While Britain’s politicians voice the old platitudes about open markets, their systems are breaking down. Markets are patently failing to deliver security — whether on jobs, energy, healthcare, transport, food or anything else.
The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 2023
In a recent editorial, Ben Chacko (below right) warns that Britain’s politicians should heed the ’Davos voice’ of International Fund for Agricultural Development president Alvaro Lario, who warns that food supply crises are likely to worsen through 2023.
Former MI5 chief Eliza Manningham-Buller, warned in November that domestic food production should be viewed as an element of national security (FT). That view is not so far reflected in the government’s plans, which abandon the CAP’s explicit goal of protecting food production.
Government statistics suggest the prices of 30 common foods rose by an average 17% from September 2021 to September 2022, and the figures were much higher for many basics like bread, pasta, tea and vegetable oil and the situation is even grimmer globally.
The war in Ukraine has hit food and fertiliser exports from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus and the global climate is also becoming increasingly unpredictable. Huge regions of east Africa have been hit by five years on the trot of failed rains. Vast tracts of farmland were inundated by Pakistan’s apocalyptic floods. Both Europe and China recorded their worst droughts in hundreds of years last summer.
The US and WTO have exerted pressure on countries like India and China who keep affordable grain reserves instead of paying top price for imports; they called this hoarding
Lario cited China’s positive role in providing food security for its own people and “South-South” food supply co-operation (see UN websites). Though there are serious problems in Chinese agriculture and ecology, China’s grain reserves — accounting for almost 70% of the global total — ensure resilience in the face of supply chain shocks.
At the close of 2021 it estimated its wheat supplies alone would meet national demand for 18 months. Like many other countries, China also applies price controls to essential foods.
Agricultural output and rural incomes have risen through a mass shift to rural co-operatives under Xi Jinping, with well over 100 million rural households (around 50%) now part of such co-ops.
The UN food expert’s praise for China reflects the fact that it recognises the instability of global systems and seeks to reduce dependence on the market. Its joined up approach, where projects like new solar farms are funded for rural co-ops so they can sell energy as well as food, has helped eliminate absolute poverty and also revitalised the rural economy as a whole.
o
Food concerns 
Recent Comments