Early warning systems had been warning of the crisis for months, but no one seems to have been able to stop Somalia's worst food catastrophe in decades.
More than seven million people – almost half the population – are today in a situation of insecurity;
Of these, 213,000 are in the technical category of "food catastrophe" and risk of death.
“We are too late for the children and adults who have already starved to death – tragic, preventable and appalling deaths.
Their deaths not only represent a catastrophe for their families, but also demonstrate in the most brutal way the growing global apathy towards the victims of the climate crisis”, declared the devastated national director of Save the Children this month.
Somalia – like the rest of the Horn of Africa – offers a stark snapshot of the array of factors that have strained the global food system to an unsustainable point.
The figures estimated by the United Nations for 2020 suggest that the volume of undernourished people was up to 828 million people, almost 10% of the world population.
For the first time in three decades, hunger is growing again in absolute and percentage terms, threatening priority objectives of the international community for 2030, such as chronic child malnutrition.
If we consider the set of nutritional alterations derived from poverty, the panorama is even more disturbing and affects all forms of malnutrition.
Unicef warns that more than 250 million children around the world – including high-income countries – could be affected in 2030 by the scourge of being overweight due to lack of income and the inability to afford healthy food.
What we are experiencing is not a crisis of access to food, but a crisis of the food system.
A model based on the medieval distribution of the means and results of production, chained to the will of a handful of commercial and financial operators, and based on unsustainable practices of production, distribution and consumption.
A model that condemns humanity to a future of uncertainty and shortages.
Source: FEWS.NET
Some of the reasons for this phenomenon are structural and have been worsening for decades.
Virtually all of the most food-vulnerable regions belong to the so-called group of poor net food-importing countries.
The low or declining productivity of agriculture in regions such as Africa prevents their economies from guaranteeing a minimum internal supply.
Especially in the face of the growing impact of extreme natural
shocks
, related in part to the climate emergency.
From the point of view of demand, not only is the total population of consumers increasing, but the rise of the middle classes in the large emerging economies has transformed diets – more consumption of meat, fish and processed products – and triggered the pressure about the market.
Half of the 2,000 million new inhabitants of the planet that are expected by 2050 will be concentrated in nine countries –India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Congo or Egypt, among them– where urbanization and the middle classes are in full expansion.
Each of these factors is complicated by the extraordinary concentration and interconnectedness of agri-food markets.
A single country, the United States, produced twice as much cereal in 2020 as the 54 African countries combined.
Brazil, one of the largest food producers in the world, imports 85% of its fertilizers from countries such as Russia and Belarus, which have thus asserted their position in the face of international sanctions.
After the collapse of the real estate markets in 2008, speculators found refuge in the food raw materials sector, the subject of an accelerated financialization process that has triggered the volatility and uncertainty of these markets.
Over the past few months we have seen how food prices have reflected more the fear and greed of
traders
that the true effects of the war in Ukraine on grain production and trade.
The United States alone produced twice as much cereal as the 54 African countries combined in 2020
Things will get worse before they get better.
Experts suggest that we are moving from an era of inequity –in distribution and access to food– to an era of inequity with scarcity.
However, would it be possible to avoid the most serious consequences of this scenario?
The recipe constitutes much more than an adjustment of the system, whose vicious circle of food scarcity, poverty and unsustainability should be completely replaced.
The food security agenda in the 21st century is closely linked to that of the fight against the climatic emergency and that of an effort to redistribute productive resources.
A first package of measures encompasses everything that does not imply altering the prices and supply of food, starting with humanitarian assistance in extreme food crises.
Multilateral and non-governmental organizations have been denouncing for years that the international response is far below the needs of the hungry population.
Emergency aid saves lives and eases the suffering of millions.
But it is still a patch that sometimes only reveals the obscene contradictions of the system, as when in 2021 the World Food Program made a desperate appeal to the billionaires, rich during the pandemic, to save 42 million people. .
The safe path against hunger is the longest.
To begin with, states can intervene to shore up family income, provide dining room scholarships, or encourage employment of the working poor.
The case of Brazil and the
family grant
program is the most famous example of the possibilities of these measures and a demonstration of the close link between income poverty and hunger, which has spurred debates such as the universal basic income.
From a macro point of view, the impact of the pandemic on the income and debt of developing economies has dramatically reduced the fiscal room for maneuver of their governments, for which the community of international donors and creditors plays a fundamental role in time to remove this obstacle.
The second block of measures has to do with stabilizing prices and guaranteeing the supply of food and supplies.
The specialized
think tank
IFPRI has warned, for example, against the risk of unilateral export restrictions, which have disproportionate effects on international market prices.
There is also the possibility that food staples will be insulated from more aggressive speculative tools, a debate that gathered steam during the 2008-10 price crisis and may pick up again now.
Finally, it would be possible to adjust the annual production of biofuels to the cycles of scarcity and abundance to avoid serious supply problems.
The battle against hunger in the poorest regions is also being fought in the fields of the most prosperous countries
All of these are effective measures for the short term, since they will help reduce shortage peaks, avoid humanitarian tragedies and control price volatility.
In the long term, however, there is no alternative to transforming the model of production and consumption.
For developing countries –particularly those whose agricultural performance is further from its potential–, the key lies in what the director of the consultancy firm Estatera, Gabriel Pons, paradoxically describes in an interview for this analysis: “One of the the best agrarian policies is industrialization.
African agriculture needs mechanization, and this implies that part of those who today make a living from the agricultural sector find employment in other industrial or service sectors.
Those who stay must have resources and control of their land.”
The revolution that agriculture in many poor countries needs means reversing decades of neglect by governments and donors.
Anthony Kamande, head of research on inequality at the NGO Oxfam, wondered in a recent article how it is possible that Ukraine, with 14% of Africa's land, is one of the world's breadbaskets, while it imports a third of the cereals you eat.
The adjustment policies and the disinterest of the governments of the African Union have kept the average level of investment in agriculture at 4.1%, less than half of the effort committed.
In the last two decades, donor countries have doubled the amount allocated to the agricultural sector –some 5,100 million euros in 2020–,
With investment, technological innovation, social protection measures, and a determined education and training effort, many regions can leave behind a history of food vulnerability.
For international donors, Pons points out, supporting this effort is not a simple exercise of solidarity, but compensation for the effects of climate change that they have not caused and retribution for the environmental services that they continue to offer after decades of exploitation of their materials. cousins.
But the battle against hunger in the poorest regions is also being waged in the fields of the most prosperous countries.
In the Anthropocene era, climate change and resource depletion are a threat to the entire system.
Europe, the United States and other prosperous regions must opt for agricultural development models that make food production, dignified rural income and environmental sustainability compatible.
And in this task it is not possible to lower our guard or place the urgent before the important, as nearly 700 academics have recalled in the manifesto
We need a transformation of the food system: in the face of the war in Ukraine, more than ever
.
The document – signed mostly by Europeans – warns against hasty responses to price increases and advocates three essential measures: transformation of diets to reduce the consumption of animals;
agroecology and increased production of legumes;
and reduce food waste, which, for wheat consumed in Europe alone, they estimate is equivalent to half of Ukraine's exports.
As with any of the existential challenges facing humanity, there is nothing simple, isolated, or immediate about transforming the global food system.
But not only are we certain that it is possible, but others depend on this battle, such as access to water or the climate emergency.
Gonzalo Fanjul
is director of Policy Analysis at the Barcelona Institute of Health and co-founder of the Fundación porCausa.
Since 2011 he is co-editor and author of the blog 3,500 Millions of Future Planet.
Neus Rosell
is a research technician at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, in the areas of Maternal, Child and Reproductive Health, Viral and Bacterial Infections, Children and the environment.
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