The excellent magazine out of the UK, Food Ethics, tackles the global food crisis in its Summer 2008 issue. The central question in the issue's title is an important one: Scarcity or Injustice? As editor Tom MacMillan writes, "While productivity is relevant, food security is more fundamentally about social justice. . . .We need policies that do the things that markets won't do and that tackle the reasons scarcity is a problem."
The issue includes writings from a number of important thinkers on the food crisis, including Bill Vorley of the International Institute for the Environment and Development (IIED) and Daryll Ray of the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center.
IATP's own Sophia Murphy also contributes an article titled, "Will free trade solve the food crisis?" Sophia writes that the further opening up of agricultural markets would likely increase volatility of agricultural prices and strengthen the market position of big agribusiness companies. Sophia writes, "Trade liberalisation and the neglect of domestic agriculture have increased the dependence of net food importing developing countries on food imports. . the global food crisis is a clear example of how the (WTO) rules have failed."
Sophia outlines strategies for governments to address the food crisis by re-shaping trade, increasing productivity, establishing public food stocks, disciplining speculative trading and redesigning bioenergy policies.
The need to increase production in countries struggling with high prices, as well as for establishing food stocks, were both included within the political declaration at the recent UN FAO Summit on Food Security. Unfortunately, the declaration also included a call for the successful conclusion of the Doha Round, which will not help address the food crisis. Two steps forward, one step back.
