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2011 | OriginalPaper | Buchkapitel

8. Food Crisis Mitigation: The Need for an Enhanced Global Food Governance

verfasst von : Mohamed Behnassi, Sanni Yaya

Erschienen in: Global Food Insecurity

Verlag: Springer Netherlands

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Abstract

As demands for food rise faster than supplies, the resulting food-price inflation puts severe stress on many countries already teetering on the edge of chaos. As a result, almost no country is currently completely immune from the impacts of food shortage. If the food situation continues to deteriorate, entire nations and their social orders will break down at an unprecedented rate because, in geopolitical terms, deeper food crisis will undoubtedly engender more collective insecurity. Paradoxically, widespread hunger exists today in a context of a global food oversupply. Often, people go hungry because they either have no means to produce their own food or earn enough money to buy it, not because of a global shortage of food. Thus, access to food can be identified as the major issue in food security rather than the amounts of food being produced. Therefore, this chapter presumes that the whole issue is more of a governance challenge, promotion of the right to adequate food and the food sovereignty. In other terms, at the root of the failure to effectively reduce hunger, the failure of the global food security governance and architecture is a key factor. So, it is becoming increasingly crucial to develop and implement adequate global food governance arrangements from a North-South redistribution perspective, with the active involvement of major stakeholders and the support of sound scientific evidence.

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Vorheriges Kapitel African Agriculture at Crossroads: Balancing the Needs of Increased Productivity and the Challenges of Sustainability. The Case of Fadama Agriculture in Semi-Arid North-Central Nigeria

Nächstes Kapitel 18,000 Children Die of Starvation Everyday: Cannot We Save Them?

The floods which are severely affecting more than 15 millions people in Pakistan (homeless people with no sufficient food, potable water or medical stuffs), is a relevant example to provide in this sense.

Many regions in Africa and Asia are already experiencing such scenarios.

Food crisis results from a combination of factors: lack of “food entitlement” − inequality, appropriation, poor governance, subsidies, the “stork and plow” − struggle between increases in population and food; total (growing) consumer demand combined with proximity to further yield growth of key crops; under-investment in agricultural research; excessive reliance on “Gene Revolution”; conflict and poverty; diversion of food crops for feed and fuel; global environmental change: climate change, plus atmospheric, water and soil factors; global economic failure; rising cost of oil, fertilizer, transport and other inputs.

Among the relevant causes we can mention: energy shortage and prices, biofuels, global warming, fresh water shortage, economic chaos, higher population levels, inefficient agricultural policies, soil degradation and grabbing, loss of crop varieties and genetic contamination, farmer shortages, fish declines, general ignorance of food and inadequate governance.

For instance, colder agricultural areas like Canada and Northern Europe may experience warmer weather and increased growing seasons which will be a positive factor in the yield equation. But other factors, like increased pest and disease problems, which are predicted to be spurred on by warming, would push back the other way.

The “CO₂ as fertilizer” argument is only correct if other required nutrients are also available in increasing quantities. Even where that is partly true, it worth pointing out that weeds tend to out-compete crops in higher-CO₂ environments.

Also associated with global warming will be the lower availability of fresh water in some areas. With use of river water in key farming regions already at or near full exploitation, any decrease will not only reduce farm output, it will also make living in concerned regions more than a challenge. Over-pumping of groundwater is another fresh water problem; that is, pumping groundwater resources at a rate greater than their recharge rate. The twentieth century saw a vast expansion of the use of groundwater for agricultural and residential purposes. Globally, up to 80% of potable water is used for irrigation. But now water tables are falling in many countries, including China, India and the United States which together account for nearly 50% of the global grain harvest. Worse, the rate of depletion is accelerating. Not all food production relies on irrigation, of course, but the situation is of serious concern. Also problematic is the contamination of groundwater from polluted surface water and land, leaking underground storage tanks and intentional “dumping” of toxic waste which can eventually find its way to usable groundwater.

Four of five major global climate models project consistent expansion of arid areas in developing countries: such areas home to almost one billion people, and more than 180 million people in Africa alone (see Fischer et al. 2005).

“Dust Bowl” is a term born in the hard times from the people who lived in the drought-stricken region during the great depression. The “Dust Bowl Days”, also known as the “Dirty Thirties”, took its toll on Cimarron County. The decade was full of extremes: blizzards, tornadoes, floods, droughts and dirt storms.

Although assessments of the global economic potential of biofuels have just begun, current biofuel policies could, according to some estimates, lead to a fivefold increase of the share of biofuels in global transport—from just over 1% today to around 6% by 2020 (World Bank 2008).

Overuse and pollution of water resources, degradation of soil, impacts in terms of human and animal health and welfare are among the serious impacts of the intensive agriculture. All these externalities have also impacts in terms of food security.

The FAO has already showed that: (a) of the 4% of the 250,000–300,000 known edible plant species, only 150–200 are used by humans. And just three plants (rice, maize/corn and wheat) contribute nearly 60% of calories and protein obtained by humans from plants; (b) since the 1900s, more than 90% of crop varieties have disappeared from farm fields as farmers worldwide have abandoned their multiple local varieties for genetically uniform, high-yielding varieties. Thirty percent of livestock breeds are at risk of extinction and six breeds are lost each month; (c) today, 75% of the world’s food is generated from only 12 plants and 5 animal species.

It has been paradoxically noticed that the Global food aid deliveries of 5.7 million mt in 2009 were the lowest since 1961: programme food aid declined by 25%, emergency food aid by 12% and project food aid by 6% (FAO 2009). The decline occurred predominantly in bilateral food aid. Compared with 2008, bilateral food aid deliveries fell by 45%, food aid deliveries channeled through NGOs fell by 18% and multilateral food aid deliveries fell by 4%. This decline occurs in a context marked by the increase of global hunger which currently reaches more than 1.02 billion people – the highest number on record. The global economic crisis and rising food prices have contributed to the surge in world hunger, which was exacerbated by 245 natural disasters affecting 58 million people; extreme weather linked to climate change is likely to increase people’s vulnerability (FAO 2009).

Proponents of food aid include Jeffrey Sachs, author of The End of Poverty (Penguin Press 2005), and Paul Collier, author of The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Oxford University Press, 2007), among others.

Critics of foreign aid include William Easterly, author of The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Penguin Press HC, 2006), and Dambisa Moyo, author of Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is Another Way for Africa (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), among others.

For example, in the 1970s less than 10% of sub-Saharan Africa’s population lived in dire poverty, while today over 70% of sub-Saharan Africa lives with less than US$2 a day.

For example, during the 2002 famine, the United States provided numerous African countries with food aid containing genetically-modified corn. The United States also refused to mill this corn, which would have prevented a mingling with local corn. Some of the affected countries initially rejected the food aid. In the end, only Zambia stuck with this rejection. Still, this is a clear case in which the United States tried to open the affected countries’ agriculture for genetically-modified organisms (Fuchs 2006).

What is the nutrition transition? Humankind has faced major shifts in dietary and physical activity patterns and body composition since Paleolithic man emerged on Earth. Human diet and nutritional status have undergone a sequence of major shifts among characteristic states – defined as broad patterns of food use and corresponding nutrition-related disease. Over the past three centuries, the pace of dietary change appears to have accelerated to varying degrees in different regions of the world. The concept of the nutrition transition focuses on large shifts in diet and activity patterns, especially their structure and overall composition. These changes are reflected in nutritional outcomes, such as changes in average stature and body composition. Furthermore, dietary and activity pattern changes are paralleled by major changes in health status and by major demographic and socio-economic changes (for more details see Popkin 2006).

Today, the supply of food in developed countries is superabundant – some 3,230 cal per caput/day, with peaks of 3,650–3,750 in various countries. Assuming unrecorded losses and waste in the households at 12% of supply, there still remain 2,842 cal, which is more than enough.

To confront the root causes of this problem, Indian scientist and activist Vandana Shiva has called for a movement that promotes food democracy and food sovereignty (growing what one wants to grow) and supports anti-trust actions against agri-business infringing upon growers’ and consumers’ rights.

For instance, the United States had accused the Zambian government as well as the EU (which had criticized the delivery of genetically-modified corn as food aid) of preferring to let millions of people starve rather than being willing to help (Fuchs 2006).

Some facts to illustrate this current state: 3 to 6 companies control 80–90% of the global grain market, 85–90% of the global corn and coffee markets, 85% of the global cocoa market, and so on. Monsanto dominates 90% of the global market for genetically-modified seeds. Another figure concerning the agro-chemical industry: in 1992, there were 12 companies in that field, while in 2003 only 6 remained as a result of mergers and acquisition (ActionAid International 2005).

The following facts can prove the current state of art: the top 30 food retailing corporations account for one-third of global grocery sales; one TNC controls 80% of Peru’s milk production; five companies control 90% of the world grain trade; and six corporations control three-quarters of the global pesticides market.

The market share of the respective three largest retail chains in European countries ranges from 40% in Great Britain to over 80% in Finland and Ireland. In USA, the five largest supermarket chains have more than doubled their market share between 1992 and 2000 (Fuchs 2006).

A prominent standard in this connection is the EUREP-GAP standard which was developed by the European food retail association to determine standards for food security and sustainability.

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Titel: Food Crisis Mitigation: The Need for an Enhanced Global Food Governance
verfasst von: Mohamed Behnassi
Sanni Yaya
Verlag: Springer Netherlands
Buch: Global Food Insecurity
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-0889-1

Electronic ISBN: 978-94-007-0890-7

Copyright-Jahr: 2011
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0890-7_8