Wednesday, July 9, 2008

food crisis

12. The rich benefit from the current food crisis. To what extent is this true?

A fast-unfolding food shortage is engulfing the entire world, driving food prices to record highs. This phenomenon, known as the food crisis, can be said to be one of the most pressing problems that the world is concerned with today. The main cause of this food shortage leading to escalation of food prices is simplistically due to a decrease in supply and an increase in demand of food worldwide. With the food crisis likely to stay, perhaps we can actually examine how it can be beneficial to certain groups of people instead of labeling it as a total menace. The group that can most probably benefit from a food crisis could be the rich as they are more financially capable to handle this surge in price of food.

The rich can pointed at to be the culprits causing this food crisis, and in the end, they could be said, to a certain extent, to be the ones benefiting from this food crisis. Due to a rapid depletion of fossil fuels worldwide, richer countries such as the United States have turned to using biofuel as a cleaner source of energy. This leads to an increase in demand for corn used to produce ethanol for the source of biofuel. This increase in demand for corn directly competes with the use of these crops for food. Last year, over 20 percent of the entire corn crop was used to produce ethanol. Furthermore, the government of these countries switching to biofuel even subsidizes or gives incentives for the use of biofuel. This further increases the demand for biofuel. As a result, these richer countries are more able to achieve self-sustainability and the businessmen in these countries are most likely to benefit in terms of profits due to the huge agricultural subsidies and incentives given out by the government. Therefore, the rich does benefit from the food crisis.

Furthermore, more land for agriculture are fast being destroyed to make way for new factories as part of development projects. This will benefit the rich from their investment in these development projects but will be detrimental to the poor as the food crises worsen with the depletion of farmland that can grow crops. One good example would be in China, one of the fastest developing countries in the world. From the period of 2000 to 2005, there was an average annual loss of 2.6 million acres of farmland used for development, which resulted in a remarkable success in economic development over the past two decades. As a result of this loss in farmland, more farmers lose their jobs while the land are being used to reap economic profits, which will benefit the rich but not the poor in this case.

However, to say that the food crisis will benefit the rich will be too hasty a conclusion. The food crisis can hardly be said to be beneficial to the rich as it has caused social unrest and riots in poorer countries that are badly affected by the souring food prices. For example, protests, strikes and violence have been experienced by countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Also, in the month of April alone, food riots have broken out in as many as 33 countries which include Egypt, Haiti and the Cameroon. The human rights activists and the World Bank even warn of a possible implication of a global catastrophe if food riots spread. With social unrest and possibility of a global catastrophe, the rich can never benefit from a food crisis as they may find their businesses affected by the unstable social status. The loss in confidence to invest due to riots may affect profits of corporations. The profits gained by the rich might eventually be eroded due to the social cost of the implications of a possible social unrest. Therefore, people on the whole, including the rich, loses out as the world might be plunged into a state of social unrest unless a quick solution is to be implemented to minimize the impact of the food crisis.

Another reason to why the rich does not stand to benefit from a food crisis is because of the rise in price of food products. The rising affluence due to the effect of globalization has caused the growth of middle class in several countries such as China and India. As such, the increasingly prosperous people are eating more and this leads to an increase in demand for meat, which in turn increases the price of food products such as corn and soybeans, as the use of maize and soybeans to feed cattle, pigs and poultry has risen sharply to meet this demand. Therefore, the world suffers from increment in prices of food although the rich is in a better position to deal with this rise in cost of food products.

In conclusion, the food crisis does not benefit anyone at all. The term ‘crisis’ has already deemed this whole phenomenon as a state of danger and instability and therefore, how can the rich gain from this state of instability? Furthermore, the food crisis will only cause turmoil and social unrest if left unresolved. Any gains by the rich will eventually be eroded should the social unrest spread worldwide and become a catastrophe as warned by human rights activists groups. A quick and effective solution has to be implemented soon to prevent the problem from aggravating and causing undesirable periods of social unrest.

3 comments:

webspinner said...

a thoughtfully critical discussion =]
you may want to think about the recent G8 summit and how it tried to address the climate crisis while balancing the issue of energy and food. how do you think this impacts the poorer nation when decisions by these developed nations will affect their struggling economies? this would be a useful case to think about as it is current and relevant.

C=21 L=13

Anonymous said...

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