THE IMPENDING GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS

Based on a talk by Dr David Hall-Matthews, University of Leeds

The years 2007 and 2008 were a disaster for the global food market, with spiralling prices pushing 200 million people worldwide into hunger. With food demand set to outstrip global supply later this century, how can governments ensure that we all have enough to eat? This is the challenging question that Dr David Hall-Matthews posed at a recent Institute for Advanced Study conference entitled The Problem of Power.

Defining famine is fiendishly difficult. In developing countries where thousands die from malnutrition, what differentiates malnutrition from famine? Dr Hall-Matthews argues that famine shouldn’t be seen as an event but a process. A famine doesn’t just ‘happen’ – there are usually multiple, complex causes over a period of time.

History has shown that government responses to famine have varied significantly. Take India as an example. Under British rule the Calcutta government made a limited response to the 1876-78 famine in southern India, adopting a laissez-faire attitude. Rulers in Madras, however, intervened by distributing aid. Calcutta put a stop to this challenge to the central state, closing down internal debate. They ignored critics who said that laissez-faire didn’t work and that the government was failing to understand the reality of famine on the ground.

Until the turn of the 20th century, the attitude towards famine relief as a ‘necessary evil’ predominated. The government wanted to be fiscally stringent and avoid costs; it viewed famine as the free markets’ responsibility. The prevailing view of the extent and role of the state changed with the rise of the nationalistic discourse of famine. No longer could the state on its own decide whether to respond to a famine. The motivation that failure to respond would result indirectly in loss of power forced even an undemocratic government to intervene. Academics debate whether the government’s failure to handle the Bengal famine in 1943 was the final trigger to end British rule in India.

So is democracy enough to prevent famine? Says Dr Hall-Matthews, “there has never been famine in a fully-functioning democracy with an active free press”. Here, ‘fully-functioning’ is the key. Zimbabwe, for example, was a better-functioning democracy in the 1990s but the downfall of democracy there brought increasing food insecurity. Other countries facing famine such as Malawi, Ethiopia and Sudan do not have the luxury of a fully-functioning democracy. Somalia doesn’t even have a functioning government.

Food markets in the 21st century are global and not designed to prioritise the hungriest.

By Penelope Jenkins