The world food crisis: intractable and explosive

In no other time during humanity’s recorded history is the savagery of market relations so paradoxically defined as in this age of plenty. We are able to transform deserts into oases, carve a path through hitherto impenetrable mountain ranges, successfully land an explorative mission to Mars. Human beings are manufactured in laboratories, the parched and arid lands of just a decade ago are being transformed into a crop yielding paradise, irrigation methods have replaced archaic methods of production and farming machinery has been revolutionised. More than any other time in our existence, humanity has the ability and the means to produce more than enough food for every breathing individual on this planet … and yet, the world faces a food crisis as never before. What’s going on?

Far from this crisis being a mere reflection of financial events of the last few years, it is very much, to a large degree, the makings of the long term policies of imperialism. What we see today is the result of the major powers blocking any attempts for a planned improvement of infrastructure and farming techniques, resulting in a restriction in many parts of the world of farm production. A significant aspect of this is the limitation placed on farm production in the so-called First World to prevent sudden falls in world prices. Under this policy farmers are encouraged not to plant crops on large acres of arable land and apply for a subsidy for farm land kept out of cultivation. A payment structure to farmers was adopted on a country-by-country basis after the 1992 reform of Europe’s common agricultural policy.

Production collapsed all over the world. European government officials and their American counterparts would have us believe that the introduction of this subsidy structure was aimed at remedying soil erosion and effects of overplanting of ecologically vulnerable land. Truth is, that land use was put in line with the new policy objectives which were “acreage reduction” and the maintenance of “target prices and price-support loans”.

The crisis is particularly harsh for developing countries. Infrastructure and agriculture are devastated by exports from wealthy countries and the IMF programmes. These programmes from the IMF dictate state policy in exchange for state loans to offset the state’s debt. The entire orientation of the IMF steered regulated subsistence farming in developing countries toward becoming export destinations for crops of wealthy nations. And so more export revenue are being siphoned off to service debts to so-called First World banks. Local farmers in developing countries are now in an impossible position to compete with highly subsidised exports. It is because of these measures that many countries in Africa are unable to sustain production of crops for their local populations. The conditions in Latin American and Asian countries are not dissimilar.

Many believe that population growth is partly to be blamed for the food crisis facing the world today. I do not share this view. Increased food demand caused by population growth does not create, in general, a problem. Population growth in this decade, roughly 1,2% per year, has been less than growth in the 1960’s, which averaged 2% per year. Crop yield is significantly lower as a result of lowering of agricultural investment, but more so as a result of lower research investment in the sector. With no planning, there cannot be a chartered change in production, thus the calamitous slow growth in food supply. The social implications have come home a while ago. In Brazil people have been “producing” dirt cakes (setting up a stall near muddy areas, baking dirt cakes and selling it to others), for the last decade and a half. Thousands of people both the UK and millions in America are malnourished and live under the poverty line. Dairy farmers across Europe, particularly France and Germany, have resorted to direct action, throwing out millions of litres of milk, due to the severe living conditions they and their families live under.

There is an irredeemable irrationality in the current food crisis. The scale of the challenges posed to food supply internationally and the inflationary crisis unleashed upon the world’s poor despite plentiful food available, marks in no uncertain terms the madness of capitalism’s profit priorities above the needs of people. Humanity’s elementary need for affordable food is now callously used by the world’s financial elite as a source of profits through speculation, smuggling or organising nationally based price cartels. The wildfire strikes and demonstrations across the world in response to the explosion of food prices are an early sign of the intractability of the crisis. Intractable and explosive.