Seeding disaster

In October 2007, the World Bank's forward-looking annual World Development Report for 2008 was titled "Agriculture for Development", pointing to the need for effective investment in agriculture. Ironically, when 2008 came around, people across many developing countries were forced to spend significantly more in order to buy food. This was due to the inflationary pressures first created, mainly, by the global oil crisis, and then by the rise in global food prices. In recent months, though the global prices of oil as well as food have fallen from their peak, the global food crisis has not gone away. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) states that more than 32 countries in Asia and Africa are currently still facing critical food insecurity. The underlying causes suggest that another international crisis – that involving global finance – is now exacerbating the situation surrounding food, particularly by reducing real incomes as well as the quantity and quality of food consumed in developing countries. In response to these international crises, the largest global emergency efforts in human history are currently being made, but these responses remain dangerously skewed.

Some assume that the rise in food prices benefited farmers, even as it hurt consumers. However, this has not always been true. In the case of most developing countries, the vast majority of farmers are not producers with net surplus; as such, both farmers and consumers have suffered, as they rely on food purchases for much of their consumption. The case also applies in Southasia, against this backdrop of the food price rise and the escalating food crisis. Given that Southasia must devise strategies that address the region's food-security challenges, the first task needs to be to re-examine the causes of the current global food crisis.