Anyone who has any doubt about just how interdependent the world has become should look at the food riots in Haiti and Egypt. They may be half a world apart but they are the same riots, triggered for the same reason — record world prices for staple foods. The same riots have also occurred in Cameroon, in Mauritania, in Ivory Coast and elsewhere in West Africa. Closer to home, in southern Yemen, tanks were deployed in several towns after protesters took to the streets to vent their anger at soaring prices — wheat up 100 percent, rice and vegetable oil up 20 percent. There have been riots too in West Bengal, India and in Mexico. There have been strikes in Argentina; there is a strike in Burkina Faso; there are shortages in Venezuela and there has even been a pasta boycott in Italy to draw attention to rocketing prices. Here too in the Kingdom, people have experienced the problem of soaring prices.
A primary cause of those sky-high prices for bread, maize, rice, meat, dairy products and the like is a lot closer to home than many of us either realize or would like to think. It is the soaring price of oil. The high price of oil has forced up transport and other production costs. The price is being paid by the world’s poorest people — people such as the Haitians and the Egyptians. It has also encouraged farmers, particularly in the US that provides 70 percent of the world’s maize exports, to divert from food production into biofuel crops. With at least a 20 percent drop in maize supplies (maize being a major animal feed), this diversion has further pushed up meat and dairy prices.
The situation is extremely serious. Six months ago, the head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Agency, Jacques Diouf, said that he would not be surprised if rising prices triggered food riots. Even he, though, must be surprised at their extent — and unless something is done they are going to spread, particularly in Africa where, according to the FAO, 21 countries face a food crisis. Worldwide the figure is 36. There is a real risk that governments will fall and political unrest may mutate into intercommunal violence as protesters seek scapegoats for their fury.
The easy answer in the face of what is expected to be a continuation of soaring prices is price controls, as Russia has done. But Russia, with its oil income and massive food production can afford to do that. Poor countries, dependent on ever more expensive food imports cannot. They cannot afford to subsidize such imports. The result is that the number of the world’s starving is going to increase substantially.
We live in a global village. We are grateful for the high oil prices, which, it is clear, the industrialized world can afford. But the world’s poor are suffering as a result. So we need to face this issue of food prices. It is not something that any one country can deal with alone. A global response to a global problem, causing global pain, is required — not in a year or so — but immediately. If there have to be subsidies for the world’s poorest, it may be that a special international fund needs to be set up.
