Thinking the African Food Crisis - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 773

Take,forexample,theenduringquestionofthepriceofbreadandJohnStuartMill's
observation, long ago, that “men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the
means of earning their bread.” Real and nominal prices of staple foods have actually
declinedsteadilysincetheglobalfoodcrisisoftheearly1970s,andtheyremainedrela-
tivelylowandstablebetween1990and2006.Pricessurgedhigherbetweenlate2006and
mid-2008,drivenbytheinancialcrisesandthebiofuelboom,andagainin2010-2011.
According to the UNDP (2012, 41), however, these two price hikes had diferent
causesandconsequences.he2010-2011pricehikeswereledbymaize,wheat,oil,and
sugar, whereas the price of rice, an import for many sub-Saharan African countries,
spikedin2007-2008.Ricewaslessafectedinthelaterepisodebecauseofgoodharvests
in Asia, the main global supplier. A second difference is that the pass-through of global
pricestolocalAfricanmarkets,strongin2007-2008,wasweakerin2010-2011,andon
the surface, the poverty impacts of the price spikes appear to have been more limited in
2010-2011thanin2007-2008.
Nonetheless the effects on poverty in both instances were dramatic. Rising prices
in2007-2008mayhaveledtoashort-termsurgeof105 millionmoreextremelypoor
people. An updated analysis suggests that the comparable price rise in the second
halfof2010ledto44 millionmorepoorpeople(UNDP2012,41).Between2005and
2009,theworld'shungryprobablygrewfromroughly850,000toslightlyover1 mil-
lion. Price volatility and the turbulence of global food markets reverberated across
the globe among the rural and urban poor, with catastrophic consequences for
food-insecurehouseholds.Foodpriceshadfallensharplybymid-2008,but,omi-
nously,,pricesbeganasharpascentonceagaintwoyearslater,andthrough2011they
wererunningatlevelsinexcessofthehighpointofpricesin2008.Whatisnew,in
otherwords,isnotthereturnoftheMalthusianspecter(demographicgrowth)orthe
challengesoflowagriculturalproductivity—bothofwhicharereal.Rather,whatis
on offer is a reconfiguration of the landscape of global food provisioning and a cou-
pling—whatGhosh(2012)callsan“unnaturalcoupling”—offood,fuel,andglobal
finance.
Sahelian and Other Famines
Iwishtoinquire/Intothewhereaboutsofthedead.
W. G. Sebald, Across the Land and the Water ,2011
Nowhere has the acute stubbornness of hunger revealed itself with more drama than
insub-SaharanAfrica(FAO2011,2012).AlmostaquarterofabillionAfricanssufer
fromhungerandmalnutrition,moderateandseverestuntingstandsat38 percent,and
thenumberofundernourishedexplodedfrom170 millionin1990to223 millionin
2006-2008(theproportionofundernourishedstalled,onlyshitingfrom26 percentto