- Part One (June 7, 2008)
- Part Two (June 9, 2008)
- Part Three (June 10, 2008)
With consumers increasingly unable to pay world market prices for food, national governments are compelled to intervene to avert famine and revolt. These interventions, while offering at best partial resolutions to local problems, only increase difficulties elsewhere. Exporting states are limiting their external sales in an attempt to shield their own populations from the worst of the price rises, while extorting higher prices from importing nations by restricting supply.
The most devastating price increases are those for the basic food grains. These are relatively non-perishable and therefore widely traded, and make up a third or more of daily caloric intake, especially in poorer countries. They are also used extensively in other parts of the food chain—e.g., for livestock feed and sweeteners—thus affecting prices for meat, eggs, dairy products and various processed foods.• • •
The central problem underlying the current food crisis is not a physical lack of food, but rather its unaffordability for masses of people due to rapidly increasing prices. Among the immediate factors driving the rapid worsening of the food crisis, a major role is played by the explosion of speculative investment in basic commodities such as oil and grain, itself bound up with the difficulties facing US and world financial markets and the decline in the US dollar. Rampant speculation by hedge funds and other big market players has increased costs, encouraging private firms to further bid up prices in a competitive drive to amass as much profit as possible.
Official statistics disprove the assertion that there is not enough food for everyone. According to 2008 US Department of Agriculture figures, the average per capita consumption is 2,618 calories per day in developing countries and 3,348 in developed countries, compared with a recommended minimum of 2,100 calories. However, profound disparities in access to this food, stemming from poverty and social inequality, condemn many millions to hunger.• • •
The current food crisis reflects not only financial events of recent years, but longer-term policies of world imperialism. Instead of allowing for a planned improvement of infrastructure and farming techniques, globalization on a capitalist basis has resulted in a restriction in many parts of the world of farm production. This has been carried out in order to lessen competition and prevent market gluts from harming the profit interests of the major powers.
One major aspect of imperialist policy was to limit farm production in the so-called "First World" to prevent sudden falls in world prices. In the US, this policy took the form of the federal government's Conservation Reserve Program, first passed as part of the 1985 Food Security Act.
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