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Addressing the Global Food Crisis
 The spikes in global food prices in 2007-8 served as a wake-up call to the global community on the inadequacies of our global food system. Commodity prices doubled, the estimated number of hungry people topped one billion, and food riots spread through the developing world. A second price spike in 2010-11, which drove the global food import bill for 2011 to an estimated $1.3 trillion, only deepened the sense that the policies and principles guiding agricultural development and food security were deeply flawed.
There is growing awareness in the policy arena that the Washington Consensus on trade and development has failed developing countries in agriculture, leading them to abandon their own food-producing sectors on the assumption that their comparative advantages lie in export agriculture and that they can trade for all the food they need on the global market. The food price crisis shattered those assumptions. Some policies have begun to shift, new institutions have been created, and new funds have been offered for agricultural development. The key question is whether such initiatives replicate the unsustainable model of industrial agriculture, or instead recognize, as a UN/World Bank report acknowledged, that “business as usual is not an option.”
Under the leadership of Timothy A. Wise, GDAE is assessing these global changes in order to identify the policy reforms that can address the underlying structural causes of the global food price crisis. His co-authored report, “Resolving the Food Crisis: Assessing Global Policy Reforms Since 2007,” finds that changes have been encouraging but inadequate and that without deeper reform we face the continued threat of repeated and disastrous food price spikes.
To complement GDAE’s work on the Global Food Crisis, the institute carries out research in the following areas:
Revaluing Smallholder Agriculture – In response to the food price crisis, this project seeks to identify ways small-scale farmers can increase their production of basic foods, for family consumption and for local and regional markets. The emphasis is on the domestic and international policies needed to reinvest in smallholders and sustainable agriculture in developing countries.
Beyond Agricultural Subsidies – Much attention is focused on US agricultural subsidies as the cause of agricultural dumping in the
developing world. This project has the premise that subsidies are not the primary problem with US agricultural policies, and that agribusiness interests, not farmers, are the main beneficiaries. As part of this work, the "Feeding the Factory Farm Project" documents the “implicit subsidies” that have gone to industrial livestock firms from below-cost feed.
Promise and Perils of Agricultural Liberalization – The GDAE-sponsored Working Group project on globalization and agriculture in Latin America highlighted both the limited promise of export agriculture and the high costs to small-scale farmers and food security. GDAE is building on that work with targeted outreach and policy work in Latin America as well as further research on better agricultural policies for the region.
Agricultural Expansion and Climate Change in the Amazon Basin – GDAE is assessing the socioeconomic and environmental consequences of trade-led agricultural expansion – particularly soybean cultivation – in the Amazon, led by GDAE Senior Research Fellow María del Carmen Vera-Díaz. The research will allow governments, international agencies, and non-governmental organizations to anticipate the threats posed by the rapid expansion of agro-export production to the local environment and communities and to global climate change.
Lessons from NAFTA - Since 2000, GDAE has carried out extensive work on NAFTA's impacts in Mexico, with a particular focus on agriculture. This includes extensive work on the impact of US agricultural dumping in Mexico. You can see a full list of GDAE publications on the lessons from NAFTA for agriculture.
Key Publications:
Resolving the Food Crisis: Assessing Global Policy Reforms Since 2007, by Timothy A. Wise and Sophia Murphy, GDAE-IATP Policy Report, January 2012.
Mexico: The Cost of U.S. Dumping, by Timothy A. Wise, NACLA Report on the Americas, January/February, 2011.
Are High Agricultural Prices Good or Bad for Poverty?, by Timothy Wise, GDAE Globalization Commentary, from Triple Crisis Blog, November 19, 2010.
Small-Scale Farmers and Development: Assume a different economic model, by Timothy Wise, GDAE Globalization Commentary, from Triple Crisis Blog, September 27, 2010.
"Agricultural Dumping Under NAFTA: Estimating the Costs of U.S. Agricultural Policies to Mexican Producers," by Timothy A. Wise, GDAE Working Paper No. 09-08, December 2009.
"Policy Space for Mexican Maize: Protecting Agro-biodiversity by Promoting Rural Livelihoods," by Timothy A.
Wise, GDAE Working Paper No. 07-01, February, 2007.
"Revaluing
Peasant Coffee Production: Organic and Fair Trade Markets
in Mexico," by Muriel Calo and Timothy
A. Wise, October 2005.
Confronting
Globalization: Economic Integration and Popular Resistance
in Mexico, Timothy A. Wise, Hilda
Salazar, and Laura Carlsen (eds.), Kumarian Press and
Editorial Miguel Angel Porrua, 2003. (Published in Spanish
as Enfrentando la Globalizacion: Respuestas Sociales
a la Integracion Economica de Mexico, Laura Carlsen,
Tim Wise, and Hilda Salazar, eds., Editorial Miguel
Angel Porrua, 2003.)
The Promise and the Perils of Agricultural Trade Liberalization: Lessons from Latin America, by Mamerto Pérez, Sergio Schlesinger, and Timothy A. Wise, with the Working Group on Development and Environment in the Americas.
“The Limited Promise of Agricultural Trade Liberalization,” Timothy A. Wise, Working Group Discussion Paper DP19, July 2008
See full library of Globalization Program publications.
The Global Development and Environment Institute’s Globalization and Sustainable Development Program examines the economic, social and environmental impacts of economic integration in developing countries, with a particular emphasis on the WTO and NAFTA's lessons for trade and development policy. The goal of the program is to identify policies and international agreements that foster sustainable development. |
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