Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
1
INTRODUCTION: SHOCKING THE GLOBAL
FOOD SYSTEM
Christopher Rosin, Paul Stock and Hugh Campbell
he spike in global food prices, peaking in 2008, is commonly recognized as a shok to
the global food system by media, governments and international organizations, and
academics. he broad resonance of this shok relects the hallenge that localized food
scarcity, and subsequent popular protest (often referred to as 'food riots') in Africa,
Asia, South America and the Caribbean, posed to a shared sense of progress - and
some would argue complacency - toward meeting the world's food demands. After
all, one of the central conceits of the last years of the twentieth century held that,
even if hunger was still with us, it was only a mater of time before a combination of
trade liberalization, expanding food markets, new tehnologies, post-Cold War polit-
ical stability and economic growth in the Developing World rendered the spectre of
a hungry world obsolete. Faith in the potential of these dynamics was underpinned
by the consistent downward trend in the cost of food commodities in the second half
of the century. he real threat and shok value of the food crisis was most evident,
however, in the erosion of heap food as a pillar of global food security. Clearly, an
ability to feed the global population was proving to be less certain and hunger on a
large scale was still a reality.
Understanding the causes of the global food crisis has proved elusive, not for
any lak of potential contributing factors, but for the absolute abundance of compet-
ing explanations. The crisis led food system analysts to re-examine the relationships
between food production, the looming end of plentiful petroleum-based energy (also
known as 'peak oil'), a rapidly hanging global climate and volatility in inancial mar-
kets. While both inequality in distribution of, and access to, food, as well as expanding
and more intensive consumption paterns still threaten global food security, the com-
peting demands for agricultural products from a burgeoning biofuels industry was
quikly identiied as a villain of the food crisis. Similarly, the impact on global food
