When the price of oil went up, the price of food went with it 鈥� enough to tip millions who had struggled out of poverty back into it and spark riots . Prices then fell back, but there鈥檚 little hope of making hunger history any time soon.
There鈥檚 more to the food crisis than oil prices. World demand for food has been spiralling, partly because there are more people on the planet and partly because industrialisation is making more of those people prosperous enough to eat better, especially to eat more meat, which takes a lot of grain to produce. We aren鈥檛 producing enough food to keep pace.
When massive investments in agricultural research and development produced unprecedented crop yields in the late 20th century, rich countries stopped spending money on it. That is one big reason why yield increases slowed, even as population growth, while slackening, remains enormous. Food R&D fell again this year, continuing a trend that New Scientist first pointed out way back in the early 1990s.
Advertisement
There is little sign of more funding. Billionaire Bill Gates stopped waiting for governments to respond and himself funded research into one of the most urgent problems, a resurgent killer wheat disease called Ug99, which threatened Asia鈥檚 breadbasket in March.
Land-poor but cash-rich countries took another tack when the bill for feeding their urban populations doubled this year: they started buying up land in poor countries to grow food for themselves, a move that seems sure to lead to conflict.
Prices have now fallen a little because of the financial crisis, but the underlying reasons for the price hike of 2008 have not gone away, and hunger will continue to bite. Worse, financial woes may also mean even less investment in research to increase farm productivity, which will eventually send food prices soaring again.