The world food crisis in historical perspective

Monthly Review

Volumn 61, Issue 3, 2009, Pages

  McMichael, Philip ^a  

^a Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77950763946     PISSN: 00270520     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.14452/MR-061-03-2009-07_3     Document Type: Review

References (61)

1. Susan George, How The Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons fo World Hunger (Montclair, NJ: Allenheld, Osmun and Co., 1977) Go back
2. John Vidal, "Climate change and shortages of fuel signal global food crisis," Guardian Weekly, November 9,2007. Go back
3. Eric Holt-Giménez and Isabella Kenfield, "When 'Renewable Isn't Sustainable,' Agrofuels and the Inconvenient Truths Behint the 2007 U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act," Policy Brief No 13, (Oakland: Institute for Food and Development Policy, 2008), 3. Go back
4. Quoted in Idem. Go back
5. N. Myers and J. Kent, "New consumers: The influence of affluence on the environment," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS) 100, 8 (2003), 4963-8
6. but see Daryll Ray, "Data show that China's more meat-based diet is NOT the cause of ballooned international corn prices?" Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, 2008. Go back
7. Quoted in Jacques Berthelot, "Sorting the truth out from the lies about the explosion of world agricultural prices," Solidarité, May 18, 2008. Go back
8. Quoted in John Vidal, "Climate change and shortages of fuel signal global food crisis," Guardian Weekly, November 9, 2007, 3. Go back
9. Quoted in Idem. Go back
10. The New York Times editorialized: "The rise in food prices is partly because of uncontrollable forces - including rising energy costs and the growth of the middle class in China and India. This has increased demand for animal protein, which requires large amounts of grain. But the rich world is exacerbating these effects by supporting the production of biofuels" (April 9, 2008). Go back
11. Editorial, Financial Times, April 9, 2008. Go back
12. The Wall Street Journal reported that in January, "China said it would require producers of pork, eggs and other farm goods to seek government permission before raising prices... Thailand is taking similar steps on instant noodles and cooking oil, while Russia is trying to cap prices on certain types of bread, eggs and milk. Elsewhere, Mexico is trying to control the price of tortillas, and Venezuela is capping prices on staples including milk and sugar. Malaysia is setting up a National Price Council to monitor food costs and is planning stockpiles of major foods,'
13. P. Barta, "The Unsavory Cost of Capping Food Prices," Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2008. Go back
14. Raj Patel, "Food riots," in Immanuel Ness, ed., The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest (New York: Blackwell, 2009). Go back
15. Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts, El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (New York: Verso, 2001), 285. Go back
16. Ibid, 7, 26, 299. Go back
17. Ibid, 285. Go back
18. Ibid, 38, 41. Go back
19. Ibid, 287, 65, 67. Go back
20. Ibid, 68, 70,71, 87-88. Go back
21. Ibid, 207-08;
22. Mark Seiden, Yenan Way in Revolutionary China. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). Go back
23. Harry Magdoff, The Age of Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969). Go back
24. Philip McMichael, Development and Social Change: A Global Perspective (Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, 2008). Go bac
25. Harriet Friedmann, "The political economy of food: the rise and fall of the postwar international food order," American Journal o. Sociology, 88S (1982): 248-86. Go back
26. Farshad Araghi, "Global De-Peasantization, 1945-1990." The Sociological Quarterly 36, 2 (1995), 337-68;
27. and Farshad Araghi, 'The Invisible Hand and the Visible Foot: Peasants, Dispossession And Globalization," in A. H. Akram-Lodhi and C. Kay, eds., Peasants and Globalization: Political Economy, Rura Transformation and the Agrarian Question, (London & New York: Routledge, 2008), 111-47. Go back
28. Reardon, T., C. P. Timmer, C. B. Barrett, J. Berdegue, "The Rise of Supermarkets in Africa, Asia and Latin America," American Journal of Agricultural Economics 85, no. 5 (2003) :1140-46. Go back
29. Howard French, "Linking Globalization, Consumption, and Governance," in Linda Starke, ed., State Of the World, 2004: Th Consumer Society (Washington, DC: The WorldWatch Institute. 2004). Go back
30. Larry Rohter, "Relentless Foe of the Amazon Jungle: Soybeans," The New York Times, September 17, 2003. Go bac
31. Philip McMichael, "Food security and social reproduction: Issue and contradictions," in Isabella Bakker and Stephen Gill, eds., Power, Production and Social Reproduction, (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008), 169-89. Go back
32. Raj Patel, "The story of rice," Raj's Blog, April 5, 2008. Go back
33. Jose Bové and Francois Dufour, The World is Not For Sale (London: Verso, 2001);
34. Philip McMichael, "La Restructuration Globale des Systems Agro-Alimentaires," Mondes en Developpment, 30, 117 (2002), 45-54. Go back
35. John Madeley, Hungry for Trade (London & New York: Zed Books, 2000), 54-55, 75. Go back
36. GRAIN, "Seized: The 2008 Land Grab for Food and Financial Security," Seedling (2008). Go back
37. Ibid, 2. Go back
38. Idem. Go back
39. Susan Ambler-Edwards, et al., Food Futures: Rethinking UK Strategy (A Chatham House Report, 2009), 12. Go back
40. John Madeley, Big Business: Poor Peoples (London & New York: Zed, 2008), 43
41. I. Angus, "Food Crisis: The Greatest Demonstration of the Historical Failure of the Capitalist Model,'" Global Research (April 28, 2008). Go back
42. Quoted in M. Lynas, "Selling starvation," Corporate Watch 7, Spring 2001. Go back
43. Peter Rosset, Food is Different: Why We Must Get the WTO OL of Agriculture (London: Zed Books, 2006), 65. Go back
44. GRAIN, Ibid, 2. Go back
45. The New York Times editorial, April 10, 2008. Go back
46. Aileen Kwa, "The Doha Round-If Truth be Told," Focus on the Global South (2007). Go back
47. Note that Malawi subsequently turned this situation around by reinstating fertilizer subsidies, against the advice of Britain and the United States, "contributing to a broader reappraisal of the crucial role of agriculture in alleviating poverty in Africa and the pivotal importance of public investments in the basics of a farm economy," C. W. Dugger, "Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts," The New York Times, December 2, 2007. Go bad
48. Raj Patel, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World's Food System (London: Portobello, 2007), 150. Go back
49. A. Waldman, "Poor in India Starve as Surplus Wheat Rots." New York Times, December 2,2002. Go back
50. Via Campesina. (2008). "A Response to the Global Food Prices Crisis." Go back
51. Paul Krugman, "Grains Gone Wild," The New York Times, April 7, 2008. Go back
52. Tom Philpott, "Bad Wrap," Grist, February 22, 2007. Go back
53. Patel, Ibid, 53. Go back
54. GRAIN, Ibid, 4. Go back
55. Idem. Go back
56. GRAIN, Ibid, 16. Go back
57. Agrofuels production consumes more fossil fuels, fertilizer, pesticides and water, and degrades the soil, globally, as President Bush's mandate of 36 billion gallons of agrofuels per year by 2022, cannot be met without importing from Southeast Asia and Latin America, according to
58. Eric Holt-Giménez. S. Leahy, "Biofuels and food prices." Inter-Press Service News Agency, 2008. Go back
59. Jacques Berthelot, "The food crisis explosion: root causes and how to regulate them," Kurswechsel (2008): 26. Go back
60. Ibid, 27. Go back
61. Quoted in Amory Starr, Global Revolt: A Guide to the Movements Against Globalization (London: Zed Books, 2005), 57. Go back