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The global food crisis: a fresh call for sustainable agriculture
Babu George, PhD
Assistant Professor of Business
University of Southern Mississippi, MS, USA
Email:
Phone: 001-601-266-6511
Abstract:The world we live in is a complex interconnected system and consequently the current crises in agriculture and in the economy should be seen as the two sides of a single coin. Unsustainable practices have led to the occurrence of both of these. Hence, the solution lies in the implementation and practice of the principles of sustainable development. To aid this, the present paper proposes a model for sustainable development based agrarian practice. Public policy implications are also discussed.
Keywords: Food crisis, sustainable development, global interdependence, bottom up development, public policy, and sympathetic capitalism.
Introduction
Until recently, developed nations cared little about food scarcity (Anderies, Ryan, andWalker, 2006). This was never a problem even in their remotest imaginations. Whenever there occurred a famine or food scarcity, the obvious response was to give food aid (Bardhan, 2005). But, what will happen if the quantum of scarcity is too large and if the same swallow the entire world? We as a civilization are at the brink of a major crisis, the crisis of global food scarcity, probably unparalleled in the history of mankind (Cox, Lowe, and Winter, 2008). The present situation is different compared with the more traditional scenario of lingering hunger in the third world despite the ample production of food grains in the world. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), world food prices have risen 45per cent in the last nine months and there are serious shortages of rice, wheat, and maize.
In Africa, food riots have swept across the continent (Nixon, 2006). Recently, Haiti’s prime minister was overthrown after days of riots over food prices. In theUnited States, unofficial estimates say that there is close to 50 per cent surge in prices for cereals over the past six months.Due to the spiraling food prices, Russia anticipated a massive domestic unrest and has imposed strict retail price controls. If prices continue to rise, the food riots that historically marred Africa will spread all across the world.An FAO report notes that prices of nearly all food commodities have risen steeply in the resent years, supported by a tight supply and demand situation (see the food price index and food commodity price indices). Surging food prices is identified to be the prime cause of inflation and ‘overheating’ in the emerging economies such asIndia and Brazil (Parry and Rosenzweig, 2004). According to many experts, this is mainly because these countries have almost neglected the agricultural sector in their excitement with a surging economy.Economists believe that, due to the particular way in which capitalistic economic relations are structured, the impact of economic growth upon agriculture is always negative (Ramanjaneyulu and Rao, 2008).
Who is Responsible?
The impending crisis of a global food outage is trigged by a combination of the following: one, the decision of the US government to give its industrial farming communities exorbitant subsidies to grow corn for the production of biofuel; two, climate change; three, the behemothal consumption patterns of the neo-rich in countries like China (Gurgel andReilly, 2007). The coming together of the mortgage crisis, uncontrollable inflation, natural disasters, food and fuel scarcity, are all likely to be but the resultants of an ecological overshoot. We have reached the peak of oil production: but, the peak in food supplies and drinking water resources is not far away.
International funding agencies like the IMF and the World Bank are equally responsible for the present crisis. The flow of funds and knowledge in the last decade has mostly been for the ‘industrialization’ of the developing and the under-developed countries and agrarian development did not even appear in the agenda of many of these institutions. The western economic model of markets that builds upon the human proclivityto seek more and more has not created any real wealth while wreaking havoc upon peoples, societies and ecosystems. All the derived wealth of industrialization is of any positive consequence to humanity only so far as the basic wealth, including food, oxygen, and water, is abundantly available and equitably distributed (Fan and Rosegrant, 2008).
In the past few years, unexpected floods, droughts, and other natural calamities have increased in the frequency of occurrence across the world. Australia reduced its food grain export to one third of the previous level; China has drastically cut back its export of rice; India has almost banned the export of rice and wheat. The paddy fields in the Kuttanadu region in the State of Kerala in India have been totally devastated by constant rain in the last month pushing the farmers to utmost misery: many farmers, with no tunnel of hope ahead, have taken the route of suicide.These happen side by side with the exponential growth in the meat eating quantity of the Chinese citizens (currently around 100 pounds per month), meaning that increasingly more grain supplies are to be set apart to feed the animals that are to go the butcher house. It is sad to see Chinareplicating in the twenty first century the model of development that the United States has followed in the second half of the twentieth century.
Increasing Global Inter-Dependence
How strong has become the degree of global interdependence and how the lopsided and self-centered policies of a national government negatively affect the entire world are very clear from the corn subsidy case. The decision to subsidize corn has led to the proliferation of corn farming across millions of acres of arable land across the United States at the cost of farming rice, wheat, and vegetables. To offset the resulting shortage of supply, as usual, the US government permitted the free import of food materials from other countries. This led to escalating prices and scarcity of food in those countries(Le Roy, Klein, and Arbenser, 2007). Despite the lack of sufficient rationale, it has become fashionable, in the name of eco-friendliness, to promote corn-based ethanol. For instance, an order from the government of India reads that gas stations should sell petrol with 10 per cent ethanol with effect from the coming October. The big question is from where other than the agricultural fields the ethanol will come. Filling tanks is not a bad thing, but filling stomachs is a far greater necessity.
A Fresh Call for Sustainable Agriculture
A generic set of answers to the above question is available in the sustainable development literature. Sustainable development is about maintaining and improving the quality of life while safeguarding the quality of life of generations to come, made possible within a framework in which environmental, economic and social factors are integrated.It is sad that sustainable development has mostly remained as a neo-Marxian elitist concept and has often been criticized as the main rhetorical weapon of anti-developmental, anti-progress, agitators. As the old saying goes, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’, and given the graveness of the issues that affect of lives, even the hard-core critics of sustainable development have begun to turn to it in search of a solution (King and Wang, 2008).
If the present generation has become a parasite upon the limited resources of the mother earth, sustainable development theory will tell that it is because of our lack of a comprehensive and holistic philosophy of life (Helleiner, 2001). Whether real or imagined, scientific or superstitious, people of earlier generations held fairly developed mental models that encompassed their position upon the cosmic design of things.
In the context of food security, sustainability is a multi-fold concept: it includes, but not limited to, the economic, social, and environmental conditions for farmers to sustain their agricultural activities; the economic power of everyone to buy the essential food items; the mechanisms that ensure the timely distribution and storage of the agricultural produce; a governance system that ensures fair pricing; and so on. We have direct control over some of these like providing a climate of economic incentives for the farmers to cultivate. We may not be able to directly control the natural environmental variables like the climate and the rain for the forthcoming season, but by means of responsible environmental action, we can definitely harness the benevolence of nature for the best possible results. The solution is not to try to tame the nature by hook or crook, but to imbue into our agrarian practices the rhymes and rhythms of nature. Any strategy for sustainable agriculture must take into account the complex, reciprocal, and ever-changing relationship between agricultural production and the broader society (Ravallion, 2005). Sustainability also includes our care and concern for the coming generations: it is both inter and intra generational. The present day industrial agriculture, in its craze to maximize the immediate return on investment, forgets the limit to such growth: with this, we may earn a bit more in the short term, but at the cost of many generations to come(Reilly and Paltsev, 2007).
Need for a RevampedPolicy Framework
From a public policy point of view, tax and credit policies should be modified to encourage a decentralized and diversified system of family or community farms rather than to hold up the prevailing dominant system of corporate concentration and the resultant mono-culture. Conversion of the agricultural land to industrial uses should be minimized: wherever the conversion is permitted, it should be only for those industries that process or market the agricultural produce. The existing price support programs should be remodeled as incentives for the small and medium scale agriculturalists for their more sustainable alternative farming and marketing practices. Governments should commit more grants for research and educational projects aiming at developing sustainable agricultural practices. There should be regulations in place that ensure socially just wages and working conditions for agricultural workers. Diversified agricultural production in small farms is against the principle of economies of scale, but it can help the farmers offset the unexpected fall of prices associated with particular commodities. In fact, it is proven to be better for preserving the fertility of the land (Collier and Dollar, 2001). Also, the responsibility of us as consumers in help providing global food security should not be underestimated. By means of our purchasing decisions, we have an opportunity to send positive feelers to those who are involved in sustainable forms of agriculture (Gordon, 2008).
Concluding Remarks
Instead of depending up on the global distribution of food supply, small administrative units like villages and districts should strive to have their own self-sufficient agricultural supply. Self-sufficient grassroots will accelerate bottom up development based on egalitarian principles. This is probably against the often narrowly defined capitalistic principles, but very much in accord with the principles of sustainable development. Capitalism in the present form has inflicted upon us more miseries than it helped us and we need no longer be the blind adherents of it just because it is still the dominant voice in the developmental debate. This is more so when the fountainheads of the present day capitalism like Bill Gates themselves argue for a new form of capitalism that is broad based and compassionate. It is high time we fetch forward sympathetic capitalism from the confines of academic debates to the real life praxis.
References
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