The ongoing food crisis has been described as a “very complex emergency” by academic and IPES-Food expert, Raj Patel who said it is a crisis of affordability, poverty and debt.
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) recently warned that the world is at serious risk of a food-access crisis, moving backwards in its efforts to end hunger and malnutrition.
A previously published FAO report estimated that up to 828 million people or 10.5% of the global population faced hunger last year, up 150 million since 2019, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Food shortages do not mean that there is not enough food, however, it means people cannot afford the food or get access to it, according to Thin Lei Win who specialised in researching food and climate issues. She said:
“Hunger is a result of political decisions, not supply.
“Last year we produced almost 780 million tonnes of wheat, out of which less than 25% were actually exported. Talking about global supply, Russia and Ukraine account for a third of almost 25% of wheat production.”
Using the global wheat market as an example, Patel explained that since the war in Ukraine the price of wheat has gone through the roof, to the benefit of traders including Archer Daniels Midland and Bunge whose share prices spiked.
Price inflation
The average cost of a healthy diet in 2020 increased for all regions of the world, leaving almost 3.1 billion people unable to afford a healthy diet, up 112 million on the 2019 figure, the FAO said.
Price speculation is a major factor, according to IPES-Food expert Patel who explained that there is money to be made out of hunger.
The pressure of the industry to find low costs leads to speculation, which means that traders place bets to pay on a contract that is, in most cases, a year in advance, director of the Food and Environment Programme at the Union of Concerned Scientists, Ricardo Salvador said.
These bets are based on the prediction that a specific part of the world will have favourable environmental conditions and ample supply; or poor growing conditions due to drought.
Using a cereal bar as an example, Salvador explained that the agricultural product is just one component of assembling a processed food product.
“[Products] are not seen as food by the majority of people that are trading in this material. They are seen as commodities that are about one ingredient in the processed-food economy.
“Everybody is in that speculation game, also farmers themselves who are trying to sell their product at the highest price. But the major speculators are the large aggregators and brokers of grain,” according to the director.
Food security and sufficiency
A programme to end hunger in Brazil successfully halved the number of people suffering from severe food insecurity between 2004 and 2013, secretary general of FIAN International, a global human-rights organisation, Sofia Monsalve Suarez said.
Strategies under the Fome Zero programme included the set up of a national council for food and nutrition security at state and municipal level, enhancing peasant farming and access to food.
Implemented public policies were not designed to serve the global supply chain and distant markets. Instead, they were there to build territorial food systems, she explained.
Brazil was temporarily removed from the FAO hunger map in 2014, however the current government destroyed anti-hunger policies. Today 33 million people, about 15% of the population, suffer from hunger in Brazil, Suarez explained.
Speaking on the relation of debt and a country’s capability of responding to the crisis, the secretary general of FIAN International said debt cancellation is a must. Globally, 54 countries are in a debt crisis that severely undermines their social security systems, she explained.
The income distribution in those affected countries needs to be addressed, according to Salvador. He explained that countries can be food secure without being self sufficient if they can afford to operate in the global financial system:
“Hunger rates in Switzerland are very low, however it is not food sufficient, it does not produce all the food that is required to meet its internal demand. However, it has food security because it is a wealthy country and therefore can buy whatever it wishes.”
On the contrary, Mali is self sufficient in cereal production, according to the executive director of the Institute for Research and Promotion of Alternatives in Development, and IPES-Food expert, Mamadou Goita.
He emphasised that the food reserve in west Africa should be based on buying food in the region and conserving it in stocks used for the regional regulation model.
Revamping territorial markets in the region will also create jobs, Goita added.
One in five people in Africa faced hunger last year, compared to 9% in Asia; 8.6% in Latin America and the Caribbean; 6% in Oceania; and less than 2.5% in North America and Europe, according to figures by the FAO.
