*“Until two years ago we had too much food, but it was badly and unequally distributed,” says Abdolreza Abbassian, secretary of the intergovernmental group for grains trade at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a UN agency. Today about 850m people, mostly women and children, remain chronically hungry while 1.1 billion are obese or overweight.
The end of cheap food
Dec 6th 2007From The Economist print edition
Rising food prices are a threat to many; they also present the world with an enormous opportunity
FOR as long as most people can remember, food has been getting
cheaper and farming has been in decline. In 1974-2005 food prices on world markets fell by three-quarters in real terms. Food today is so cheap that the West is battling gluttony even as it scrapes piles of half-eaten leftovers into the bin.That is why this year's price rise has been so extraordinary. Since the spring, wheat prices have doubled and almost every crop under the sun—maize, milk, oilseeds, you name it—is at or near a peak in nominal terms. The Economist's food-price index is higher today than at any time since it was created in 1845 (see chart). Even in real terms, prices have jumped by 75% since 2005. No doubt farmers will meet higher prices with investment and more production, but dearer food is likely to persist for years (see article). That is because “agflation” is underpinned by long-running changes in diet that accompany the growing wealth of emerging economies—the Chinese consumer who ate 20kg (44lb) of meat in 1985 will scoff over 50kg of the stuff this year. That in turn pushes up demand for grain: it takes 8kg of grain to produce one of beef.
But the rise in prices is also the self-inflicted result of America's reckless ethanol subsidies. This year biofuels will take a third of America's (record) maize harvest. That affects food markets directly: fill up an SUV's fuel tank with ethanol and you have used enough maize to feed a person for a year. And it affects them indirectly, as farmers switch to maize from other crops. The 30m tonnes of extra maize going to ethanol this year amounts to half the fall in the world's overall grain stocks.
Dearer food has the capacity to do enormous good and enormous harm. It will hurt urban consumers, especially in poor countries, by increasing the price of what is already the most expensive item in their household budgets. It will benefit farmers and agricultural communities by increasing the rewards of their labour; in many poor rural places it will boost the most important source of jobs and economic growth.
Although the cost of food is determined by fundamental patterns of demand and supply, the balance between good and ill also depends in part on governments. If politicians do nothing, or the wrong things, the world faces more misery, especially among the urban poor. If they get policy right, they can help increase the wealth of the poorest nations, aid the rural poor, rescue farming from subsidies and neglect—and minimise the harm to the slum-dwellers and landless labourers. So far, the auguries look gloomy.
In the troughThat, at least, is the lesson of half a century of food policy. Whatever the supposed threat—the lack of food security, rural poverty, environmental stewardship—the world seems to have only one solution: government intervention. Most of the subsidies and trade barriers have come at a huge cost. The trillions of dollars spent supporting farmers in rich countries have led to higher taxes, worse food, intensively farmed monocultures, overproduction and world prices that wreck the lives of poor farmers in the emerging markets. And for what? Despite the help, plenty of Western farmers have been beset by poverty. Increasing productivity means you need fewer farmers, which steadily drives the least efficient off the land. Even a vast subsidy cannot reverse that.
With agflation, policy has reached a new level of self-parody. Take America's supposedly verdant ethanol subsidies. It is not just that they are supporting a relatively dirty version of ethanol (far better to import Brazil's sugar-based liquor); they are also offsetting older grain subsidies that lowered prices by encouraging overproduction. Intervention multiplies like lies. Now countries such as Russia and Venezuela have imposed price controls—an aid to consumers—to offset America's aid to ethanol producers. Meanwhile, high grain prices are persuading people to clear forests to plant more maize.
Dearer food is a chance to break this dizzying cycle. Higher market prices make it possible to reduce subsidies without hurting incomes. A farm bill is now going through America's Congress. The European Union has promised a root-and-branch review (not yet reform) of its farm-support scheme. The reforms of the past few decades have, in fact, grappled with the rich world's farm programmes—but only timidly. Now comes the chance for politicians to show that they are serious when they say they want to put agriculture right.
Cutting rich-world subsidies and trade barriers would help taxpayers; it could revive the stalled Doha round of world trade talks, boosting the world economy; and, most important, it would directly help many of the world's poor. In terms of economic policy, it is hard to think of a greater good.
Where government help is really neededThree-quarters of the world's poor live in rural areas. The depressed world prices created by farm policies over the past few decades have had a devastating effect. There has been a long-term fall in investment in farming and the things that sustain it, such as irrigation. The share of public spending going to agriculture in developing countries has fallen by half since 1980. Poor countries that used to export food now import it.
Reducing subsidies in the West would help reverse this. The World Bank reckons that if you free up agricultural trade, the prices of things poor countries specialise in (like cotton) would rise and developing countries would capture the gains by increasing exports. And because farming accounts for two-thirds of jobs in the poorest countries, it is the most important contributor to the early stages of economic growth. According to the World Bank, the really poor get three times as much extra income from an increase in farm productivity as from the same gain in industry or services. In the long term, thriving farms and open markets provide a secure food supply.
However, there is an obvious catch—and one that justifies government help. High prices have a mixed impact on poverty: they hurt anyone who loses more from dear food than he gains from a higher income. And that means over a billion urban consumers (and some landless labourers), many of whom are politically influential in poor countries. Given the speed of this year's food-price rises, governments in emerging markets have no alternative but to try to soften the blow.
Where they can, these governments should subsidise the incomes of the poor, rather than food itself, because that minimises price distortions. Where food subsidies are unavoidable, they should be temporary and targeted on the poor. So far, most government interventions in the poor world have failed these tests: politicians who seem to think cheap food part of the natural order of things have slapped on price controls and export restraints, which hurt farmers and will almost certainly fail.
Over the past few years, a sense has grown that the rich are hogging the world's wealth. In poor countries, widening income inequality takes the form of a gap between city and country: incomes have been rising faster for urban dwellers than for rural ones. If handled properly, dearer food is a once-in-a-generation chance to narrow income disparities and to wean rich farmers from subsidies and help poor ones. The ultimate reward, though, is not merely theirs: it is to make the world richer and fairer.
Food prices Cheap no more
Dec 6th 2007From The Economist print edition
Rising incomes in Asia and ethanol subsidies in America have
put an end to a long era of falling food pricesGerrit BuntrockONE of the odder features of last weekend's vote in Venezuela
was that staple foods were in short supply. Something similar
happened in Russia before its parliamentary election.
Governments in both oil-rich countries had imposed controls on
food prices, with the usual consequences. Such controls have
been surprisingly widespread—a knee-jerk response to one of
the most remarkable changes that food markets, indeed any
markets, have seen for years: the end of cheap food.
In early September the world price of wheat rose to over $400
a tonne, the highest ever recorded. In May it had been around
$200. Though in real terms its price is far below the heights it
scaled in 1974, it is still twice the average of the past 25 years.
Earlier this year the price of maize (corn) exceeded $175 a
tonne, again a world record. It has fallen from its peak, as has
that of wheat, but at $150 a tonne is still 50% above the
average for 2006.
As the price of one crop shoots up, farmers plant it to take
advantage, switching land from other uses. So a rise in wheat
prices has knock-on effects on other crops. Rice prices have hit
records this year, although their rise has been slower. The
Economist's food-price index is now at its highest since it began
in 1845, having risen by one-third in the past year.
Normally, sky-high food prices reflect scarcity caused by crop
failure. Stocks are run down as everyone lives off last year's
stores. This year harvests have been poor in some places,
notably Australia, where the drought-hit wheat crop failed for
the second year running. And world cereals stocks as a
proportion of production are the lowest ever recorded. The
run-down has been accentuated by the decision of large
countries (America and China) to reduce stocks to save money.
Yet what is most remarkable about the present bout of
“agflation” is that record prices are being achieved at a time not
of scarcity but of abundance. According to the International
Grains Council, a trade body based in London, this year's total
cereals crop will be 1.66 billion tonnes, the largest on record
and 89m tonnes more than last year's harvest, another bumper
crop. That the biggest grain harvest the world has ever seen is
not enough to forestall scarcity prices tells you that something
fundamental is affecting the world's demand for cereals.
The meat of the questionTwo things, in fact. One is increasing wealth in China and India.
This is stoking demand for meat in those countries, in turn
boosting the demand for cereals to feed to animals. The use of
grains for bread, tortillas and chapattis is linked to the growth of
the world's population. It has been flat for decades, reflecting
the slowing of population growth. But demand for meat is tied
to economic growth (see chart 1) and global GDP is now in its
fifth successive year of expansion at a rate of 4%-plus.
Higher incomes in India and China have made hundreds of
millions of people rich enough to afford meat and other foods.
In 1985 the average Chinese consumer ate 20kg (44lb) of meat
a year; now he eats more than 50kg. China's appetite for meat
may be nearing satiation, but other countries are following
behind: in developing countries as a whole, consumption of
cereals has been flat since 1980, but demand for meat has
doubled.
Not surprisingly, farmers are switching, too: they now feed
about 200m-250m more tonnes of grain to their animals than
they did 20 years ago. That increase alone accounts for a
significant share of the world's total cereals crop. Calorie for
calorie, you need more grain if you eat it transformed into meat
than if you eat it as bread: it takes three kilograms of cereals to
produce a kilo of pork, eight for a kilo of beef. So a shift in diet
is multiplied many times over in the grain markets. Since the late
1980s an inexorable annual increase of 1-2% in the demand for
feedgrains has ratcheted up the overall demand for cereals and
pushed up prices.
Because this change in diet has been slow and incremental, it
cannot explain the dramatic price movements of the past year.
The second change can: the rampant demand for ethanol as fuel
for American cars. In 2000 around 15m tonnes of America's
maize crop was turned into ethanol; this year the quantity is
likely to be around 85m tonnes. America is easily the world's
largest maize exporter—and it now uses more of its maize crop
for ethanol than it sells abroad.
Ethanol is the dominant reason for this year's increase in grain
prices. It accounts for the rise in the price of maize because the
federal government has in practice waded into the market to
mop up about one-third of America's corn harvest. A big
expansion of the ethanol programme in 2005 explains why
maize prices started rising in the first place.
Ethanol accounts for some of the rise in the prices of other
crops and foods too. Partly this is because maize is fed to
animals, which are now more expensive to rear. Partly it is
because America's farmers, eager to take advantage of the
biofuels bonanza, went all out to produce maize this year,
planting it on land previously devoted to wheat and soyabeans.
This year America's maize harvest will be a jaw-dropping 335m
tonnes, beating last year's by more than a quarter. The increase
has been achieved partly at the expense of other food crops.
This year the overall decline in stockpiles of all cereals will be
about 53m tonnes—a very rough indication of by how much
demand is outstripping supply. The increase in the amount of
American maize going just to ethanol is about 30m tonnes. In
other words, the demands of America's ethanol programme
alone account for over half the world's unmet need for cereals.
Without that programme, food prices would not be rising
anything like as quickly as they have been. According to the
World Bank, the grain needed to fill up an SUV would feed a
person for a year.
America's ethanol programme is a product of government
subsidies. There are more than 200 different kinds, as well as a
54 cents-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. That keeps out
greener Brazilian ethanol, which is made from sugar rather than
maize. Federal subsidies alone cost $7 billion a year (equal to
around $1.90 a gallon).
In theory, what governments mandate, they can also scrap. But
that seems unlikely with oil at the sort of price that makes them
especially eager to promote alternative fuels. Subsidies might be
trimmed, of course, reducing demand occasionally; this is
happening a bit now. And eventually, new technologies to
convert biomass to liquid fuel will replace ethanol—but that will
take time. For the moment, support for the ethanol programme
seems secure. Hillary Clinton and John McCain used to be
against ethanol subsidies, but have changed their minds. Russia
and Venezuela are not the only countries that like to meddle in
food markets for political reasons.
So demand for grain will probably remain high for a while.
Demand, though, is only one side of the equation. Supply forms
the other. If there is a run of bumper harvests, prices will fall
back; if not, they will stay high.
Harvests can rise only if new land is brought into cultivation or
yields go up. This can happen fairly quickly. The world's cereal
farmers responded enthusiastically to price signals by planting
more high-value crops. And so messed-up is much of the rich
world's farming systems that farmers in the West have often
been paid not to grow crops—something that can easily be
reversed, as happened this year when the European Union
suspended the “set aside” part of its common agricultural policy.
Still, there are limits to how much harvests can be expanded in
the short term. In general, says a new report by the International
Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which is financed by
governments and development banks, the response tends to be
sticky: a 10% rise in prices yields a 1-2% increase in supply.
In the longer run, plenty of new farmland could be ploughed up
and many technological gains could be had. But much of the
new land is in remote parts of Brazil, Russia, Kazakhstan, the
Congo and Sudan: it would require big investments in roads and
other infrastructure, which could take decades—and would
often lead to the clearing of precious forest. Big gains could be
had if genetically modified foods were brought into production
or if new seed varieties were planted in Africa. But again, that
will take time. Moreover, GM foods will not live up to their
promise unless they shed the popular suspicion that dogs them,
especially in Europe. And some of the new land—dry, marginal
areas of Africa, Brazil and Kazakhstan—could be vulnerable to
damage from global warming. By some measures, global
warming could cut world farm output by as much as one-sixth
by 2020. No less worryingly, high oil prices would depress the
use of oil-based fertilisers, which have been behind much of the
increase in farm production during the past half-century.
It is risky to predict long-run trends in farming—technology in
particular always turns out unexpectedly—but most forecasters
conclude from these conflicting currents that prices will stay high
for as much as a decade. Because supplies will not match
increases in demand, IFPRI believes, cereal prices will rise by
between 10% and 20% by 2015. The UN's Food and
Agriculture Organisation's forecast for 2016-17 is slightly
higher. Whatever the exact amount, this year's agflation seems
unlikely to be, as past rises have been, simply the upward side
of a spike.
If prices do not fall back, this will mark a break with the past.
For decades, prices of cereals and other foods have been in
decline, both in the shops and on world markets. The IMF's
index of food prices in 2005 was slightly lower than it had been
in 1974, which means that in real terms food prices fell during
those 30 years by three-quarters (see chart 2). In the 1960s
food (including meals out) accounted for one-quarter of the
average American's spending; by 2005 the share was less than
one-seventh.
In other words, were food prices to stay more or less where
they are today, it would be a radical departure from a past in
which shoppers and farmers got used to a gentle decline in food
prices year in, year out. It would put an end to the era of cheap
food. And its effects would be felt everywhere, but especially in
countries where food matters most: poor ones.
A blessing and a curseIf you took your cue from governments, you would conclude
that dearer food was unequivocally a bad thing. About a score
of countries have imposed food-price controls of some sort.
Argentina, Morocco, Egypt, Mexico and China have put
restraints on domestic prices. A dozen countries, including
India, Vietnam, Serbia and Ukraine, have imposed export taxes
or limited exports. Argentina and Russia have done both. In all
these places governments are seeking to shelter their people
from food-price rises by price controls. But dearer food is not a
pure curse: it produces winners as well as losers.
Obviously, farmers benefit—if governments allow them to keep
the gains. In America, the world's biggest agricultural exporter,
net farm income this year will be $87 billion, 50% more than the
average of the past ten years. The prairie farmers of the
Midwest are looking forward to their Caribbean cruises.
Other beneficiaries are in poor countries. Food exporters such
as India, South Africa and Swaziland will gain from increased
export earnings. Countries such as Malawi and Zimbabwe,
which used to export food but no longer do so, also stand to
gain if they can boost their harvests. Given that commodity
prices have been falling for so long in real terms, this would be
an enormous relief to places that have suffered from a relentless
decline in their terms of trade.
In emerging markets an income gap has opened up between
cities and countryside over the past few years. As countries
have diversified away from agriculture into industry and
services, urban wages have outstripped rural ones. Income
inequality is conventionally measured using a scale running from
zero to one called the Gini coefficient. A score of 0.5 is the
mark of a highly unequal society. The Asian Development Bank
reckons that China's Gini coefficient rose from 0.41 in 1993 to
0.47 in 2004. If farm incomes in poor countries are pushed up
by higher food prices, that could mitigate the growing gap
between city and countryside. But will it?
Guess who losesAccording to the World Bank, 3 billion people live in rural
areas in developing countries, of whom 2.5 billion are involved
in farming. That 3 billion includes three-quarters of the world's
poorest people. So in principle the poor overall should gain
from higher farm incomes. In practice many will not. There are
large numbers of people who lose more from higher food bills
than they gain from higher farm incomes. Exactly how many
varies widely from place to place.
Among the losers from higher food prices are big importers.
Japan, Mexico and Saudi Arabia will have to spend more to
buy their food. Perhaps they can afford it. More worryingly,
some of the poorest places in Asia (Bangladesh and Nepal) and
Africa (Benin and Niger) also face higher food bills. Developing
countries as a whole will spend over $50 billion importing
cereals this year, 10% more than last.
Rising prices will also hurt the most vulnerable of all. The World
Food Programme, the main provider of emergency food aid,
says the cost of its operations has increased by more than half in
the past five years and will rise by another third in the next two.
Food-aid flows have fallen to their lowest level since 1973.
In every country, the least well-off consumers are hardest hit
when food prices rise. This is true in rich and poor countries
alike but the scale in the latter is altogether different. As Gary
Becker, a Nobel economics laureate at the University of
Chicago, points out, if food prices rise by one-third, they will
reduce living standards in rich countries by about 3%, but in
very poor ones by over 20%.
Not all consumers in poor countries are equally vulnerable. The
food of the poor in the Andes, for example, is potatoes; in
Ethiopia, teff: neither is traded much across borders, so
producers and consumers are less affected by rising world
prices. As the World Bank's annual World Development
Report shows, the number of urban consumers varies from over
half the total number of poor in Bolivia, to about a quarter in
Zambia and Ethiopia, to less than a tenth in Vietnam and
Cambodia.
But overall, enormous numbers of the poor—both urban and
landless labourers—are net buyers of food, not net sellers. They
have already been hard hit: witness the riots that took place in
Mexico over tortilla prices earlier this year. According to
IFPRI, the expansion of ethanol and other biofuels could reduce
calorie intake by another 4-8% in Africa and 2-5% in Asia by
2020. For some countries, such as Afghanistan and Nigeria,
which are only just above subsistence levels, such a fall in living
standards could be catastrophic.
So it is no good saying “let them eat cake”: there are strong
welfare arguments for helping those who stand to lose. But the
way you do it matters. In general, it is better to subsidise poor
peoples' incomes, rather than food prices: this distorts price
signals the least and allows farmers to benefit from higher
prices. Where it is not possible to subsidise incomes (because
to do so requires a decent civil service), it is still possible to
minimise the unintended consequences if food subsidies are
targeted and temporary. Morocco fixed bread prices (the food
of the poor) during Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting; at
the same time, it cut tariffs on food imports to increase
competition.
AP
But a problem tooIn contrast, Russia shows how not to do it. It
imposed across-the-board price controls on milk, eggs, bread
and other staples, benefiting everyone whether they needed help
or not. Food is disappearing from shelves and farmers are
bearing the brunt. As Don Mitchell of the World Bank points
out, “if you want to help consumers, you can do it without
destroying your producers but only if you go about it in the right
way.” In reality, many of the recent price controls are blatant
politicking. About half the countries that imposed price controls
did so before elections or other big political events. Russia's are
due to run out just after next year's presidential election. Funny,
that.
There is one last important knock-on effect of agflation. It is
likely to help shift the balance of power in the world economy
further towards emerging markets. Higher food prices have
increased inflation around the world, but by different amounts in
different countries. In Europe and America food accounts for
only about one-tenth of the consumer-price index, so even
though food prices in rich countries are rising by around 5% a
year, it has not made a big difference. There have been clucks
of concern from the European Central Bank and a consumer
boycott of pasta in Italy, but that is about all.
In poor countries, in contrast, food accounts for half or more of
the consumer-price index (over two-thirds in Bangladesh and
Nigeria). Here, higher food prices have had a much bigger
impact. Inflation in food prices in emerging markets nearly
doubled in the past year, to 11%; meat and egg prices in China
have gone up by almost 50% (although that is partly because
pork prices have been pushed up by a disease in pigs). This has
dragged up headline inflation in emerging markets from around
6% in 2006 to over 8% now. In many countries, inflation is at
its highest for a decade.
Central bankers are determined to ensure that what could be a
one-off shift in food prices does not create continuing inflation
by pushing up wages or creating expectations of higher prices.
So they are tightening monetary policy. China increased interest
rates in August, Chile in July, Mexico in May. The striking thing
about these rises is that they are the opposite of what has been
happening in some rich countries. The Federal Reserve reduced
rates by 50 basis points in September and 25 points in
October; the Bank of Canada cut rates this week. The indirect
effect of food-price rises has therefore been to widen the
interest-rate differential between rich and emerging markets.
And all this is going on as the economic balance of power is
shifting. Growth in America and Europe is slowing; China and
India are going great guns. Financial confidence in the West has
been shaken by the subprime-mortgage crisis; capital flows into
emerging markets are setting records.
This shift will be tricky to handle. Such transitions always are.
The risk is of a bubble in emerging markets. As Simon Johnson,
the IMF'S director of research, wryly notes, “every bubble
starts with a change in the real economy.” Food markets are an
obvious place to start. How emerging countries fare—and how
poor consumers cope—depends on their economic policies.
The imposition of food-price controls was not exactly a good
start.
An expensive dinner
Nov 3rd 2007From Economist.com
Alarm is growing about rising food prices
AP“THE world’s most vulnerable who spend 60% of their income on food have been priced out of the food market,” is the alarming warning from Josette Sheeran, head of the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP). As the price of wheat, maize, corn and other commodities that make up the world’s basic foodstuffs is soaring the poorest people in the poorest countries are the hardest hit. And as prices shoot up helping them is getting tougher too. The WFP’s food costs increased by more than 50% over the past five years. Ms Sheeran predicts that they will increase by another 35% in the next couple of years too.
For many years the least developed nations have worried about food security, especially countries at war and those battling droughts and other climatic hardships. Meanwhile the world’s richest nations have produced more than enough for their needs and spent more time and effort worrying about the problems related to an abundance of food. These range from the health risks associated with ballooning rates of obesity to subsidies for uncompetitive farmers, particularly from the European Union. Despite efforts to tackle spending on farm subsidies, over 40% of the entire EU budget still goes towards supporting agriculture.
“Until two years ago we had too much food, but it was badly and unequally distributed,” says Abdolreza Abbassian, secretary of the intergovernmental group for grains trade at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a UN agency. Today about 850m people, mostly women and children, remain chronically hungry while 1.1 billion are obese or overweight.
Food is scarcer now thanks to market liberalisation, which helped to cut excess production and lower stocks. At the same time demand for grains and other food commodities has shot up in China, India and other countries with rapidly growing economies. The biofuel industry is gobbling up an increasing share of the corn and sugar crops. And this year floods and droughts around the world destroyed much of the harvest in countries such as Britain, which had one of the wettest years in recent history, and Australia, which had one of the driest.
Concern about the cost of food is even spreading beyond the world’s poor countries. Last month Italians took to the street in Rome and Milan to protest against an increase in pasta prices. They are eating less too: Italians’ pasta and bread consumption dropped 7.4% and milk consumption fell by 2.6% in the first eight months of the year according to Coldiretti, a farmers’ association.
Efforts to find solutions have been complicated by political manipulation. This month the Russian government introduced price controls in the run-up to parliamentary elections in December. This will temporarily help the country’s poor but leave them more exposed to the impact of price increases after controls are lifted. Jacques Diouf, head of the FAO, predicts that more countries will introduce food-price controls while others will scrap import tariffs on food or increase subsidies for food production.
And efforts to alleviate one problem, finding an alternative to oil, has brought strong condemnation from a proponent of another, feeding the world’s starving poor. Jean Ziegler, the UN’s independent expert on the right to food, calls the growing use of crops to replace petrol as a crime against humanity and wants a five-year moratorium on biofuel production.
Periods of high prices followed by times of low prices are common in agricultural markets. What makes the current cycle different from previous periods of high prices is the rise has hit nearly all food commodities. In the past farmers producing a plentiful crop attracting low prices would switch to one in shorter supply that would earn them more. And stocks are so tight at the moment that there is not much of a buffer if bad weather next year effects crops again, according to the FAO’s Mr Abassian.
Prices will probably remain high for the next year or two while the world is adapting to food scarcity. What happens next will reveal the resilience of the world’s food-supply system, predicts Ms Sheeran. Her programme, she says, is battling with a host of adverse circumstances. In addition to higher prices for food the WFP has to cope with climatic change, a rapidly increasing world population and the decline in the rich world’s aid budgets. Ms Sheeran refers to this as the post food-surplus era. The fat probably won’t get any thinner but the effects on the world’s poorest and hungriest could be devastating.
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