You can’t eat political reform

Mohamed Bouazizi

Today, the Jordanian King Abdullah sacked his cabinet. The King told reporters in Amman that economic reform was a "necessity to provide a better life for our people, but we won't be able to attain that without real political reforms, which must increase popular participation in the decision-making." Of course, to further that end, he has asked his former ex-military adviser Marouf Bakhit to form a new cabinet.

Zaki Bani Rsheid, a leader of the Islamic Action Front (IAF), was quick to point out that Mr al-Bakhit "is a not a man of reforms." The Islamists have long claimed that the 2007 election was rigged.

It’s all beginning to sound a bit familiar. There are plenty of commentators out there who are drawing overheated comparisons with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and playing parlour games trying to guess what form the new Middle East paradigm will take.

But somehow, somewhere along the way the point of all this is being lost. Six weeks ago, a Tunisian fruit vendor set himself alight and since then the flames have spread. Perhaps Mohamed Bouazizi’s trade as much as his gesture is symbolic of the current turmoil.

While we in the west are generally happy to view this movement as being driven by high (bourgeois) ideals of reform and democracy the truth is that the upheavals are due in large part to the effect of global food price increases in countries with a widening gap between rich and poor.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), its global food index has surpassed the all-time high of 2008, both in nominal and real terms. The cereals index has risen 39% in the last year, the oil and fats index 55%.

Do a quick websearch for news on world food prices and you’ll see at a glance that for several years now, dire predictions on the state of global food resources have been common currency and not just for cranks and Cassandras.  

In a considered piece in the Torygraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard  maintains that “the immediate cause of this food spike was the worst drought in Russia and the Black Sea region for 130 years, lasting long enough to damage winter planting as well as the summer harvest. Russia imposed an export ban on grains. This was compounded by late rains in Canada, Nina disruptions in Argentina, and a series of acreage downgrades in the US. The world’s stocks-to-use ratio for corn is nearing a 30-year low of 12.8%, according to Rabobank.”

But in the longer term, the problems are deep-seated. In a recent article: ‘Age of low-cost food is over study warns; Third of world’s food is currently being wasted’ Finfacts editor Michael Hennigan said the real price of key crops is set to rise 50-100% during the next 40 years. This according to a UK government report entitled Global Food and Farming Futures.  In a project involving around 400 leading experts in a wide range of natural and social science disciplines from about 35 low, middle and high-income countries across the world, a rocky 40 year cycle is predicted.

But the thing that really shows us up in the western world as self-indulgent swine is the following nugget of information: “Today, an estimated 925m people suffer from food shortage; about 1bn over-eat, triggering various diseases including the growing incidence of type 2 diabetes  and another 1bn have nutrient deficient diets.”

And another: “It has been estimated that as much as 30% of all food grown worldwide may be lost or wasted before and after it reaches the consumer. Some estimates have placed it as high as 50%.”

In terms of demand on resources, global population is set to increase from nearly 7bn today to 8bn by 2030, and probably to over 9bn by 2050. With generally rising wealth expectations comes a greater demand for a more varied, high-quality diet requiring additional resources to produce.

Supply side is also facing constraints; “competition for land, water and energy will intensify, while the effects of climate change will become increasingly apparent. The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a changing climate will become imperative. Over this period globalisation will continue, exposing the food system to novel economic and political pressures.”

In the west, most people have so far been largely cushioned from this reality but the country level wealth gaps that continue to widen in Europe and the glaring chasm between the fat north and malnourished south are not sustainable, morally, ethically or ecologically speaking.