The Ukraine conflict has triggered a major disruption of grain exports causing a serious global food crisis. Food inflation has spiked, which is resulting in greater food insecurity for poorer households the world over. However, this is not the first or last time that we will be confronted by food insecurity.
Hunger and even outright famines have been recurrent problems in human history and these problems have not gone away despite the exponential increase in food productivity. In recent years, recurrent extreme weather events and supply chain disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic began exerting growing pressure on food prices. Back in 2008, food inflation had also spiked alarmingly due to bad weather combined with rising oil process which had, in turn, triggered a high demand for biofuels, leading to food shortages and rising prices.
The UN had estimated that 193 million people in 53 countries were food insecure during this past year. These are distressing statistics given that we live in a world which produces more than enough food for everyone. Yet, poorer people in rich countries struggle with obesity due to consumption of cheaper processed foods, whereas in poorer countries, alarming levels of chronic hunger and malnutrition continue to persist. Such opposing trends indicate that the global food system is intrinsically flawed and in urgent need of drastic reforms.
The need for ensuring food security via sustainable farming practices has been sidelined due to agricultural liberalisation which is primarily motivated by the need to maximise profits. The evident flaws plaguing our global food system can be traced back to the era of colonisation which compelled farmers in the global south to turn away from subsistence farming to produce cash crops which enabled colonising countries to dominate world trade in commodities like sugar, rubber and textiles.
The promotion of the so-called ‘Green Revolution’ during the 1950s and 1960s increased global reliance on high yield seed varieties, and it increased mechanisation and the use of environmentally harmful fertilisers and pesticides. While the Green Revolution significantly boosted agricultural output, it was larger and middle-sized farmers who benefited from capital-intensive farming techniques. A significant proportion of poorer and landless farmers were in fact displaced from rural areas due to the increased reliance on mechanisation.
Agribusinesses today farm large tracts of cultivable land around the world, and multinational giants such as Monsanto have come to dominate the agricultural inputs market. The global grain trade is similarly dominated by a handful of multinational companies such as Cargil. Agricultural inputs are controlled by large firms too, including Dupont-Dow and Chem-China Syngenta. There has also been a consolidation amongst retailers as well, resulting in the domination of a handful of supermarket chains.
On the other hand, poorer farmers remain trapped in the unenviable position of providing raw materials to multinational giants which do not adequately remunerate the growers of essential ingredients which make up their products. Consider, for instance, how much a coffee bean grower is paid as a proportion of the price of an average cup of cappuccino sold by multinational chains of coffeehouses such as Starbucks or Gloria Jeans.
The global food system continues to reward richer farmers and middlemen, whereas big businesses involved in the production and distribution of food and other agri-products make obscene amounts of profits. However, small food producers (be they small landholders, sharecroppers, seasonal or daily waged agri-labourers) and poorer consumers are becoming more disenfranchised and food insecure. Our existing global food system has also wreaked environmental havoc, the brunt of which is also faced by poorer people.
Unless governments and multinational development agencies take concrete steps to reorient agricultural production to prioritise sustainable food production via poorer farmers, the problems of food insecurity and ecological destruction will only intensify.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 11th, 2022.
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