FOOD INSECURITY?

Grain Traders are looking East at Russia where a commission on food security been set up in response to dry weather that has halved grain yields in some areas. The worlds food markets are awash with talk that Russia may respond to the developing crisis by limiting or stopping exports (as it did some two years ago). The United States is already facing one of the worst droughts for 50 years, and the prices of many grains and food crops have soared on world commodity markets.

The recent rise in food prices will have a major impact on food security, it will affect all of us as individuals and whole countries in the developed and the developing world. Many of the world’s poorest peoples spend over half their income on food. So the recent price rises for cereals and other staple food stuffs will force them to cut back on the quantity or quality of their primary foodstuffs. This will result in food insecurity and malnutrition, with potentially tragic implications in the short and long term.

Undernourishment increases disease and mortality, lowers productivity and can have severe lifelong effects, particularly for children. Price spikes also hit poorer households when it comes to meeting important non-food expenses, e.g. education and health care. Global food price hikes affect low-income, food importing countries, and put pressure on their limited financial resources. High food prices have a very negative impact on food security when prices spike suddenly or reach extremely high levels.

Yet food security issues can affect both food producers and food purchasers - high prices send an important message to food producers. Half the world’s undernourished people, are small farmers, livestock producers and fishermen. For them, high prices are an opportunity and a threat. They can act as an incentive to produce more for the market and make more food available while improving access to richer foodstuffs, as poor farmers’ incomes rise.

That said, higher prices are also a threat, as many poor farmers are net food buyers e.g. they spend more on food than they make by selling their produce, Also many of them face serious obstacles when it comes to producing more food and getting more of their produce to the marketplace.

The World Bank stated that the 2010 to 2011 food price spike pushed approximately 44 million people into poverty. Yet for some 24 million food producers, rising food process have actually been a ticket out of poverty – admittedly potentially a relatively short-term one, as their numbers were swamped by the 68 million that have fallen below the extreme poverty line.

Now food security or food insecurity is not new, back in 1996, the World Food Summit defined food security as existing “when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has acknowledge that the concept of food security is defined as including both physical and economic access to food that meets people's dietary needs as well as their food preferences. All very fine and dandy you may say, but, what does that have to do with us?

Well, a quite a lot , the UK produces 73% of ‘indigenous-type foods’, and is around 60% self-sufficient when exports and local consumption are set against production. UK consumers spend an average of £420 per household on food each year and then throw away some 4.1M tonnes of food nationally (2011). Each day we bin some 4.4 Million apples, 5.1 Million potatoes, 2.8 Million tomatoes and 1.6 Million bananas. Back in 2009 Wrap data suggested some £12 Billion pounds worth of food was binned every year in the UK, or around £680 for the average family when drinks and liquid food is included.

At the end of the day, rising food prices will bring little real benefit to our own or more distant food producers when they are being short changed by the Supermarkets (and some of their suppliers). Food producers are important and they need a fair deal and so do we (the food consumers) which is something to think about as we are confronted by the increased cost of our basic foodstuffs on the supermarket shelves.

FOOD SOVEREIGNTY

We need to spare some thoughts to ways of developing medium to long term sustainable farming practices both here in Wales and elsewhere on the planet. We are overdependent on oil based chemical fertilizers and a world trade network that is fueled by increasingly  expensive oil products.

There are plenty of people around the world who don't subscribe to or support the efforts of the European Union, the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the multinationals and some governments who are busy trying to continue to globalize food production at the expense of local self sufficiency.

The concept of 'Food Sovereignty' focuses on 'national' control of food policy, and self sufficiency rather than the production of cash crops for export. More locally these efforts could focus on promoting regional and local foodstuffs and developing local markets. Opponents of  this idea have suggested that this idea hampers free trade, which in turn lowers prices and makes food more accessible to all.

In truth some countries cannot grow enough food to feed themselves so there will always be some trade in foodstuffs. The real questions that should be asked  are what kind of trade in food is taking place? Who controls it? And who benefits from it? Not to mention who does this trade in food fit into the larger picture of local and regional agriculture?

FOOD FOR THOUGHT?

Oxfam Cymru claim half of Welsh people have changed their eating habits in the last two years, with 39% having to do so because food prices have rocketed.They suggest that more people in financial distress are approaching food banks for free, short-term supplies (as previously blogged by Leanne Wood AM). The OXFAM survey, which is part of a global study into eating habits in the last two years, comes after the Office for National Statistics revealed rising food inflation was escalating the cost of living.

The hard statistics reveal that a range of foods have undergone sharp rises, with prices of meat up 5.1%, fish up 11.4%, bread and cereals up 5.8%, mineral waters, juices and soft drinks up by 10.3% and jams by 7.5%. Oxfam Cymru says only 60% of Welsh respondents reported having enough to eat on a daily basis – with 39% saying they got enough, most or some of the time. They pointed to global figures, which showed an average 61% getting enough to eat all the time, indicating the Welsh statistics were part of a global problem.

A number of issues are going to impact on food prices, here and in the rest of the world. There is Climate Change, which as temperatures rise, will lead to a fall in crop yields – potentially we are talking of up-to half of their current levels in some African countries. At the same time, extreme weather events like heat waves, droughts and floods will get worse and become more frequent, and the seasons that people rely on to grow crops will get even more unpredictable.

Across the world governments have dragged their feet for too long. We need to start dealing with a situation that's only going to get more urgent. The food price spikes of 2008 are partially related to and being aggravated by land grabs, as wealthy companies have invested heavily in cheap agricultural land in poor countries, often for commercial use. The land that is sold is actually being used by poor families to grow food in many cases.

Poor farmers and their families are often forcibly evicted with little or no warning or compensation, and to make things worse often the land is either left idle by investors who know it will only grow in value, or actually used in ways that reduce food production. So it's time for effective global rules to get land grabs under control – rules which ensure local communities see the benefits of investments and which help make sure that governments provide secure access to land for smallholder farmers, and especially women.

After decades of progress, the number of people without enough to eat is actually increasing, and food price spikes are a big part of the problem. That's because, when you spend up to 75% of your weekly income on food – as many poor families are forced to do – sudden rises have an especially destructive effect. Price spikes have many causes including the changing climate, oil prices, dysfunctional commodities markets, biofuels policies that turn potentially productive crop-lands into fuel for cars rather than fuel for people. Oxfam and a number of other agencies conclusions is that we are facing a whole new challenge.

It's time for governments to actually work together to deal with food price crises effectively and to tackle the problems that mean millions of people can't afford enough to eat. After the best part of one hundred years of so of crop yield increases, crop yields are beginning to flat-line partially because intensive farming can only go so far. We need to focus on the huge untapped potential of small-scale farmers in developing countries and especially of women, who often do most of the work for often scant reward.

The reality is that some 500 million small farms put the food on the plates of some two billion people (one in three of our planets population). With effective government support and a focus on sustainable techniques, productivity can soar. In Vietnam, for instance, the number of hungry people has halved in just 12 years – a transformation which was kick-started by government investment in small farmers previously disadvantaged by the old Soviet style collective farms. It's time to change the way that we in Wales and the rest of the world thinks about growing food.