All of a sudden, newspapers around the world are reporting that soaring food prices have evolved into a full-blown food crisis. Sunday’s New York Times had a front page story (“A Global Need for Grain that Farms Can’t Fill”). Today, Scotland’s Sunday Herald ("2008: the Year of the Global Food Crisis") and the Asian Tribune (“Grain Shortage”) have feature stories. For several weeks, the Manila Times and other East Asian newspapers have been focusing on record rice prices and their impact on the urban poor. Middle East newspapers have also been on high alert.
For any newspaper reporter wanting to do a feature story on soaring food prices, there is a large and growing number of angles to cover: angry food protests, major grain exporting nations limiting their grain exports, new commodity prices records, soaring production costs, the diversion of farmland to biomass production, pleas for more international food aid, the plight of the urban poor in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and growing fears of political destabilization in many parts of the world.
But, if it is a global food crisis, you could hardly tell it by following the presidential race or the debate in Congress. It may not be a conspiracy of silence, but it’s a testament to how far removed America and its leaders are from the problems that afflict most of the world.
Americans live so far up the food chain that soaring costs of staples like flour and rice, barely registers with the average household. Or sure, American are concerned that food prices have gone up 5-6 percent in the past year, but that’s nothing compared to the food inflation faced by those living overseas on less than $2 a day. When the price of flour doubles, it doesn’t set off any alarm bells in U.S. homes, nothing compared to the level of concern registered in Morocco, Jordan or Nigeria.
Americans, of course, will not be untouched by a global food crisis should one be around the corner. If population pressures, changing diets, and the growing demand for biomass are outstripping our ability to ramp up food production, there is an ultimate price to be paid. And it’s not just higher gas prices or food bills for American consumers.
A genuine food crisis would be very destabilizing for grain-importing countries like Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan, and the Philippines that have large populations already struggling with food costs. Pakistan is already on the verge of crisis. If U.S. foreign policy makers are not concerned about the impact of a food crisis on global stability, they ought to be. And so should the average American.
