Food Security

Record food and oil prices threaten to push 100 million people worldwide back into abject poverty, development experts estimate. Surging inflation is striking hardest at the world's very poor, who are forced to spend 60 percent to 80 percent of their income on food, experts say. If long-term prices stay high—as food analysts predict—the financial burden could drive families back below the poverty line and undermine progress toward the goal of halving the world's poverty and hunger by 2015, a target established at the UN Millennium Summit in New York in 2000.

Soaring world food prices may dip in coming months, but steadily rising demand means higher food costs are probably here to stay over the coming decade. That could fuel growing hunger and unrest in the world's poorest and most vulnerable nations, a United Nations agency reported Thursday. In one of the strongest statements yet of the potential scale and impact of the world food price crunch, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization said there is ample reason to believe that "permanent factors" and not just inclement weather are behind the current rise in prices and that those will keep food costs at "higher average levels than in the past."

The House easily overrode President Bush's veto of a $307 billion farm bill last night in what appeared to be the most significant legislative rebuff of Bush's presidency. But a legislative glitch is likely to force embarrassed Democratic leaders to pass the bill all over again today -- and prompt a second showdown with Bush next month. The problem came when a House clerk mistakenly dropped a whole section dealing with trade policy from the 673-page bill before it was sent to the White House. Republican leaders argued last night that the House had overriden a veto on legislation that had never actually passed the House and Senate. For the sake of legislative integrity, Democratic aides said, Congress is likely to start the whole process again.

Half a century ago, a campaign to boost agricultural production using new, high-yield seed varieties swept Asia and Latin America, rapidly doubling the amount of wheat, rice and other staple crops those regions produced and helping lead to years of nearly worldwide food surplus and plenty. Today, with developing nations facing renewed hunger and even riots amid a potential global food crisis, experts agree that a new Green Revolution is needed to offset the challenges of population growth, biofuel demand, extreme weather and a growing clamor for costly-to-produce meat and milk.

We are now several months into the global food crisis, which is a much bigger deal than the subprime meltdown for most people in the world. Food prices have almost doubled in three years, threatening to push 100 million people into absolute poverty, undoing much of the development progress of the past few years. The new hunger has triggered riots from Haiti to Egypt to Ethiopia, threatening political stability; it has conjured up a raft of protectionist policies, threatening globalization. And yet the response to this crisis from governments the world over has been lackadaisical or worse.

Today, more than 70% of Haitians live on less than $2 a day, and the U.S. rice that is the staple of their diet has doubled in price in little more than a year. Hungry hordes rioted in the capital last month, leaving at least six dead by the time President Rene Preval restored calm by announcing that foreign aid and subsidies would lower the price of a 110-pound bag of rice to $43 from $51. But importers and economists warn that those supports are unsustainable and predict further unrest in this poorest country in the Americas when the subsidies run out in late summer and, based on current price trends, the same sack will cost $70. The answer, experts say, is revitalizing domestic production and returning to more traditional foods.

Gigantic waves—like those that surged across the Indian Ocean in 2005 taking countless lives—are now sweeping through the poorest nations of the world. In addition to the cyclonic waves that have wrought so much destruction this month, there are waves of hunger and anger caused by the dramatic rise in prices for food staples like corn, wheat, rice and soybeans. The cost increases have spawned deadly riots in countries as far apart as Haiti and Indonesia. The riots’ implications for spreading political unrest understandably worry world leaders.

While food inflation is causing tensions and riots around the world, even the affluent United States is being touched. At a cost of about $39 billion to the U.S. Treasury, nearly one in 10 Americans - 28 million people - are expected next year to use food stamps, which would be the highest enrollment in the program apart from a spike after the Gulf Coast hurricanes of 2005.

The Bush administration is pushing for an increase in US food aid and more flexibility in aid delivery at a time when natural disasters and soaring prices are threatening to spread hunger among some of the poorest in the world. Critics point out that the new money wouldn't start flowing until 2009 – and that aid-policy changes could well be halted by US agricultural politics. But many private aid groups still welcome the proposed moves as a sign of US engagement with a complex international problem – food shortages – that is unlikely to abate anytime soon.

As soaring food prices threaten to unleash widespread hunger across Africa and other poor countries, President Bush is right to press Congress for more food assistance. He is also right to insist that some of that aid be given in cash to purchase food from local farmers. Unfortunately, the American farm lobby, which supports food aid as long as it gets the profit, is fighting any change to the system. The situation has become increasingly desperate as rising energy prices, growing world demand and government-subsidized ethanol production — in the United States and Europe — have driven corn prices up by 25 percent over the last year. The prices of wheat and soybeans have doubled. There have already been food riots in several countries, including Haiti, Egypt and Somalia, with fears of more to come.