World Food Crisis: Is it a shock to development process?
Analyze this: A week-long protest, riot and looting in Haiti due to spiralling food prices led to the ouster of the Prime Minister and the announcement of a $10 million feeding program by the World Bank during an emergency meeting in Washington in April. The 9000-strong UN peacekeeping force is still in a dilemma to face the ‘hungry mob’ in Haiti. Approximately 10,000 workers clashed with police near the capital in Bangladesh over the rising food price. At least dozens of people, including 20 police officials, were injured in the violence in Dhaka. In Egypt, the revolt over food is mounting. The food-sufficient countries are facing a food crisis. However, for world leaders, this is a secondary crisis. It is at least not the oil crisis!
For around 820 million poor in developing country who never gets a meal in a day, this is a ‘silent Tsunami’. This has never been considered a crisis or shock or a top of the agenda by the world leaders as long as other politics are executed. Now, this has been called an Asian and African rice price crisis! But, more than half of the world's population is facing the heat of rising food prices. Overall, global food prices have increased by 83 per cent and are still growing! The cost of rice has risen by as much as 74 per cent during the past year. Several rice-producing countries have put curbs on exports in recent weeks. Remember, the oil shocks are not unusual in the world of politics. Sometimes, they are orchestrated for vested interests. Don’t confuse this food of affairs with the 1997 South East Asian Financial crisis as Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, and the Philippines are undergoing food prices!
We heard not long back ago about the Water War! That alert came from World Bank officials as well. So, after ten years of understanding the Water War syndrome, now we have another ‘Food War’ cautioned by the international development mandarins. The apprehension is that the food shortage or crisis will lead to civil war within or among the poorest countries. However, the World Bank will play a major role as its President is Robert Zollieck, former top US negotiator for WTO. Now, he will be interested in expediting his unfinished task within the World Bank to free the world from hunger. The affected countries must be cautious while considering the World Bank’s recommendations on the food crisis. It may be linked to the free agriculture trade in a later stage or the introduction of genetically modified seeds or grains. The world has been witnessing the worst form of food diplomacy during the Cold War by the superpower.
The world's population is 6.67 billion, increasing by one per second. Almost half of this number of people depend on rice. However, the world population has 85.5 million hectares of productive arable land. It is estimated that one hectare of productive land is lost every 7.67 seconds. Sometimes, the Malthusian concept comes surprisingly in a recurring time interval in poor countries. Have the development objectives put forward by world agencies failed somewhere? Or does the projected market-driven growth have some inherent problems? 5.
Since the 1960s, development institutions have supported the countries in agriculture, irrigation, water resource management, and so on to eradicate poverty in the regions. All this is directly linked to the production of food for the poor people. During the last decade, the World Bank invested $13.2 billion in agricultural and water management, out of which $5.6 billion was specifically for agricultural water management and went to South and East Asia, China, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan. Over the last three decades, ADB has cooperated with the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to improve rice-related research projects by supporting $17.3 million in various projects. But have they reduced poverty?
Bangladesh is facing a severe food shortage crisis to feed its large, poor people. It is boiling over ‘hidden hunger’. About 30 million of the country’s 150 million people could go hungry very soon. The cascading effect will be on the boarding India- one of the largest rice-producing/exporting countries. But, India has stopped exporting rice in the face of crisis. A large migration from Bangladesh is on the sleeve, triggering intense competition in boarding Assam, West Bengal and Orissa. The IFIs, especially the ADB, invested $ 1.6 billion in 51 agriculture and natural resource projects in 2006 in Bangladesh. However, the major loans have gone to the energy sector, finance, transport and communication, and industry and trade. The ADB has been guiding Bangladesh's development plan even with other development partners. But the country is facing a severe food crisis. The ADB, in general, has reduced its portfolio lending on agriculture and natural resource management since 2004. In 2007, while the total borrowing of ADB has set the history of $ 10.2 billion, the agriculture sector received merely $146 million as loans and $ 22.3 million as grants! Although the ADB announced that it would increase its lending to $ 2 billion a year on agriculture during the 41st Annual Governing Body Meeting in Madrid, it’s too little and too late. 7.
The shortsighted visions, truncated projects, and program design have created the present situation. The development assistance beyond countries, coupled with national design, has been focusing on more agricultural production through the development of irrigation management. Even they have failed to arrest or reduce the number of hungry stomachs. The impacts of climate change have already reduced the production of grains. Again, the drive for agro-fuel or bio-fuel has transformed the traditional cropland into cash crops to mitigate the emissions. In the end, staple grain production has decreased, but the cash crop is increasing with profitable employment/wages. To feed the hungry, the frontier technology- will be placed hurriedly, and the owner of that technology will call the deal. The crisis is not as simple as it looks. It’s more severe than an immediate orchestrated world crisis. Countries and development institutions are responsible for feeding the hungry without playing politics.