[Radix] Re: Preparations for food crises?

[George Kent]

My thanks to Carl, Terry, and James for offering valuable insight  
relating to food crises. I would like to add a few thoughts.

Carl said “pre-emptive food hoarding is encouraged in disaster-prone  
areas,” in the sense that FEMA keeps a two-week food supply on hand.”  
I would use a different term, such as “stockpiling” for this, since I  
understand “hoarding” to imply something that has bad consequences, by  
definition. After all, we don’t want to say that someone who buys  
groceries for tomorrow as well as today is hoarding.

I am glad to learn that USDA has given attention to the need to  
prepare for food crises. However, I wonder about preparedness at the  
state level. There may be over-reliance on the idea that the federal  
government will take care of the states in all contingencies.

Terry mentioned the full warehouse in Bengal at the time of the famine  
there. This is comparable to the 2001 scandal in India that led to the  
Supreme Court’s requiring distribution to the needy of much the 60  
million tons of grain that were held in storage. Food held in storage  
by private parties, largely so they can engage in price speculation,  
is very different from food held or controlled by government to meet  
urgent needs and to help limit price gouging. As Terry indicated, the  
significance of “hoarding” depends on who is doing the hoarding, and  
why. When governments do it to protect the needy, I would call it  
stockpiling.

Terry added, “It seems often the case that the problem is not a  
shortage of food, but the price that poor people are expected to pay  
for it.” Yes. For those of us with money, the current food crisis is  
little more than an inconvenience. Food migrates toward money, not  
need. The people who are so keen to maintain the freedom of  
international food trade should keep this in mind.

James observes that the approach taken by USDA to deal with possible  
food crises is based on lots of pre-existing infrastructure of the  
sort that is not available in poor countries. Thus USDA does not  
provide a useful model for most countries. However, we should not  
think about this only on a country-by-country basis, but also think  
about what sort of management is needed globally, if not to solve the  
hunger problem generally, but at least to respond to sudden-onset food  
crises.

In my earlier email I pointed out that the purchasing of futures of  
food commodities is a form of hoarding at the global level. The recent  
run-up in global food prices was at least partially due to this type  
of hoarding. Hardly anyone identifies this as a serious problem, much  
less does anything about it.

With the realities of global food trade, the vigorous market in  
commodities futures, and the absence of publicly held food stores at  
the global level, we can anticipate more strong food crises in the  
future—mainly for the poor, in all countries.

Aloha, George