In order to answer this question one needs to look at the underlying drivers for the uprisings in both 2008 and now.
The 2008 Food Crisis
Global riots and unrest
In 2008 riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and catapulted it to the forefront of the world’s attention.
In April 2008 Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute said, “This is the world’s big story.
In the same month World Bank President Robert Zoellick said that while many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs, and it is getting more and more difficult every day.
For days running, parts of Haiti erupted into violence triggered by the soaring cost of food. On April 12, 2008, the Haitian Senate voted to dismiss Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis after violent food riots hit the country.
Food prices, which have risen 40% on average globally since mid-2007, also caused unrest around the world in 2008.
The price rises affected parts of Asia and Africa particularly severely with Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Senegal, Mauritania, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt and Morocco seeing protests and riots in late 2007 and early 2008 over the unavailability of basic food staples. Other countries that have seen food riots or are facing related unrest are: Mexico, Bolivia, Yemen, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and South Africa.
Food riots in southern Yemen that began in late March 2008 and continued through early April, saw police stations torched, and roadblocks were set up by armed protesters.
In Egypt, a boy was killed from a gunshot to the head after Egyptian police intervened in violent demonstrations over rising food prices that gripped the industrial city of Mahalla on April 8. Large swathes of the population have been hit as food prices, and particularly the price of bread, have doubled over the last several months as a result of producers exploiting a shortage that has existed since 2006.
Cameroon, the world’s fourth largest cocoa producer, saw large scale rioting in late February 2008, in protest against inflating food and fuel prices, as well as the attempt by President Paul Biya to extend his 25-year rule. At least seven people were killed in the worst unrest seen in the country in over fifteen years.
One of the earlier food riots took place in Burkina Faso, on February 22, when rioting broke out in the country’s second and third largest cities over soaring food prices (up to a 65 percent increase).
10,000 workers rioted close to the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, smashing cars and buses and vandalising factories in anger at high food prices and low wages. Dozens of people, including at least 20 police officials, were injured in the violence.
Causes of the 2007 – 2008 food crisis
A lot has been written about the causes for the 2007 – 2008 food crisis. Between 2006 and 2008 average world prices for rice rose by 217%, wheat by 136%, corn by 125% and soybeans by 107%. In late April 2008 rice prices hit 24 cents (U.S.) per U.S. pound, more than doubling the price in just seven months.
Many reasons have been cited for the global food crisis, including:
World population growth – According to Joachim von Braun, of the IFPRI, total food production increases only about 1 to 2 percent per year, while total world population increases approximately 4%. Aggregate cereal grain food production, per capita, had risen yearly from the 1960s to the 1980s but has been in decline since. World population has grown from 1.6 billion in 1900 to an estimated 6.8 billion.
Increased demand for more resource intensive food – The head of the International Food Policy Research Institute, stated in 2008 that the gradual change in diet among newly prosperous populations is the most important factor underpinning the rise in global food prices.
Effects of petroleum price increases – A major IFPRI Report launched in February 2011 stated that the causes of the 2008 global food crisis were similar to that of the 1972-74 food crisis, in that the oil price and energy price was the major driver, as well as the shock to cereal demand (from biofuels this time), low interest rates, devaluation of the dollar, declining stocks, and some adverse weather conditions.
Declining world food stockpiles – In the past, nations tended to keep more sizable food stockpiles, but more recently, due to a faster pace of food growth and ease of importation, less emphasis is placed on high stockpiles. For example, in February 2008 wheat stockpiles hit a 60-year low in the United States.
Financial speculation – Destabilizing influences, including indiscriminate lending and real estate speculation, led to a crisis in January 2008, and eroded investment in food commodities.
Commodity Index Funds – Goldman Sachs’ entry into the commodities market via the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index has been implicated by some in the 2007–2008 world food price crisis. In a 2010 article in Harper’s magazine, Frederick Kaufman magazine accused Goldman Sachs of profiting while many people went hungry or even starved. He argued that Goldman’s large purchases of long-options on wheat futures created a demand shock in the wheat market, which disturbed the normal relationship between Supply and Demand and price levels.
Effects of trade liberalization – Some theorists, such as Martin Khor of the Third World Network, point out that many developing nations have gone from being food independent to being net food importing economies since the 1970s and 1980s International Monetary Fund free market economics directives to debtor nations. In opening developing countries to developed world food imports subsidised by Western governments, developing nations have become dependent upon food imports that are cheaper than what local smallholders agriculture produces, even in the poorest regions of the world.
Effects of food for fuel – One systemic cause for the price rise is held to be the diversion of food crops (maize in particular) for making first-generation biofuels. An estimated 100 million tons of grain per year are being redirected from food to fuel. As farmers devoted larger parts of their crops to fuel production than in previous years, land and resources available for food production were reduced correspondingly.
Biofuel subsidies in the US and the EU – The World Bank lists the effect of biofuels as an important contributor to higher food prices. The FAO/ECMB has reported that world land usage for agriculture has declined since the 1980s, and subsidies outside the United States and EU have dropped since the year 2004, leaving supply, while sufficient to meet 2004 needs, vulnerable when the United States began converting agricultural commodities to biofuels.
A World Bank policy research working paper released in July 2008 says that biofuels have raised food prices between 70 to 75 percent.
Idled farmland – According to the New York Times on April 9, 2008, the United States government pays farmers to idle their cropland under a conservation program. This policy reached a peak of 36,800,000 acres (149,000 km2) idled in 2007 that is 8% of cropland in United States, representing a total area bigger than the state of New York.
Agricultural subsidies – The global food crisis has renewed calls for removal of distorting agricultural subsidies in developed countries. Support to farmers in OECD countries totals 280 billion USD annually, which compares to official development assistance of just 80 billion USD in 2004, and farm support depresses global food prices, according to OECD estimates. These agricultural subsidies lead to under-development in rural developing countries including the least developed countries; meanwhile subsidised food increases overconsumption in developed countries. The US Farm Bill brought in by the Bush Administration in 2002 increased agricultural subsidies by 80% and cost the US taxpayer 190 billion USD. In 2003, the EU agreed to extend the Common Agricultural Policy until 2013.
Distorted global rice market – Japan was forced to import more than 767,000 tons of rice annually from the United States, Thailand, and other countries due to WTO rules. This is despite the fact that Japan produces over 100% of domestic rice consumption needs with 11 million tonnes produced in 2005 while 8.7 million tonnes were consumed in 2003–2004 period. Japan is not allowed to re-export this rice to other countries without approval. This rice is generally left to rot and then used for animal feed.
Under pressure, the United States and Japan are poised to strike a deal to remove such restrictions. It is expected 1.5 million tonnes of high-grade American rice will enter the market soon.
Crop shortfalls from natural disasters – Several distinct weather- and climate-related incidents have caused disruptions in crop production.
• Extended drought in Australia, historically the second-largest exporter of wheat after the United States
• The 2006 heat wave in California’s San Joaquin Valley, which killed large numbers of farm animals
• Unseasonable 2008 rains in Kerala, India, which destroyed swathes of grain.
• Cyclone Nargis on Burma in May 2008 caused a spike in the price of rice.
• Stem rust that reappeared in 1998 in Uganda (and possibly earlier in Kenya) with the particularly virulent UG99 fungus that by January 2007 had gone across the Red Sea into Yemen and then to major wheat-growing areas in Iran. The disease was expected to spread over China and the Far-East.
Soil and productivity losses – Large areas of croplands are lost year after year, due mainly to soil erosion, water depletion and urbanisation. Additionally, agricultural production is also lost due to water depletion.
Urbanisation is another, smaller, difficult to estimate cause of annual cropland reduction.
Rising levels of ozone – One possible environmental factor in the food price crisis is rising background levels of ozone in the atmosphere. Plants have been shown to have a high sensitivity to ozone levels, and lower yields of important food crops, such as wheat and soybeans, may have been a result of elevated ozone levels.
How the world reacted to the food crisis of 2007 – 2008
The following probably sums up the conclusion reached on the global food crisis:
“Former President Clinton told a U.N. gathering Thursday [Oct 16, 2008] that the global food crisis shows “we all blew it, including me”, by treating food crops “like color TVs” instead of as a vital commodity for the world’s poor…. Clinton criticized decades of policymaking by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and others, encouraged by the U.S., that pressured Africans in particular into dropping government subsidies for fertilizer, improved seed and other farm inputs as a requirement to get aid. Africa’s food self-sufficiency declined and food imports rose. Now skyrocketing prices in the international grain trade — on average more than doubling between 2006 and early 2008 — have pushed many in poor countries deeper into poverty.”
The following are some of the steps taken by governments and international bodies as a result of the food crisis:
– Temporary ban on the export of rice;
– The removal of customs duty on rice and other basic foodstuff – in 2008 the NPP led government in Ghana scrapped the 20 percent import duty on rice and other foodstuff;
– Announcement of emergency programs designed to achieve food self-sufficiency;
– Buying rice at the high market price and selling rice to the public at a lower subsidized price at food kiosks;
– Pressure on retailers to freeze food prices.
Although food prices eased by the end of 2008, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) convened a World Summit on Food Security at its headquarters in Rome in November 2009, noting that food prices remain high in developing countries and that the global food security situation has worsened.
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High Food Prices And Popular Uprisings – Is Ghana At Risk?