is the argument advanced in Asian Development Bank, Food Prices and Inflation, and also in King, Green and Poole, Food Fight.
47. Roberts et al., 'Agricultural Trade'.
48. L.R. Oldeman, R.T.A. Hakkeling and W.G. Sombroek, World Map of the Status of Human Induced Soil Degradation: An Explanatory Note (Wageningen: International Soil Reference and Information Center, 1990).
49. World Bank, World Development Report 2008.
50. Fiona Harvey, 'Soil under Strain: A Thinning Layer of Life Evokes Concern', Financial Times, 16 July 2008.
51. Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, Water for Food, Water for Life: A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture (London and Colombo: Earthscan and International Water Management Institute, 2007).
52. Frank R. Rijsberman, 'Every Last Drop: Managing Our Way out of the Water Crisis', Boston Review, September-October 2008.
53. FAO, Climate Change, Water and Food Security, technical background document from the expert consultation held on 26-28 February 2008 (Rome: FAO, 2008); World Bank, World Development Report 2008.
54. Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture, Water for Food, Water for Life: A Comprehensive Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture; and World Bank, World Development Report 2008.
55. OECD Environmental Outlook to 2030 (Paris: OECD, 2008).
56. World Bank, World Development Report 2008.
57. Mitchell, A Note on Rising Food Prices.
58. World Bank, Double Jeopardy.
59. Cited in OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017.
60. Nitrogen fertilisers, for example, are produced with natural gas.
61. Keith Bradsher and Andrew Martin, 'Shortages Threaten Farmers' Key Tool: Fertiliser', New York Times, 30 April 2008.
62. FAO, Current World Fertilizer Trends and Outlook to 2012 (Rome: FAO, 2008).
63. Trostle, Global Agricultural Supply and Demand.
64. Export policy changes included the imposition of export taxes in China (grains), Argentina (wheat, corn, soybeans, soybean meal, soybean oil), Russia (wheat), Kazakhstan (wheat) and Malaysia (palm oil); the introduction of quantitative restrictions in Argentina (wheat), Ukraine (wheat), India and Vietnam (rice); and the imposition of export bans in Serbia and Ukraine (wheat), Egypt, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia (rice), India (wheat and non-basmati rice) and Kazakhstan (oilseeds and vegetable oils).
65. Keith Bradsher and Andrew Martin, 'Hoarding Nations Drive Food Costs Ever Higher', New York Times, 30 June 2008. According to the World Trade Organisation, not one of these countries had met its obligation to notify the organisation of its actions as required by WTO rules (albeit a rule without any penalties for being breached). The policy actually showed some signs of 'working' in the short term: in the case of Egypt, for example, the announcement of a six-month ban on export sales cut the local price of rice by US$100 in the space of a single day. Alan Beattie and Javier Blas, 'Precious Grains', Financial Times, 15 April 2008.
66. Hookway, 'Rice Hoarding Pressures Supplies'.
67. OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017.
68. FAO, Soaring Food Prices.
69. Alan Beattie, 'As Food Costs Rise, Farmers Cling to their Subsidies', Financial Times, 13 May 2008.
70. Trostle, Global Agricultural Supply and Demand.
71. As already noted above, the biofuel story is not quite as convincing when applied to the rice-price spike, although there are some linkages due to substitution effects. In the case of rice, some other factors were at work, including a run-down in Thailand's large government stocks, the presence of which had been keeping world market prices from rising, and lower Chinese production incentives for rice, which in turn led to lower exports, lower stocks and higher imports. Mitchell, A Note on Rising Food Prices.
72. A somewhat different perspective would place even more weight on long-term supply and demand factors, stressing that the real 'surprise' was not the sudden price spike in early 2008, but rather the absence of such a price spike before then. Anthony Faiola, 'The New Economics of Hunger', Washington Post, 27 April 2008.
73. FAO, Climate Change and Food Security: A Framework Document (Rome: FAO, 2008).
74. Cited in Box 2.1 in Alan Dupont and Graeme Pearman, Heating up the Planet: Climate Change and Security, Lowy Institute Paper 12 (Sydney: Lowy Institute for International Policy, 2006).
75. Country elevation also matters, with higher elevation implying lower losses. William R. Cline, 'Global Warming and Agriculture', Finance and Development, vol. 45, no. 1, March 2008.
76. Table SPM.2 in Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Summary for Policymakers (Geneva: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007).
77. See Cline, 'Global Warming and Agriculture'. For a more detailed version,
78. William R. Cline, Global Warming and Agriculture: Impact Estimates by Country (Washington DC: Center for Global Development and Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2007).
79. World Bank, World Development Report 2008.
80. Cited in Joachim von Braun, The World Food Situation: New Driving Forces and Required Actions (Washington DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2007).
81. Rijsberman, 'Every Last Drop'.
82. FAO, Climate Change, Water and Food Security.
83. Rijsberman, 'Every Last Drop'.
84. Josef Schmidhuber and Francesco N. Tubiello, 'Global Food Security under Climate Change', Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 104, no. 50, 11 December 2007, pp. 19703-8.
85. David B. Lobell, Marshall B. Burke, Claudia Tebaldi, Michael D. Mastrandrea, Walter P. Falcon and Rosamond L. Naylor, 'Prioritizing Climate Change Adaptation Needs for Food Security in 2030', Science, vol. 319, no. 5863, 1 February 2008, pp. 607-10.
86. Box 2.1 in World Bank, World Development Report 2008, discusses why there was no Green Revolution in sub-Saharan Africa.
87. Javier Blas and Jenny Wiggins, 'Expensive Tastes: Rising Costs Force Food up the Political Agenda', Financial Times, 17 March 2008.
88. World Bank, World Development Report 2008.
89. Mark W. Rosegrant, Claudia Ringler, Timothy B. Sulser, Siwa Msangi, Tingju Zhu, Rowena Valmonte-Santos and Stanley Wood, 'Agriculture in Asia: Challenges and Opportunities', in Reducing Poverty and Hunger in Asia, 2020 Focus, no. 15 (Washington DC: International Food Policy Research Institute, March 2008).
90. Paul Roberts, 'Food Fight: The Four Barriers to the Genetically Modified Food Revolution - and why No One is Talking about Them', Slate, 8 August 2008. Also Focus E in World Bank, World Development Report 2008.
91. World Health Organisation, Modern Food Biotechnology, Human Health and Development: An Evidence Based Study (Geneva: Food Safety Department, World Health Organisation, 2005).
92. See, for example, Raj Patel, A Critical Review of the World Bank's World Development Report 2008, discussion paper, ActionAid, October 2007.
93. For an interesting argument that we may be generating too few, rather than too many, environmental false alarms, see Steven W. Pacala, Erwin Bulte, John A. List and Simon A. Levin, 'False Alarm over Environmental False Alarms', Science, vol. 301, no. 5637, 29 August 2003, pp. 1187-9.
94. Nicholas Eberstadt, 'Six Billion Reasons to Cheer', Wall Street Journal Asia, 13 October 1999.
95. Chris Flood, 'Grain Production to Reach Record Levels', Financial Times, 9 May 2008.