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Report Sees Decade of High Food Prices
Andrew Marting, New York Times
Record prices for farm crops should gradually come down, but they will remain substantially higher than average over the next decade because of fundamental changes in demand, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Because the recent spike in crop and food prices has been caused in part by temporary factors like drought, the report predicted that prices should decrease as weather conditions return to normal and crop yields improve.
“At least we hope they are temporary,” said Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the O.E.C.D., alluding to the potential impact of climate change on agricultural production.
(30 May 2008)
More wealth, more meat. How China’s rise spells trouble
Jonathan Watts, Guardian
Jonathan Watts reports from China, where rising demand for meat from a growing middle class is destabilising world food prices
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Before lunch Zhang Xiuwen asks his family to give thanks. The table in their small Beijing flat is set with a simple meal: garlic pork in vinegar, fresh tomatoes, leavened bread, potato, cauliflower, and fried egg with cucumber. But for Chinese migrants such as Zhang and his wife it is a feast that they could only have dreamed about when growing up in a poor country village.
Ten years ago Zhang swapped the mountain skyline of his rural home near Shangrila in south-western Yunnan province for the grimy suburbs of west Beijing. For Zhang what he sacrificed in scenery he has more than made up for in lifestyle and diet. Once a rural farmer, Zhang is now an urban tennis coach. He no longer grows food, he buys it. Often hungry during a poor childhood, he can now afford meat every day.
It is a trend repeated across the most populous nation that is affecting global prices of grain and dairy products, and raising the risk of hunger among the world’s poor as grain is diverted to fatten up animals.
Western suppliers claim the shift will ripple through world markets for years. “This is the end of self-sufficiency for China,” says James Rice, chief of China operations for Tyson Foods, the world’s biggest meat producer. “This year will be the last in which China produces enough corn for itself, and the last that it is self-sufficient in protein.”
(30 May 2008)
Video at original. Related from the Guardian:
China: From poverty and hunger to fast-food outlets in two generations
More on the Global Food Crisis
China cuts food import tariffs to increase food supplies, cool high inflation
Canadian Press
China will cut import duty on pork and some types of animal feed and cooking oil, the government said Wednesday, in an apparent move to increase food supplies and cool stubbornly high inflation.
The move adds to mounting government efforts to rein in food prices that surged by 22.1 per cent in April, threatening to fuel possible unrest ahead of this summer’s Beijing Olympics.
(28 May 2008)
WFP chief calls for lifting of food export curbs
AFP
The head of the UN World Food Programme appealed Thursday for a lifting of restrictions on agricultural exports, saying they were exacerbating the global price crisis.
A number of major food exporters have limited their shipments to ensure domestic demand at a time of soaring global prices.
“We urge all nations to allow us to purchase food, even if they have controls for humanitarian purposes. This is very critical,” WFP chief Josette Sheeran told reporters at a summit of African leaders in Yokohama, Japan.
“Many nations have imposed export controls. Today we buy 80 percent of our humanitarian food in the developing world,” she said.
(29 May 2008)
