-
08/08/2011
-
Gerdien Meijerink
In early 2011, I predicted that food prices would stay in the news this year. The first half of 2011 has proved me right. World food prices peaked at the start of 2011 and although they have since dropped slightly, according to the FAO, the overall price level is still higher than during the ‘food price crisis’ of 2008. Unfortunately, food prices have once again hit the headlines because of the famine in East Africa: the high prices are only exacerbating the situation there.
So what is going on? After many years of low food prices, a sudden rise in 2008 shook us out of our stupor. We could no longer take cheap food for granted. The days of the butter mountain became a thing of the past. There are several reasons for these high prices; together with my colleagues at the LEI, part of Wageningen UR, I have compiled a brief summary. In a nutshell, the demand for food (and particularly grain sorts) is rising steadily, while supply is having difficulty meeting this demand. Long-term projections generate questions like “will we be able to feed 9 billion people in 2050?” The FAO has calculated that food production will have to increase by a staggering 70%.
As a result, there has been a call for more investment in agriculture, particularly in Africa. This is partly justified; agriculture has been neglected there for many years and our Ministry of Development Cooperation paid insufficient attention to this area (see the WRR report 2009). In 2004, the African countries agreed to spend at least 10% of their budget on agriculture, but this never really became a reality.
But there is another way to ensure more food in the world. Demand for food is largely a question of distribution. Despite the famine in East Africa, we are still disposing of mountains of food: here in the Netherlands, we throw away between 30 and 50% of all the food we produce every year. This is the equivalent of 9.5 million tons or 1.2 million lorry loads.
A lot of food is lost during the production process, particularly in poor production countries (loss of crops or sorting beans of the ‘wrong’ size in Kenya), or in the chain afterwards (storage and transport) and in shops (supermarkets throw away food just before it reaches the end of its shelf life). But people at home also throw away a lot of food. Although this cannot always be avoided, it has been estimated that only 10% of our food waste is actually ‘unavoidable’. So if we can make sure that less food is wasted, we may be on the way to feeding 9 billion people by 2050.
This would mean (I hope) a return to the post-war mentality, whereby guilt inspired us to save every slice of stale bread and make it into a bread-and-butter pudding. But it will probably also imply a different take on and renewed respect for food, a commodity that is no longer cheap and readily available. So I am sticking to my prediction that food (and food prices) will continue to be a hot item for the rest of 2011. The theme of the 2011 world food day in October will help: namely high food prices!
Gerdien Meijerink
Senior economist at the LEI with a special focus on food security and markets