Food and global politics
Near the end of March, I noted a Xinhua article that suggested the Chinese government was raising prices paid to farmers to combat inflation. I suggested that feared food shortages were more a motive than feared inflation. (There are several additional references and comments appended to the original post.)The latest Economist (May 10) puts the food supply in a global political context. It's worth reading for the examples it provides as well as a way to ask students to identify The Economist editors' biases and alternative preferences.
Taking the strain
"The political fallout from the rising cost of food has been manageable—so far.
"WHEN Haiti's prime minister resigned last month after a week of food riots, it seemed to confirm a warning that Bob Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, had given ten days before. He said 100m people were being pushed into hunger and malnutrition—and 30-odd countries faced social upheaval unless food policy improved and the rich world got its act together to help...
"The UN is... trying to make the international response more coherent. Ban Ki-moon, its secretary-general, has set up a task-force to co-ordinate what the UN agencies are doing and has called a food summit in early June to work out a plan...
"While donors squabble, poor countries face riots. But so far, these have had less political impact than many expected. Around 30 countries have suffered protests but only Haiti has seen its government fall. In the Middle East, the part of the world most dependent on food imports, there have been demonstrations and strikes in Egypt, Morocco and Jordan. But all three countries withstood more serious food riots in the late 1970s and 1980s...
"In some of the poorest countries, rising food prices have been causing less distress than might have been expected because benefits have also appeared. In Bangladesh, one of the most vulnerable countries, the rice crop is up 10%, prices are about four times production costs and wages for landless peasants are soaring...
"Food importers... are buying time by, for example, boosting food subsidies or hiking wages. In Egypt, bread used to be about a fifth of the world price; now it is less than a tenth. Several Arab states have decreed hefty pay rises: 25% for public-sector workers in Syria, 30% in Egypt.
"These policies are inflationary and expensive.,,"
Labels: economics, globalization, politics
posted by Ken Wedding @ 9:26 AM
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