Fighting Over Food
The Growing Food Contradiction
Renee Horne 28 February 2011
Take a walk to your local grocery store, and you’re confronted with a range of bargains and special offers such as ‘buy one get one free’ or ‘four for a pound’. This is enough to make one think that there’s plenty of food to go around. So why are experts constantly reminding us about food shortages or that more food riots are expected as a result of soaring food prices? Indeed, the fight over food has spilled onto the streets of many developing countries. In an interview with the World Entrepreneur Society, Dr Laura Hammond, a Senior Lecturer in Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies said, the paradox is that we see riots in some African countries and automatically associate it with merely autocratic and dictatorial governments, “Certainly in Egypt the problem was the increasing prices in basic food stuffs; it was an inability to cope with it. We see this even in Somalia. For example, you think that food prices wouldn’t be the main priority for people that people would be more concerned about the conflict itself but what gets women and men on the streets are when food prices go up”. However, Hammond added that there is a connection between “food availability, food prices and the stability of governments”. Hammond was one of four experts at a panel discussion in London which highlighted the dilemma Africa faces that is food security, the biggest challenge or an opportunity for economic growth?
Farmers Supply Food but go Hungry
“I think it is a scandal most of the poor are farmers and, according to the United Nations, half of the world’s hungry are farmers. It is clear that a farmer who we rely on to produce food in ever increasing quantities can’t actually pay to eat the food”, that’s the word from Mike Gidney, Deputy Executive Director for the Fairtrade Foundation. So the growing contradiction is how does a farmer who has access to food every day become the one that’s likely to go hungry? How does this translate when more than 60% of Africans are involved in farming or agriculture for their livelihoods yet thirteen African countries are the worst affected by hunger and malnutrition? Stéphane Doyon, Nutrition Policy Advisor for Doctors without Borders argues that in Africa, “out of ten children that die before the age of five, three deaths will be associated with malnutrition”, and most are under two year olds, since they are in the development age and need precise nutrition.
The Blame Game
The word is out, Africa is open for business due to economic growth, so perhaps Africans should blame themselves, take responsibility as to why their farmers produce, but their communities go hungry? Or are the developed nations exploiting African farmers, buying from African farmers and then selling it back to them at a higher price? Indeed there is a host of culprits in the blame game; Gidney argues that “It is a whole scale of structural readjustment that is needed. In a nutshell, farming has been organised and then ignored over the last fifty years”. No doubt a finger will be pointed at financial institutions, according to Hammond, “financial speculators are betting on the fact that food prices will go up and what we saw in 2007 and 2008 is that when speculators bet that food prices go up, they do go up. So I think the role of financial speculation is quite considerable”. There appears to be consensus from the World Development Movement, “the role of financial institutions like the IMF or World Bank, who have done a huge amount in terms of market liberalisation in these countries, getting rid of a lot of support structures in terms of market boards and things like this, that have helped local producers get a fair price for their food” said Murray Worthy: Policy Officer from the World Development Movement. Worthy’s job is to look at how financial institutions speculate on food, “Over the last ten years we are seeing financial speculators and hedge funds actually speculating on the price of food so they bet on whether the price of food rises or falls. However, while they are making money on this, they simultaneously push up the price on food and this has a devastating effect on people in the developing world”.
So who is to blame on the fight for food? Is it Africa’s farmers who are unable to negotiate the worth of their produce? Is it the developed countries that come to negotiating table taking a considerable amount of the food winnings? Is it the financial sector who considers the food market as a gambling table? Is there a role here for entrepreneurs as producers, organisers or sellers? (click here to have your say)