Global Food Crisis Challenges Policymakers; Malthus May Have Been Right
Known as outsourcing’s “third wave,” the trend among wealthy nations to buy farmland in developing countries is reportedly raising concerns among those dealing with issues like world hunger and water shortages. When the price of staples like wheat, rice and corn skyrocketed in recent years, food exporting countries, faced with food riots, restricted their exports to limit price increases in their own countries. That led wealthy food importing nations to begin investing in significant land acquisitions or leases on terms not necessarily advantageous to their targets. The food grown on these farms is all sent to the wealthy nations owning them, while the host countries continue to be threatened by hunger and malnutrition.
Host governments apparently claim that they are giving up land that is vacant or owned by the state, but empty land may actually be grazing land or farmed under arrangements recognized by local custom but not by law. The right to land also brings the right to access water, which Nestlé Chair Peter Brabeck-Letmathe has called “the great water grab.” In Madagascar, a proposed land deal that would have taken half of the island’s arable land resulted in the government’s overthrow. A Washington, D.C.-based food policy think tank, trying to resolve such conflicts, has called for foreign investors to sign a code of conduct to improve the terms of deals for local residents. This would apparently mean respect for customary rights, shared benefits among locals, including hiring them to work the land, increased transparency, and promises not to export food if the host country is in the midst of a famine.
To end the global food crisis, some are calling for a new “green” revolution like the one that occurred from the 1950s to the 1990s and increased crop yields dramatically with the use of fertilizers, irrigation, pesticides, and monoculture. They point to advances in genetically modified crops that will be resistant to infestations and drought. But others contend that water sources have been depleted or poisoned from the “green” revolution, soils have been stripped of nutrients, and the world has grown more dependent on fossil fuels. They tout the benefits of sustainable and ecologically friendly practices that improve the well-being of small farmers and their families.
While some say that Thomas Robert Malthus, who claimed in the 1700s that “[t]he power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man,” has been proven wrong, given our ability to feed most of the six billion people “added to the planet’s dinner tables” since his time, others worry that the next doubling of the world’s population will outpace even science’s ability
to create new ways to feed us all. See The Economist, May 21, 2009; Financial Times May 24, 2009; Truth About Trade & Technology, May 29, 2009; National Geographic Magazine, June 2009.
