Food crisis

Monday, April 14

Food security is not a precise concept but is an extremely powerful one. It can be defined as 'access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life'. On this definition, large parts of the developing world are, and long have been, suffering from food insecurity, as shown by the existence of chronic malnutrition.

Until the late eighteenth century, Western countries were in a similar situation. This led economist Thomas Malthus to argue that population growth pressure would hold down food consumption per person to the level of bare subsistence. Three factors allowed Western countries to escape this Malthusian trap while they industrialised, namely:

• the availability of huge areas of good uncultivated land in the Americas and Antipodes;
• mass emigration of surplus European population to these areas; and
• falling transport costs that made international trade in food profitable.

In the 20th century, episodes of mass hunger have been mainly related to disruptions of war, or follies of authoritarian leaders (for example, China's Mao Zedong, North Korea's Kim Jong Il and Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe). The main systemic threat to world food security emerged in the 1960s, but was staved off by the intensification of wheat and rice cultivation in Asia -- the 'green revolution'.

Recent price rises. Since 1974, the real price of food has been drifting gradually downwards, and by 2005, had declined by a remarkable 75%. During these three decades the world became accustomed to cheap food, even if it was still too expensive for many of the poor in developing countries. Since 2005, food prices have gone dramatically into reverse, and are now nearly back to the 1974 level.