Belfer Center Programs or Projects: Science, Technology, and
Globalization; Science, Technology, and Public Policy
International prices of rice, wheat and corn have risen sharply, setting
off violent urban protests in roughly a dozen countries in Asia, Africa
and Latin America. But is this a "world food crisis?"
It is certainly a troubling instance of price instability in
international commodity markets, leading to social unrest among urban
food-buyers. But we must be careful not to equate high crop prices with
hunger around the world. Most of the world's hungry people do not use
international food markets, and most of those who use these markets are
not hungry.
International food markets, like international markets for everything
else, are used primarily by the prosperous and secure, not the poor and
vulnerable. In world corn markets, the biggest importer by far is Japan.
Next comes the European Union. Next comes South Korea. Citizens in these
countries are not underfed.
In the poor countries of Asia, rice is the most important staple, yet
most Asian countries import very little rice. As recently as March,
India was keeping imported rice out of the country by imposing a 70
percent duty.
Data on the actual incidence of malnutrition reveal that the regions of
the world where people are most hungry, in South Asia and Sub-Saharan
Africa, are those that depend least on imports from the world market.
Hunger is caused in these countries not by high international food
prices, but by local conditions, especially rural poverty linked to low
productivity in farming.
When international prices are go up, the disposable income of some
import-dependent urban dwellers is squeezed. But most of the actual
hunger takes place in the villages and in the countryside, and it
persists even when international prices are low.
When hunger is measured as a balanced index of calorie deficiency,
prevalence of underweight children and mortality rates for children
under five, we find that South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa in 2007 had
hunger levels two times as high as in the developing countries of East
Asia, four times as high as in Latin America, North Africa or the Middle
East, and five times as high as in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
The poor in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are hungry even though
their connections to high-priced international food markets are quite
weak.
In the poorest developing countries of Asia, where nearly 400 million
people are hungry, international grain prices are hardly a factor, since
imports supply only 4 percent of total consumption - even when world
prices are low.
Similarly in sub-Saharan Africa, only about 16 percent of grain supplies
have recently been imported, going mostly into the more prosperous
cities rather than the impoverished countryside, with part arriving in
the form of donated food aid rather than commercial purchases at world
prices.
The region in Africa that depends on world markets most heavily is North
Africa, where 50 percent of grain supplies are imported. Yet food
consumption in North Africa is so high (average per capita energy
consumption there is about 3,000 calories per day, comparable to most
rich countries) that increased import prices may cause economic stress
for urban consumers (and perhaps even street demonstrations) but little
real hunger.
Import dependence is also high in Latin America (50 percent for some
countries) but again high world prices will not mean large numbers of
hungry people, because per capita GDP in this region is five times
higher than in sub-Saharan Africa.
There is a severe food crisis among the poor in South Asia and
sub-Saharan Africa, but it does not come from high world prices. Even in
2005 in sub-Saharan Africa, a year of low international crop prices, 23
out of 37 countries in the region consumed less than their nutritional
requirements.
Africa's food crisis grows primarily out of the low productivity, year
in and year out, of the 60 percent of all Africans who plant crops and
graze animals for a living. The average African smallholder farmer is a
woman who has no improved seeds, no nitrogen fertilizers, no irrigation
and no veterinary medicine for her animals. Her crop yields are only one
third as high as in the developing countries of Asia, and her average
income is only $1 a day.
One third of these poor African farmers are malnourished. In part
because of the added burden of climate change, the number of
undernourished people in Africa is now expected to triple by 2080,
whatever the level of prices on the world market.
The long-term solution to such problems is not lower international
prices or more food aid, but larger investments in the productivity of
farmers in Africa.
African governments essentially stopped making these investments 25
years ago, when the international donor community pulled back from
supporting agricultural modernization in the developing world.
Over the past two decades the U.S. Agency for International Development
has cut its support for agricultural science in Africa by 75 percent.
World Bank lending for agriculture has dropped from 30 percent of bank
lending in 1978 to just 8 percent. In 2005, the World Bank president at
the time, Paul Wolfowitz, told a business forum: "My institution has
largely gotten out of the business of agriculture."
This may be changing, and if high world food prices help speed the
change, so much the better.
In a recent interview, the new World Bank president, Robert Zoellick,
said he planned to raise agricultural lending to Africa next year from
$450 million to $800 million. Since 2006, the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation has also begun to focus more of its grant-making on the needs
of poor smallholder farmers in Africa through an Alliance for a Green
Revolution in Africa (AGRA) chaired by Kofi Annan.
These are encouraging initiatives, because the productivity of farms in
Africa - not food prices on the world market - should be the long-term
focus.
Robert Paarlberg, professor of political science at Wellesley College,
is the author of "Starved for Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept
out of Africa."
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