Global food prices ‘to double’ by 2030
OXFAM has called for the global food system to be overhauled in response to fears staple food prices could more than double over the next 20 years.
In a report, the charity predicts that prices of staple crops like wheat and maize will rise by 120 to 180 per cent by 2030.
It says the biggest driver will be climate change, which could account for as much as half the increase, the report says.
Other factors include the rising global population, changing diets, shortages of land and water and the use of crops for biofuels, it says.
Despite projections that demand for food will increase by 70 per cent by 2050, the growth rate in agriculture yields is set to decline to less than 1 per cent in the next decade.
“We are sleepwalking towards an avoidable age of crisis. One in seven people on the planet go hungry every day despite the fact that the world is capable of feeding everyone,” Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s chief executive said.
“The food system must be overhauled if we are to overcome the increasingly pressing challenges of climate change, spiralling food prices and the scarcity of land, water and energy.”
Oxfam is calling on governments across the globe to take actions to avert a potential food crisis.
These include moves to increase food production and build up reserves, as well greater transparency in commodity markets and regulation of futures markets. The report also calls for governments to end policies that promote biofuels and to invest in helping smallholders produce more.
It urges Governments due to meet meeting at a climate change summit in South Africa, in December to get global climate fund ‘up and running’ so people can ‘protect themselves from the impacts of climate change and are better equipped to grow the food they need’.
The World Bank warned in April that food prices were 36 per cent higher than a year ago, partly as a result of unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, and this was pushing millions of people into extreme poverty.
In its report, Oxfam highlights four ‘food insecurity hotspots’, areas which are already struggling to feed their citizens.
In Guatemala, for example 865,000 people are at risk of food insecurity, due to a lack of state investment in smallholder farmers, the charity says.
In India, people spend more than twice the proportion of their income on food than UK residents – paying the equivalent of £10 for a litre of milk and £6 for a kilo of rice.
In Azerbaijan, wheat production fell 33 per cent last year due to poor weather, forcing the country to import grains from Russia and Kazakhstan.
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