A Quarter of Wheat for a Penny: Sky-Rocketing Food and Oil Price Rises - Part Two

By Louis Egbe Mbua

This week in Rome, Italy, where world leaders have gathered to debate and find solutions to the world food shortage and the near oil total scarcity, it would seem from a trained eye that they are actually convening the totally wrong summit. The reasons for these apparently misplaced priorities are grounded on evidence that unless fundamental social and political problems are fully addressed internationally, their efforts would turn out to be little more than an early exercise in pure pointlessness. While one would agree that some kind of immediate action has to be taken, now, to stem the clearly unwitting -- and possibly blind -- march to the steep edge of the sliding cliff; and the inevitable descent into the time warp of the pre-historic stone age of want, hunger and hand-to-hand dog fights for scraps or crumbs of foraged nuts: the bare truth is that these solutions reached in Rome may be short term. The reason for this bold claim are multi-faceted and complex. Food and oil shortages have very little(although there is a minimal effect) to do with increased biofuels production in Brazil, America or any other countries for that matter: Brazil has been producing ethanol from sugar cane since the 1970s at a large industrial scale with no effect on food prices such as sugar.

The underlying factors threatening this mayhem; economic, international imbroglio and social chaos lie first in increased human population and the mal-distribution of resources. As world population passed the 6 billion mark, it became clear that a new kind of economic model should be developed for a proportionate and equitable distribution of resources: especially food and fuel.It has been proven time and again that certain areas of the world such as Europe and America consume at least 70 percent of food and fuel while the rest of world population are barely surviving on left overs. Surely it would be easier for the world if those who have surplus should release their surplus to Africa, Asia to even out the imbalance; and hence stabilise food and energy prices.

The international community are still wondering as to what direction they would have to move; and what role would be in store for them with the emergence of Brazil, India, Russia, China and possibly South Africa and Nigeria as new industrial powers who would evidently require increased energy and oil consumption as well as modify their tastes for food; technological and computer gadgets; cars and other fuel dependent transport; entertainment such as film production and other energy dependent past times and luxuries as the population becomes richer. Increased wealth in emerging new economies may mean that their populations have to move from bare grain staples of one meal per day to three meals a day that would include increased meat and fish diets. It follows that the demand for grain, meat, vegetables and fish will rise and thus followed by prices. As food and energy prices soar, the poor are caught in the cycle since they will not be able to afford high priced fuel, energy and food leading to protests and riots. In London, today, it was the fishermen who were protesting against high fuel prices. In other areas of the world, it was the common citizen who was protesting against high food prices including depleting fish stocks. In London, for example, the number of restaurants has almost quadrupled in less than five years. The solution out of this social and economic miasma would be for individual countries to invest heavily on sustainable agriculture and renewable fuels to plug that resource gap that comes with the divide between the very wealthy and the very poor: the latter almost always outstrips the former in many developing countries which leads us to the third kind of unsolved problem: Third World debts.

For Developing countries to purchase commodities in the international markets, they need hard currency. The IMF-led recommendation of all size-fit economic and financial solution to recover international debts for all developing countries has left several counties strangulated with little to do but to leave on a hand to mouth basis. Consequently, these nations have little capital to spend on grain -- and petroleum in case of a non producer like Burkina Farso -- in times of need as we have today:

Can't buy,

Won't buy.

Give us,

Food free.

Then we

Will be

At ease.

may now serve as fashionable begging catch verse (if begging can be seen as fashionable) as envisioned by Cuba's Castro in his "can't pay, won't pay" prophetic proclamation more than a decade ago on the coming dangers of poverty, hunger, want and debts. This resulting scarcity of grain and crude oil at home in turn causes food and fuel prices to spiral out of control leading to explosive riots and protests. Although a sizable number of these debts have been "cancelled"; the long periods of interest payments caused these countries to become poor with little or no foreign reserves on display: which comfortably brings us to the next cause --massive corruption, shameless back-handers, and widespread theft of obscenely gigantic amounts of money from the people by autocratic and brutal dictators and their cohorts. This would be discussed fully in the next series.