Food prices are increasing around the world and a perfect storm of multiple factors have converged to form what experts are calling a global food crisis.
Several Ohio State professors are researching and trying to help solve the problem.
“It’s a serious crisis right now,” said Ian Sheldon, professor of international trade. “The head of the World Food Programme is calling it a tsunami.”
There are about 1 billion people in the work who are living on less than $1 a day, according to the 2007 U.N. Human Development Report. Riots in Haiti, Bangladesh, Mozambique and Egypt occurred in the last few months over the skyrocketing prices.
A variety of factors have caused the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other essential food products to double or triple in recent years. The crisis is inconveniencing many Americans and devastating poor people worldwide.
Rattan Lal, a professor of soil science and a researcher with the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center, said another major reason for the crisis is low agricultural production in the countries that need food the most.
Crops such as corn, rice and wheat are not being produced enough, especially in developing countries, he said.
With prices and demand high, the poorest people in need of food are often out of luck, he said.
Sheldon said there is plenty of supply in developed countries, but the main problem is exporting supplies. Countries such as Russia have excessively taxed exports, further debilitating the already-poor places with people in need of food.
A big problem in developing countries is abuse of the farmland that hurts the soil, Lal said. If carbon is restored to the soil, the quality of the soil will improve and positive change can begin.
“This crisis can be solved,” Lal said. “The solution is to empower the poor farmer in Africa and Asia so that they can produce more, and the crop yield of those farmers can be quadrupled with proper management.”
Although the crisis is mostly affecting poor countries, Americans are being hit hard.
“It will affect all Americans,” said Carl Zulauf, professor of agricultural marketing and policy. “We’ve already seen higher food prices in the grocery stores, and we think we’re going to see higher meat prices down the road. Because of the significance of meat in the American diet, that will be a major event.”
Poorer Americans who spend more of their income on food will be hurt the most.
“This will be an income-differentiated response, because the impact will be much more definitive among poor Americans,” Zulauf said, adding poor Americans might need to dabble with already-tight budgets.
Although Americans might have it tough, citizens here are much better off compared to other countries. For example, approximately 40 percent of Bangladesh’s 140 million people live below the poverty line, spending nearly 70 percent of their income on food.
“We’re a relatively rich country, and we will have more opportunities to adjust than other poorer countries,” Zulauf said.
Although various factors point to the cause of the food shortage, Sheldon said it is likely Southeast Asia’s growing population has caused an increase in prices.
“Even if we didn’t have some of these supply shocks like the drought in Australia, and even if we didn’t have the biofuel boom in the United States, we would still have an increase in food prices,” Sheldon said.
India and China’s populations are booming, he said, and Chinese incomes are rising. The Chinese are spending a high proportion of their growing income on food items such as meat. Thus, Chinese diets are becoming more like Western diets.
Lal said OSU students interested in helping should not feel hopeless.
“The student community can play a major role,” Lal said. “If they start a movement of protecting the Earth to improve the quality of soil, we will see the impact within five to 10 years.”
Tom Knox can be reached at [email protected].
