Global food systems are not confined to production. There are also a massive complexity of commercial interactions. All this is in the context of an economic system we call capitalism which, while food access a public essential, due to own internal logic food is primarily produced for exchange rather than use.
Now George Monbiot has published a thought-provoking article linking food and financial systems in The Guardian (19 May) where he has a regular column: Banks collapsed in 2008; now food systems?
Monbiot, a British environmental and political activist who has also written several books, argues that “…the global food system is beginning to look like the global financial system in the run-up to 2008.” He notes that while financial collapse would be “…devastating to human welfare, food system collapse doesn’t bear thinking about.”
George Monbiot: global food system beginning to resemble global financial system before 2008 global recession
Monbiot focusses on the current surge in food prices. While it is generally assumed that this crisis is caused by a combination of the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine, he drills down further to argue that these two events are aggravating a more dangerous underlying situation.
From 2005 to 2015 there had been a trend of declining numbers of undernourished people from 811 million to 607 million (nothing to be proud of but the trend was at least in the right direction). However, 2015 was a turning point with global hunger rising ever since (650 million in 2019 and 811 million in 2020). 2021 is expected to prove to be much worse.
Massive contradiction
Contradictions are central to the functioning of capitalism. Global food systems are not exempt from this dynamic. Here is its contradiction and what a massive contradiction it is. At the same time as global hunger is on the increase, so has global food production.
In fact, this abundance has been rising steadily for more than half a century; even greater than population growth. But only in the past two years has it surged thereby making it a major driver of inflation.
So why do we have significantly increasing food production and hunger concurrently? Monbiot provides an insightful answer – the complexity of a system that develops spontaneously from billions of interactions” thereby creating “counterintuitive properties.”
When under sufficient stress these properties start transmitting shocks through the network. There is a critical threshold where “a small disturbance can tip the entire system over” to an extent that collapse is possible.
Complexity of global food systems
Describing them as connecting nodes, Monbiot identifies food production’s inter-dependencies. They include corporations trading grain, seed and farm chemicals, major exporters and importers, and ports linked together through commercial and institutional relationships.
Counter-intuitiveness
The counter-intuitiveness arising out of this systemic complexity is that where these nodes are weak, and subject to behaviours, the system is likely to be resilient; conversely if certain nodes become dominant, behave in similar ways and are strongly connected, the food system is likely to be fragile.
An estimated four corporations control 90% of the global grain trade. But there is more. These corporations have been buying into seed, chemicals, processing, packing, distribution and retail. This has set the scene for a further contradiction; while food production has become locally more diverse, globally it has become less diverse with wheat, rice, maize and soy comprising almost 60% of the calories grown by farmers.
Similarly food production is now highly concentrated in a handful of nations, including Russia and Ukraine, the global network is increasing streamlined, and the industry is becoming “tightly coupled” to the financial sector. The food system is more and more vulnerable not only to its internal frailties, but also environmental and political disruptions that might interact with each other.
Changing drivers; from exchange only to use
There is an urgent need to diversify global food production and break the control of the big corporations and financial speculators. In the words of George Monbiot:
“If so many can go hungry at a time of unprecedented bounty, the consequences of the major crop failure that environmental breakdown could cause defy imagination. The system has to change.”
The problem, however, is that the tendency of the economic system we call capitalism is for increasing monopolistic power to accelerate this pursuit of not just profits but, more so, profit maximisation. This means narrowing the scope of food production at the expense of reducing global hunger.
The global food system desperately requires major reform in order for a humanitarian public good to be achieved (reducing on route to ending global hunger). But inherent economic drivers create behaviours which ensure that food production is primarily for exchange rather than use values.
Until this is resolved, this perverse outcome of increasing food production and increasing hunger globally can be expected to continue.
Ian Powell was Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, the professional union representing senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand, for over 30 years, until December 2019. He is now a health systems, labour market, and political commentator living in the small river estuary community of Otaihanga (the place by the tide). First published at Political Bytes
The “Limits to Growth.” used computerised systems dynamics to evaluate economic processes. Economists (and others) rejected the boom and crash indicated. Following the business as usual we continue the unsustainable option as predicted. Economists still have not got with complex system dynamics and follow a reductionist model which fails. The economic system is a complex one with many interactions. Weather models work and produce some short term accuracy. Finance modelling and food system modeling are important. Take notice. Food crises are coming.
I remain unenlightened.
If food production is increasing, and the number going hungry is also increasing, is it because
a) some are consuming more than they need, so depriving others (which implies that inequality of wealth and income is a determining factor as well as inappropriate patterns of consumption),
b) the balance in the kinds of food being produced are not congruent with the balance in the kinds of food needed to maintain good nutrition and overall health
b) the system of distribution is failing (no means to get the food from regions of abundance to regions of scarcity)
c) reversals in comparative advantages (numbers of people have moved from food self-sufficiency to cash crops or working in urban manufacturing and service sectors, only to find that costs have increased and incomes declined to the point where they can no longer provide for themselves through the cash economy).
d) other factors
e) some or all of the above
I know that in forestry the objective of maximizing the rate of return on capital results in lower volumes of production and a reduced range of products than would be the case if the objective was to maximize nett revenue per hectare. That anomaly is most marked when returns on capital are high. Is food production subject to the same distortions as a result of the drive to maximize return on capital rather than return per hectare?
If Australia is happy to send 501s here they will no doubt be happy to abandon their long term NZ flour milling customers for short term spot market profits in Europe. What will Labour and Fed Farmers do to ramp up NZ wheat production? Is the necessary seed wheat even available here?
Over complexity in our systems is obvious, but the real issues are single points of failure and lack of redundancy. That is by definition always going to happen in a competitive economy where profit comes before all else.
You could go Biblical and understand that the key to being Pharaoh was to keep a few years supply in the royal granary for years of famine. Our current political elite seem to have no idea that with power comes a responsibility. How many who criticise the Gallipoli campaign a century ago realise that the major driver was fear of bread riots due to poor harvests. The only large supply was in Odessa. Sound familiar?
yup if theres one thing neo-lib has taught us it’s systems with no slack fail at the 1st hurdle….but this goes across the board from private business to public service..a tight ship will do on a predictable path but with no spare capacity(an ‘uneccesary’ expense) 1st blip and it’s off the rails.
how about that for mixed metaphors?
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