Return of Malthus and the Politics of Food

By: Bikal Dhungel

From 2007/2008, the attention of the world diverted towards Food Crisis as food prices sky-rocketed causing huge turbulence in both developing as well as developed countries. World Population has reached 7 billion level and continues to rise causing an upward pressure in food prices. The growing demand of foods especially meat products in emerging economies drove the prices higher causing those in the lower scale of income distribution unable to afford foods. Crop failures due to climate change caused additional pressure to food prices. So, we can conclude that the factors that caused the food prices to rise are:

• Rise in world population
• Growing demand of foods
• Climate change
• Increased use of Bio-fuel
• Speculation
• Rising energy prices etc

Thomas Malthus's ' An essay on the principle of population ' published in 1798 highlighted that the food production increases arithmetically but population geometrically. This would cause mass starvation and famine. However, in the first place, Malthus was terribly wrong as he failed to forecast the role of technology in food production. Luckily, the famine and starvation he mentioned didn't take place, at least not in that time he told. However, we cannot ignore that almost half a billion people go to bed hungry in the world and this number is expected to rise. The Green Revolution, the sophisticate technologies in food production and improved crop yields saved the lives of perhaps billions.

The recent developments and changes in environment has again attracted attention in global level. While the human population is still increasing coupled with problems connected with urbanization and its impacts in environment, our Earth has reached its limitations. The pesticides used on the fields eventually mixes with the ground water poisoning it for use and causing other negative impacts on environment. The impact has grown so massively that sooner or later, the environment will turn into a big dumping site. On the other hand, the green revolution is water intensive. Water is already a scarce good. Over a billion people lack a supply of clean water and there are places where water is used for agriculture and other people are left with less amount available. One such region is the middle east where governments used the technique of desalination, a process where sea water is diverted to fresh water using the natural process. Other causes of rising the food price like the uses of bio fuel might grow, the population shows no sign of decrease hence the price will continue to grow and energy prices will also rise, at least in the next few decades as Green Energy is still preparing a take off and oil is believed to last only for next 40 years if no new discovery is made. But the suffering of people is surely to be seen. So, the aim of this article is to briefly highlight what could be done to end the catastrophe.

As we have seen above, the rise of food prices will affect the whole world and handsome amount of time will be invested in it. In this matter, the price hike is more than the law of demand and supply, many other factors are also connected with it.

1. Intelligent Public Finance: Public expenditure in developing countries are over-proportionally in things that do not cause economic growth and maintain sustainable lives. For example, defense spending is ever increasing in total numbers, inefficient public education soaks a large amount of budget and short lasting infra-structure pulls financial injection in yearly basis as building contractors are mostly well connected with politicians. Expenditure on health are mere 3-6% in most developing countries though experts say that about 10% is required to ensure primary health care for all. Similarly, budget for agriculture has decreased over time. Apart from national budget, also foreign aid for agriculture has decreased. This trend needs to be reversed as food security is a serious issue that will impact the health of a population, their ability of learning and mal-nourished people also earn less than those who were not. As they will also be prone to diseases, this will increase in rising costs for healthcare. For children, mal-nutrition and lack of enough nutrition cause decrease is class attendance. This all will impede economic growth in the long term. So, first, the public finance should be spent intelligently and if less is available ( in the case of poor countries ), focus should be on efficiency.
2. Investment in small scale farming: Any mainstream economist will tell that, in order to achieve economic growth, agriculture should be efficient and less number of people should be involved in the profession of pure agriculture whereas the big fraction should be in industries or services. This means, to grow, agriculture should be industrialized. This is actually true but in the case of developing countries where largest fraction of population is subsistence farmers lacking the capital to divert to big scale farming, this statement might not hold true. In the absence of other employment opportunities, if a family goes away with subsistence farming, their chance of getting pushed into poverty is higher. So, even though, it will not achieve substantial economic growth, focus on subsistence farming will at least help people to get away from extreme poverty. So, investment in scale farming and a focus on small farmers is vital.
3. Rethinking Green Revolution: There is no doubt that Green Revolution has saved the lives of billions but not without side effects and terrible impacts on eco-system. Input intensive agriculture should be slowly reduced in terms of pesticide, fertilizers and energy uses.
4. Protect the Poor: Poorest people are the ones who were hit hard the most, in every country. Price hikes affect the poor more than the other group. A social protection system is necessary in developing countries, at least for those who are most in need. A report by the UN shows that only 20% of the world's poor are within the social protection system. This should be the political goal of governments.
5. Re-thinking land leasing: Countries like China already know that the issue of food will be more and more important for them in the future. So, to protect their population by ensuring the supply of foods, China has bought huge lands in Africa. They pay the host government certain amount of money and for that, the Chinese could practice agriculture there and send the crops back home. Other countries like South Korea has done the same. However, if this is also a host country friendly policy, more research is needed. For example, in Madagascar, where the government of South Korea leased the land, it is not sure if this is also good for the poorest people in Madagascar. May be they need the land themselves to ensure food security locally. So, every such leases should be under the monitoring of international organisation. Having said that, it does not mean that land leasing is a bad thing. It is a means of technology transfer from a rich to poor country, it creates job and also gain hard currency. What was meant was only a good coordination by not forgetting the interest of poor countries who has less voice in such negotiation.
6. Abolish agricultural subsidies of rich countries: Richest parts of the world, the European Union, United States and Japan all have agricultural subsidies in place. This has created an unfair game prioritizing rich country farmers and caused poor country farmers to get pushed out of the market as the subsidized products from rich countries are flooded in their countries. The potential farmers then end up coming to the cities looking for employment opportunities. This rule of trade should be abolished. Within the EU itself, there are both proponents and critics of such subsidies but as EU is a combined body of 28 independent nations, such negotiations are tough and time consuming. But if it is successful, it could be a boon for poorest countries.
7. Investment in Technology: Technology is the last hope of everybody. Technology in every sector has been the driving force of human society. Without the technologies of Green Revolution, our world would have been different. Since recorded history of humans, technologies and discoveries in agriculture has played an important role to make us how we are today. From domestication of staples to ploughing, frequent cropping, crop rotations, uses of fertilizers and pesticides, the discovery of nitrogen, mechanization of ploughing machines, breeding to green revolution are all the examples of technological change that improved the way humans have done before. So, the future technology can save us further. Future technology might be less water intensive crops, crops without pesticides, further increase in yields or the ability to grow in less amount of land. This would push the Malthusian dilemma further.

These policies are necessary to mitigate food crisis in the future but this is not all. As I have already mentioned before, food is not just the issue of demand and supply, nor just of agriculture. It has lot to do with politics, energy, climate change and other geo-political and socio-economic factors. Incase of rises in energy prices, the food price will rise accordingly as the production and transportation prices of food will also increase with it. Climate change is going to pose a serious challenge in crop yield. The recent years has seen events like heat waves in Australia and the US, floods in India and Pakistan and other environmental effects that caused in crop failure. This hampered the supply of crops and food prices rose drastically. Climate Change is yet to display other events in the future which we do not know. In some parts of the world, it will come with one form whereas in the other, there will be other events. Additionally, the political situation is full with turbulence. War, repression and other issues have caused mass migration, like in Syria, placing people in need of external food support. Similarly, the fighting in Somalia forced millions to flee neighbouring countries leaving the lands barren in one hand and putting the sufferers in a risk of starvation on the other. More to this, especially in poor countries, a functioning market system is not yet there. The price mechanisms for agricultural products are a necessary steps to let small scale farmers get fair price for their products. In the absence of this, there will be no incentive to produce/cultivate causing further pressure in food prices. Hence, these are wide range of issues. All of them have either direct or indirect effect on Food Prices. And last but not least, the danger of atomic war or the use of chemical weapons should not be under-estimated. Once the chemical weapons are used on a certain area, this land will be unusable for billions of years to come. This argument is based on the chemical weapons used by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during the conflict. Researchers say that such lands are unusable as these chemicals will remain there for the next billions of years.