FOR MY OWN ENLIGHTENMENT, I usually go to the most reputable media sites on the Internet for information. Recently, my focus has been on the impact of natural disasters and the weather on food prices.
What initiated this interest was the announcement last August that because of a severe drought and wildfires that had destroyed one-fifth of Russia’s grain crop, that the country would ban all exports for the rest of that year.
The news sent wheat prices soaring to a two-year high and raised the possibility of inflated food prices. The costs of other crops, including barley, rice and corn, also rose sharply after Russia’s announcement.
The fears expressed then were that any significant hike in food prices would derail the already weak global economic recovery. That’s because as soon as Russia made the announcement some manufacturers in Europe warned consumers that products that contained wheat – from crackers to beer – might be increased.
You may recall that those fires, which were sparked by a heatwave, were the third instalment of devastation wrought by the weather from June.
This trilogy of events began with the flooding in Pakistan, which left about 700 000 hectares of crops under water or destroyed mainly in Punjab province, considered the breadbasket of that country.
Next was China, which experienced the worst floods in a decade and had its food supplies severely disrupted as a result. This led to a hike in prices there. Then came the events in Russia.
For the last few weeks, flooding has engulfed the agricultural heartland of Australia in Queensland state, robbing that country and the world market of grain and other food crops.
The unexpected grain shortfalls in these countries and a few others, aggravated by policy responses from some exporting countries, have contributed to a serious global food shortage.
The situation has become so serious that on Friday, January 7 this year, the United Nations warned that millions of people were at risk because global food prices hit their highest level ever since 2008.
Surging prices for cooking oil, cereal and sugar in particular, “will affect millions of people”, said Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome.
FAO index
The FAO’s food price index, an average of monthly price changes for meat, dairy, cereals, oil and sugar, hit 214.7 points in December – the highest level since the index began in 1990. And that December level tops the peak of 213.5 in June 2008.
“Rising prices are re-emerging as a threat to global growth and social stability,” Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, wrote in a commentary for the Financial Times.
Since then the fears expressed over the spike in basic food items have been seen in protests in a few countries. Indeed, the biggest story in the world today, apart from terrorism, is food prices and what is being done about them, or more appropriately, what can be done about them.
Locally, the high price of food is also the main thing on people’s minds.
It is a major contributing factor to the cost of living, which the Democratic Labour Party promised it would tackle if elected to Government in the general elections in 2008.
That it has failed to honour this pledge since coming to office is not entirely its fault, given the global situation. What can be argued, however, is that some of their policies have aggravated the situation.
But this piece is not about attributing blame, because as far as I am concerned there is more than enough to share between our two political parties.
Rather, I prefer to focus on solutions; that is, what we, as average people, can do to help ourselves ease our food bills. I have two suggestions.
First, we need to plant more yams, potatoes, bananas and vegetables on our lots. Though some of us have large houses with little room around them, we can still plant some items in pots, old oil drums and tyres.
Secondly, we need to take a serious look at what we eat and ask ourselves if our bodies really need some of these things because many are laden with salt or sugar and are not really good for us. I speak here of pastries, chips, other packaged snacks, and the like. Of course, we are not suggesting complete elimination of them – only a significant reduction.
We note that politicians on both sides agree this food price crisis needs to be tackled as a matter of urgency. One can only hope that they can come together in some meaningful way to map out a plan that will ease the burden on all Barbadians.
I live in hope.