Home >> History, Ideology & Science >> International Business

     Email   Print 

Food inflation: Back into the driver’s seat

Bhuwan Thapaliya - 2/25/2011

How do you sell poverty? Very simple – inflate the food prices. And unfortunately, this is happening. Much to the dismay of the poor – the global food inflation has raised its murky head yet again, and rising food prices is making life a misery for millions of people all around the globe.

The World Bank expects above the average soar in the grain prices till the year 2015 and the scene is alarming as the price of some basis foods are already nearing or are beyond the peaks of 2008. That’s menacing news for the world and could further cripple nearly one billion people who are already trodden by hunger.

The poor, even when they work, cannot keep the wolf from the door. There is no cure yet and like protagonist brothers, hunger and poverty, share a long-lasting solidarity. Now that both are blossoming, given the volatile recovery of the world economy, the poor are suffering.

Why has the Food inflation returned? “Unpredictable weather patterns all over the major crop producing nations of the world,” say some experts. They cite the floods in Australia, droughts in China, deep freeze in Mexico and various other natural calamities that affected major crops in many parts of the world to boost their arguments.

Other experts blame it on the rising oil prices and the diversion of food crops, especially in the United States into bio-fuel production. “The price of oil is up and it raises the cost of production and transport,” they are shouting, and their argument is legitimate, but others blame it on the bad governmental policies as governments are cutting back on entitlement programs for the poor as part of austerity drives to fight inflation.

“Rising food prices mean that the World Food Programme has to pay more for the food it purchases on the open market. If we cannot mobilize extra resources to cover the higher cost of food, then our purchasing power will diminish and we will have less food to feed the hungry,” warns The World Food Programme. And the warning is alarming because there are 75 million people more undernourished now than in 2008 according to the media reports. Unfortunately, the hunger is back into the driver’s seat today and the situation could deteriorate further.

“Food prices rose by 15 percent between October 2010 and January 2011, and that pushed another 44 million people into poverty,” reports The World Bank. The statistics are frightening and it is true that food is beyond the reach of the poor and this could lead to further political instability in the world.

“The world is reaching a danger point where soaring food prices threaten further political instability. There could be an awful lot of turmoil and governments could fall and societies could go into turmoil,” World Bank president Robert Zoellick was quoted as saying by the media.

Unemployment, rising poverty, and soaring food prices along with other factors has undoubtedly coerced political turbulence across the Middle East and North Africa. Autocratic rulers in Egypt and Tunisia has already been toppled and another one is about to be toppled in Libya. Clearly, urgent action against hunger is required though it is too much to expect at the time of economic uncertainties. But something must be done. In an ideal world, food prices must come down.

Furthermore, we often hear about the government’s desire to solve hunger and the pain associated with it. Nonetheless, we must realize that people are hungry because they are poor, not because the earth is running out of food. Why the people are poor? They are poor because of various features such as war, corruption, political uncertainties, environmental disaster, rising unemployment and volatile economic growth etc.

Hence, world hunger is correlated to world poverty. Thus alleviation of hunger means the alleviation of poverty. On the flipside, however, if only one dimensional effort to provide, improve and distribute the food prevails, then the structural root causes that create hunger and poverty would linger forever.

To sum it up, world hunger is political rather than economic. For a decade or so, groups of food analysts have argued that, there is enough food in the world and shortage and hunger are not primarily about food at all. They are about poverty, and poverty should be addressed by major policy changes.

What about addressing the causes of poverty and tackling them one by one. Then hunger problem would be automatically solved. So what’s stopping us?