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Resolving the Food Crisis:
Research for Global Policy Reform

The third food price spike in five years highlights the inadequacies of the global community’s policy responses to the 2007-8 food price spikes. In a January 2012 report, Timothy A. Wise and Sophia Murphy assessed
 how well has the international community responded to the challenge? In “Resolving the Food Crisis: Assessing Global Policy Reforms Since 2007” Wise and Murphy argued that the recent crisis has been a catalyst for important policy reforms, but they concluded that governments had yet to address its underlying causes. They warned that the international community was avoiding deeper structural reforms, leaving the world vulnerable to further crisis. The third devastating price spike in five years, triggered by the U.S. drought, is now the case in point.

The report launched a GDAE research program on the causes of and policy solutions for  the current food crisis. Research includes ongoing work on:

• the ever-closer links between food, fuel, and financial markets;
• the reliability of projections that we will not be able to feed the world in 2050;
• research into the impacts of U.S. biofuels policies on developing countries.

The report, “Resolving the Food Crisis,” is based on a comprehensive assessment of the policies and actions taken since 2007 by four international groups of actors: the UN, the G-20, the World Bank and international donors. The authors document the welcome renewal of attention to agricultural development and to the contributions of small-scale farmers and women. They also find encouraging signs of improvement in the attention to environmental issues, including climate change. But they warn that policy reforms fall well short of what is needed to meet the world’s current and future food needs in a sustainable way, particularly in the context of rapidly changing climate.

Several issues received priority attention in the Food Crisis report, and they are the focus of ongoing GDAE research:

• Reducing financial speculation on commodities markets – Reforms have been limited, leaving commodities markets prone to wide price swings. Proposals to increase the use of food reserves to limit volatility have been largely rejected. (See further research below)

• Limiting the further expansion of crops and land dedicated to biofuels –Government subsidies, incentives, and mandates spur biofuel expansion in industrialized countries, contributing to the underlying demand-growth that drives agricultural prices steadily upward. (See further research below)
  
  
• Expanding sustainable food production in developing countries – Yield gaps are largest among smaller scale farmers, and investing in the sector can close those gaps, improving livelihoods, resource management, and food production. (See further research below)

• Halting “land grabs” – As food-producing resources become more valuable, resource-constrained countries and speculative investors have bought or leased millions of acres of agricultural land in Africa and in other developing regions, compromising the long-term food-producing capacity of developing countries..

Download “Resolving the Food Crisis: Assessing Global Policy Reforms Since 2007”
Download the Executive Summary


Further analysis from GDAE's work on the Food Crisis:

Food Crisis Update: Main Drivers of Price Volatility Still Not Addressed, by Timothy A. Wise and Sophia Murphy, GDAE Globalization Commentary, from Triple Crisis Blog, February 12, 2013

A year of squandered opportunities to resolve the food crisis, by Timothy A. Wise and Sophia Murphy, IATP Commentary, January 31, 2013

Resolving the food crisis: The need for decisive action, Timothy A. Wise & Sophia Murphy, Al Jazeera, January 30, 2013 (Also reprinted in Third World Economics: Trends and Analysis)

Global Food Security in a Volatile World, Timothy A. Wise, World Politics Review, November 6, 2012

Spotlight G-20: Mexico’s Surreal Leadership on Food Security, by Timothy A. Wise, GDAE Globalization Commentary, from Triple Crisis Blog, June 18, 2012

G-8 punts on food security … to the private sector, by Timothy A. Wise and Sophia Murphy, GDAE Globalization Commentary, from Triple Crisis Blog, May 22, 2012

Resolving the Food Crisis: Global leaders fail to make crucial reforms, by Timothy A. Wise and Sophia Murphy, GDAE Globalization Commentary, from Triple Crisis Blog, January 18, 2012.
Also available in Spanish. And in Portuguese at Opinion Sur.

Read "The Continuing Food Crisis: Global Policy Reforms Lag," an article by Wise and Murphy in Economic and Political Weekly, February 25, 2012.

Learn more about GDAE's work on The Food Crisis and Agricultural Development
Read more on IATP's work on food and agriculture