Food Dependency and Global Food Crisis

ABSTRACT

A key feature of the contemporary global economy is the unevenness of food production and trade. The problem of food dependency and the system’s lack of capacity to accommodate global demand continue to haunt the global food trade and capitalism in general. This paper shows that the global food trade emerged as a solution to the problem of food in capitalist development; however, this solution so far has been clearly limited in its scope and capacity. By exploring the three major global food crises since the mid-nineteenth century, I trace the historical forces behind the crises and the restructuring of the global food trade and production. Finally, I discuss the future of food in global capitalism and the ways of better feeding the world population, especially those in the third world.

KEYWORDS:

• Food dependency
• food crisis
• global food trade
• capitalism

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Zhun Xu is Assistant Professor of Economics at Howard University. His research interests include political economy, social development, and the Chinese economy. His recent book is From Commune to Capitalism: How China’s Peasants Lost Collective Farming and Gained Urban Poverty (Monthly Review Press, 2018).

Notes

1. This strand of literature uses a much broader food regime framework. This paper restricts itself in focusing on food trade as a fix to the food problem in capitalist development.

2. See some background notes and sample recipes during this period from Cornell University Mann Library online exhibits (http://exhibits.mannlib.cornell.edu/meatlesswheatless).

3. According to FAO statistics (http://faostat3.fao.org/), Russian cereal production stagnated around 80 million metric tons since the early 1990s, and only had some moderate increase in the last few years.

4. Calculated based on BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2016 (http://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/energy-economics/statistical-review-of-world-energy.html).

5. China’s cereal import data are from FAOstat. For China’s soybean import, see the USDA report “Major Factors Affecting Global Soybean and Products Trade Projections” (http://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2016-may/major-factors-affecting-global-soybean-and-products-trade-projections.aspx).