Food alarm rings in developing world

The situation in the famine-hit Horn of Africa is getting worse, with 12 million people suffering from hunger and more than 2,000 flooding into refuge camps near the Somalia-Kenya and Somalia-Ethiopia borders every day. According to the United Nations Food Programme, a child starves to death every 6 minutes in Somalia, which has been the hardest hit and has lost almost 6 percent of its population to starvation.

China has provided emergency food aid worth 90 million yuan ($14.07 million) to Ethiopa, Kenya and Djibouti, but UN agencies still face a fund gap of more than $300 million to meet the immediate needs of the hungry.

Though the famine or famine-like conditions in Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Djibouti has been caused by the severest drought in almost 60 years, it reflects the vulnerability of the food situation in the developing world. If the crisis is not handled immediately and properly, the tragedy in the Horn of Africa will take the lives of tens of thousands of more people.

The food supply in developing countries is becoming increasingly inadequate to meet the demand. According to the UN Population Fund, the world population would exceed 9 billion by 2050, and most of the newly increased population would be in the developing countries. Good production and water supply both need to be increased by 70-100 percent and 50 percent to meet the rise in demand when about 7 million hectares of arable land is disappearing every year because of desertification, urbanization and various other reasons.

Climate change is having an ever-increasing impact on food production. Researchers have found that climate change "is already exerting a considerable drag on yield growth". If global temperature rises 1 C, the global food output will drop by as much as 10 percent, the researchers have said. Today, more than 852 million people are chronically hungry and 830 million of them live in the developing countries, which will suffer the most because of climate change.

Since more food crops are likely to be used to make biofuels, food security may deteriorate in the developing countries. The United States alone is expected to use about 180 million tons of corn by 2022 to make biofuels, which could be enough to feed 580 million people for one whole year.

The global debate on biofuels is still far from being conclusive and no agreement on it has been reached at World Trade Organization negotiations, with developed countries insisting that the issue of "biofuels is too complicated" to be settled.

Rising food prices have pushed more people in the grip of hunger and poverty, and triggered riots in some countries. Food giants such as ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus Inc. monopolize 80 percent of the world food trade, and control the chain of food production, processing and sale.

Because of monopoly and speculation, food prices have been at least 10 percent above their real values globally. Experts say food prices would remain high in the years to come, which will make food security a more acute problem for developing countries.

Food is not only a necessity for, but also a fundamental right of human beings. But many of the world's 70 percent poorest people, who depend on agriculture for a living, are being forced to go without food.

World leaders have to pay a lot more attention to the unpromising food security in the developing countries. Developed countries, in particular, should honor their promise to support agriculture in the developing countries, fight against food speculation, reduce trade barriers in agriculture, and ensure that biofuel production does not threaten food security.

Food security is a major issue for G20 nations, and people in the developing countries hope that G20 leaders would take concrete actions at their Cannes Summit to help address food shortage. The world is waiting expectantly for the major nations to fulfill their responsibilities toward humanity.

The author is a Beijing-based scholar of international relations.

(China Daily 08/13/2011 page5)