A hungry future for the world

Viewpoint

Wednesday February 27th 2008

As Mexicans protest the price of tortillas and food riots in a variety of other countries become more common, it becomes clear that the world is heading towards a bigger crisis than anything implied by rising oil prices. Many of the poorest buyers can no longer afford to buy meat and grains at their inflated index-linked prices. Frédéric Lemaître looks at the factors involved and says that, to avoid catastrophe, the world will have to start producing more to eat

Wednesday February 27th 2008

More grain is being fed to animals. Photograph: Orlando Kissner/AFP

When Mexicans started protesting about the price of tortillas last year, the world didn’t take it seriously. The same non-reaction greeted a one-day boycott of pasta by Italian consumer organisations to draw attention to rising prices. We missed the point. These protests are precursors of a crisis to come, because hundreds of millions of people all over the world are finding it harder to get enough to eat. The reason is simple: the poorest buyers can no longer afford meat and grains; and – this is new – in the towns as well as in the country.

Mexico and Italy are not alone. Food riots are becoming more common. Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Guinea, Mauritania and Senegal have also had demonstrations linked to higher prices for essential foodstuffs. "This development is a much bigger headache for governments than rising oil prices," according to the head of a major international organisation at last month’s Davos forum.

The World Trade Organisation is still pressing for an agreement to lower trade barriers for agricultural produce, but individual countries have decided to restrict grain exports, fix quotas or raise duty to sometimes prohibitive levels. Russia and China (which exports maize) have enforced restrictive policies, following Argentina and Ukraine. They are determined to give priority to home markets to avoid social unrest.

Prices rocketed in 2007, when the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation’s index rose by almost 36%. "In absolute terms we have not broken any records, but we have rarely seen such fluctuations," says Abdulreza Abbassian, an FAO economist.

Several factors have combined: rising demand, stagnant supply and the increasing cost of sea transport. Rising demand could be seen as good news. Because of higher standards of living, people in Brazil, China and India have acquired new tastes. In less than a generation, average meat consumption in China has climbed from 20kg to 50kg a year, with a direct impact on demand for feed grains.

If economic growth in emerging countries continues, this trend will do so too. Every year the world has to feed an extra 28.5 million more mouths; global population is expected to increase from 6.5 billion people to 9 billion people in the second half of the 21st century, so there is little chance of a drop in demand.

Current supplies are not enough. Several of the biggest grain producers, including Ukraine and Australia, have had mediocre, even poor, harvests recently. Reserves are at their lowest for 30 years. Europe, once encumbered by its stockpiles, will have to import a record 15m tonnes of grain this year.

The higher cost of oil has had negative effects. It adds to the cost of sea transport, which now accounts for a third of the price of grain, and it boosts the appeal of biofuels, so that sugar, maize, manioc and oil seeds are diverted from the food market.

"In some African countries palm oil is index-linked to the price of crude oil. Local shoppers can no longer afford it," says Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Programme. She warns: "The WFP feeds about 90 million people out of the 860 million going hungry. Higher grain prices force us to choose. Either we feed 40% fewer people or we almost halve the size of the portions we serve."

To the three factors usually cited – rising population, economic growth and global warming – is added an equally important fourth: continued application of misguided policies. The World Bank is clear about this in its latest development report, published last October. For the past 20 years world leaders have ignored agriculture. Although three-quarters of the world’s poor live on the land, agriculture in developing countries only receives 4% of public aid.

The bank now advocates the opposite of the policies it (and the International Monetary Fund) previously implemented; it acknowledges increased agricultural output and poverty reduction depend on public investment in rural infrastructure: irrigation, roads, transport and energy.

Increased spending is even more necessary because climate change threatens agriculture. In 2007 the UN forecast that the amount of land affected by drought in sub-Saharan Africa could increase from 60m to 90m hectares by 2060; the number of people suffering from malnutrition could increase by 600 million by 2080.

Each study seems more gloomy than the one before. Earlier this month Science magazine published forecasts by scientists at Stanford University, California, predicting that southern Africa could lose more than 30% of its main crop, maize, in the next 20 years. Indonesia and southeast Asia could suffer a 10% loss. "It is worrying. We did not think it would happen so fast," admitted an FAO spokesperson.

We will all have to produce more. Some recommend giving over more land to farming, but global warming and urban sprawl are actually reducing the available space. It would also be possible to boost output, but intensive farming uses more water, which is becoming a rare and precious resource. Which leaves the development of genetically modified plants – but their use is disputed.

• This was translated by Harry Forster from the Le Monde article by Frédéric Lemaître.

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