{"id":7885,"date":"2010-07-14T12:58:32","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T17:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.sustainablog.org\/?p=7885"},"modified":"2010-07-14T12:58:32","modified_gmt":"2010-07-14T17:58:32","slug":"food-security-global-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sustainablog.org\/articles\/food-security-global-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"The Emerging Politics of Food Scarcity"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a> A dangerous geopolitics of food scarcity is emerging in which individual countries, acting in their narrowly defined self-interest, reinforce the trends causing global food security to deteriorate. This began in late 2007 when wheat-exporting countries, like Russia and Argentina, attempted to counter domestic food price rises by limiting or banning exports. Viet Nam banned rice exports for several months, and several other minor exporters also restricted exports. While these moves reassured those living in the exporting countries, they created panic in the scores of countries that import grain.<\/p>\n At that point, as world market prices for grain and soybeans were tripling, governments in food-importing countries suddenly realized that they could no longer rely on the market for supplies. In response, some countries tried to nail down long-term bilateral trade agreements that would lock up future grain supplies. The Philippines, a leading rice importer, negotiated a three-year deal with Viet Nam for a guaranteed 1.5 million tons of rice each year. A delegation from Yemen, which now imports most of its wheat, traveled to Australia with the hope of negotiating a long-term wheat import deal. Egypt has reached a long-term agreement with Russia for more than 3 million tons of wheat each year. Other importers sought similar arrangements. But in a seller\u2019s market, few were successful. The inability to negotiate long-term trade agreements was accompanied by an entirely new genre of responses among the more affluent food-importing countries as they sought to buy or lease large blocks of land to farm in other countries. As food supplies tighten, we are witnessing an unprecedented scramble for land that crosses national boundaries. Libya, importing 90 percent of its grain and worried about access to supplies, was one of the first to look abroad for land. After more than a year of negotiations it reached an agreement to farm 100,000 hectares (250,000 acres) of land in the Ukraine to grow wheat for its own people.<\/p>\n What is so surprising is the sheer number of land acquisition agreements that have been negotiated or are under consideration. In 2009 the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) compiled a list<\/a> of nearly 50 agreements, based largely on a worldwide review of press reports. No one knows for sure how many such agreements there are or how many there will eventually be. This massive acquisition of land to grow food in other countries is one of the largest geopolitical experiments ever conducted.<\/p>\n The role of government in land acquisition varies. In some cases, government-owned corporations are acquiring the land. In others, private entities are the buyers, with the government of the investing country using its diplomatic resources to achieve an agreement favorable to the investors. The land-buying countries are mostly those whose populations have outrun their own land and water resources. Among them are Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China, Kuwait, Libya, India, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. Saudi Arabia is looking to buy or lease land in at least 11 countries, including Ethiopia, Turkey, Ukraine, Sudan, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Viet Nam, and Brazil.<\/p>\n In contrast, countries selling or leasing their land are often low-income countries and, more often than not, those where chronic hunger and malnutrition are commonplace. Some depend on the World Food Programme (WFP) for part of their food supply. In March 2009 the Saudis celebrated the arrival of the first shipment of rice produced on land they had acquired in Ethiopia, a country where the WFP is working to feed some 5 million people. Another major acquisition site for the Saudis and several other grain importing countries is the Sudan\u2014ironically the site of the WFP\u2019s largest famine relief effort.<\/p>\n
\nBy Lester R. Brown<\/strong><\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\nA Lack of Food Security Leads to Land Grabs<\/h2>\n