What caused the food crisis?
The causes are multiple and complex so only a brief summary of some of the issues is possible here.
In Latin America, and elsewhere, a real lack of food is not the problem. Latin America has become a huge food producer and exporter of commodity crops since sweeping reforms to its trade policies since the 1980s, but is now less food secure. Trade liberalisation, pushed by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank, IMF –International Monetary Fund- and WTO –World Trade Organisation-, has led many developing countries to prioritise their ‘comparative advantage’ by growing cash crops for sale to large transnationals, and to buy food on the international market. Market prices are not stable however. The liberalisation of trade in Mexico for example has changed it from a country which exported its historical staple, maize, to one where the poor are protesting at their inability to pay for imported US maize which in January 2007 increased in price by 50%. According to Laura Carlsen in her article ‘Behind Latin America's Food Crisis’, the Mexican crisis was caused by the confluence of several factors: the rise in the international price, the increase in the price of gas, and the concentration of corn markets by transnational companies as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and most importantly, speculation and hoarding on the part of the main four relevant transnational corporations - Cargill, Maseca-Archer Daniels Midland, Minsa-Arancia Corn Products International, and Agroinsa - who drove prices up to increase profits and to take over the corn four market.
The trend towards deregulation of food markets continues through the WTO and various bilateral and regional trade agreements with both the US and the EU which push for further liberalisation of the agricultural sector. The actual response from the international financial institutions and other agencies to the food crisis is to push for further liberalisation of agriculture, to donate more food aid (which undermines local growers) and to deepen the ‘green revolution’, that is, to push for farmers to further indebt themselves to buy more fertilisers and technological equipment.
Extreme food insecurity has also worsened in recent years due to the boom in another cash crop, biofuel products, as a result of high oil prices and EU/US renewable energy resource policies. More land is being used for biofuel production which reduces that available for food cultivation, displaces peasants and further threatens biodiverse regions such as the Amazon.
LASC feels that this deregulation of world food markets, the unfair trade practices by the countries of the Global North and of wealthy transnational agribusiness corporations should be highlighted as these are areas around which our learners can take action, in order to influence policy at national and European levels.
