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CHAPTER 18
FOOD AND HUNGER: MARKET FAILURE AND INJUSTICE
Overview:
Since World War II there have been occasions of massive hunger, primarily in developing nations, but for
the most part the world food problem was viewed as a problem of excess supply and weak demand. However, in the
summer of 2008, the world found itself in a new food crisis, with hungry and poorer people facing low levels of
commodity reserves and high food prices. In 2011, similar spikes in food prices contributed to political unrest in
North Africa and the Middle East that became known as the Arab Spring. Likewise a series of drought conditions in
the United States, Russia, Australia, and other states also drove up food prices. This crisis triggered riots and
dramatic increases in the number of hungry if not starving people in the world. It also generated intense debate over
many of the political, economic, and social factors that created the crisis as well as possible solutions to combat
global hunger.
The chapter outlines many of the political, economic, and social structural elements of the global food
production and distribution system. In a brief history section, we discuss some of the important recent developments
in food and hunger conditions and policies. We then use the three dominant IPE perspectives to explain the primary
factors that experts and policy officials suggest contributed to the latest world food crisis. The chapter ends with a
short overview of popular proposals to solve the crisis and a discussion of some of the implications of our work for
management of global food and hunger problems.
The chapter employs the three dominant IPE perspectives of economic liberalism, mercantilism, and
structuralism to explain the primary factors that experts and policy officials suggest contributed to the new latest
world food crisis. Our coverage ends with a short overview of popular proposals to solve the crisis and a discussion
of some of the implications they have for management of global food and hunger problems.
The chapter makes three arguments. First, the current world food crisis is not primarily due to lower
commodity supplies accompanied by an increase in income and population. Rather, this argument only begs the
question of why prices increased so much over roughly a three-year period before the crisis of 2008 was
acknowledged to exist and why commodities ended up in short supply so suddenly.
Second, instead, the chapter concludes that the seeds of the global food and hunger problem remain rooted
in poverty and a mismanaged food distribution system. Hunger and starvation are permanent structural features of
the global political economy related to political, economic, and social structures of power that reign over the market.
Poor people consistently lack access to adequate food supplies. The crisis itself was caused by a combination of six
factors that came together in a relatively short period of time that resulted in high food prices.
Finally, management of the food production and distribution system suffers from the conflicting interests
and values of different food actors that include states, international organizations, multinational corporations, and
sub-national groups. These actors make up policy networks connected to complicated economic development,
energy and environmental issues, and security problems that make it nearly impossible to create global food policy.
Learning Objectives:
• To outline what was the dominant explanation of “world hunger” up until the 1970s.
• To outline and discuss the political and economic causes of the world food crisis of 1973–74 along with the
current food crisis that began in 2005.
• To outline and discuss specific ways that state policies and market actions often cause hunger.
• To outline and discuss how mercantilists, economic liberals, and structuralists view food and hunger problems
in the global political economy.
• To explain the six factors that experts and officials cite as the main causes of the 2008 world food crisis,
namely: (1) a weak (undervalued) U.S. dollar that helped draw down commodity reserve levels; (2)
environmental events that placed a natural limit on commodity production, particularly in developing nations,
which then sparked renewed fears of famine and starvation throughout the world; (3) heavy investment
(speculation) on agriculture commodities (4) new U.S. and EU requirements for biofuel production that reduced
the amount of commodities available for food consumption; (5) the ineffectiveness of international food
development strategies and policies; and (6) the persistence of war, disease, and government mismanagement.
Chapter Outline:
AN IPE OF FOOD AND HUNGER
a) For mercantilists, food and hunger issues are tied up with national wealth and power. Nations that produce
surplus food supplies benefit from their ability to influence other nations.
b) Economic liberals tend to stress that farmers, special interest groups, and agribusinesses in the major grain-
producing countries often “capture” the policy-making process in order to enhance farm income through
subsidies, trade tariffs, and/or exports subsidies.
c) Orthodox economic liberals view the world food and hunger problem as a failure of market forces to
balance supply and demand, believing that if the market decided policy outcomes, there would be enough
food to feed the world.
d) Heterodox are skeptical that states can resolve the myriad conflicting domestic and international interests
that give agricultural trade its quasi-protectionist flavor. HILs prefer fair trade over free trade, partially to
account for the impact of trade policy on food security.
e) Structuralists tend to see food and hunger as a global class issue, charging that “cheap food” policies often
benefit the rich to the detriment of the working class and poor. Agrarian reform—providing landless rural
workers with access to land to produce their own food—is a structuralist prescription for addressing hunger
particularly where a large portion of the population still lives in rural areas.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GLOBAL FOOD AND HUNGER ISSUES
a) In the twentieth century, increased commodity surpluses combined with weak demand led to low food
prices and farm income, causing governments to adopt production subsidies and implement a variety of
protectionist measures, including trade.
b) b) Cheap food policies in the United States lead to increased consumption, while increased production
allowed the use of food as a tool, helping to achieve a variety of foreign policy objectives.
c) In the second half of the century, hunger came to be viewed as the result of inadequate food production
coupled with overpopulation.
d) d) International organizations funded development projects in the 1960s such as Green Revolution
research to help LDCs overcome their hunger problems. Yet even with these measures, LDCs could not
overcome hunger.
e) The “Lifeboat Ethics,” thesis by biology Professor Garrett Hardin, suggested that the industrialized nations
should discontinue food aid to the developing nations due to the finite amount of resources available in the
world. Critics argued that the world had not reached such limited resources, and that those that had more
than enough should share with those who had little or nothing.
A World Food Crisis and a Paradigm Shift
a) In 1972, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) declared a world food crisis because of anticipated
grain supply shortages.
b) In 1973 the United States devalued its dollar, allowing industrialized nations to import more grain, but
forcing the countries most reliant on food imports to go without, as they were unable to afford the higher
prices created by the shortage.
c) Concurrently, OPEC dramatically raised the price of oil, causing many non-oil-exporting states to limit
food exports in order to pay their energy bills.
d) In the mid-1970s, “Food Firsters” like Frances Moore Lappé and Susan George put forth the argument that
hunger resulted more from income distribution than reduced production and overpopulation. LDCs lacked
the ability to insure all individuals received the minimum requirement of nutrients or the financial resources
to produce these nutrients.
e) Many Food Firsters and other structuralist critics also tended to share the belief about the necessity of food
security arguing that hunger was not endemic to LDCs but rather a by-product of their political and
economic relationship to the industrialized nations, shaped by asymmetrical international interdependence.
f) In response to this understanding of the roots of hunger, small farmer and peasant movements around the
world began mobilizing to demand greater autonomy to shape local and regional food systems. They called
for (and sometimes received) land reform that would allow them greater access to land to produce food for
themselves and their local community. This movement would later coalesce internationally as the “food
sovereignty” movement, discussed later in the chapter
HUNGER AMIDST PLENTY
a) After the food crisis of the 1970s ended, food security did not improve for many individuals in LDCs. In
cases such as Somalia and Ethiopia, civil war and disease both contributed to the continued spread of
hunger.
b) In the 1980s and 90s efforts by both governmental and private organizations did little to halt the spread of
hunger and starvation, particularly in Africa.
c) During the rest of the 1990s and into the early 2000s, civil war contributed to the deaths of millions by
starvation. Africa, ravaged by wars in Rwanda, Sudan, Angola, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia,
remains the most affected continent. Many other African states regularly face hunger due to drought and
must overcome high incidences of HIV infection, which have worsened their hunger problems. In 1996, the
FAO sponsored a world food conference in Rome, where 187 states pledged to halve the number of hungry
people in the world within 20 years, to approximately 400 million. Little progress toward these objectives
has been made, and little is expected given that the global financial crisis that started in 2008 has led to
cutbacks in promised food aid.
d) As of 2012, more than fifteen countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa had met this goal, and many
more had made significant progress.
An IPE of the Global Food Crisis of 2008
a) Food experts offer at least six reasons that contributed to a “perfect storm” of a global food crisis that
appeared in the summer of 2008: an undervalued U.S. dollar, natural limits on food production, speculation
in financial investment, the increased use of biofuels, GMOs and other industrial production methods, and
finally, war, disease, and corruption, and mismanagement.
An Undervalued U.S. Dollar
a) A weak dollar encouraged other nations to import more U.S. grain, creating a drop in global supply levels
and rise in food prices.
b) While a hardship for the world’s poor, U.S. farmers welcomed the rise in prices and anticipated increased
sales to China and India.
Natural Limits, Population Growth, and the Return of Malthusian Nightmares
a) Droughts, water shortages, and desertification brought about decreasing yields in grains.
b) Production shortfalls combined with population increase in many LDCs such as China and India renewed
fears of a Malthusian nightmare of overpopulation and starvation.
c) Most structuralists disagree that the world does not have enough food to feed everyone. Structuralist Food
Firsters like Lappé, Collins, and Rosset argue that while there could be 74 million more mouths to feed
every year, more people are buying more meat and more food is going into biofuels. Hunger is primarily a
byproduct of inequality and exploitation rather than shortage of production or overpopulation.
d) Some HILs and neomercantilists argue that as China and India have rapidly developed their industrial
sectors, they have deliberately slowed grain production, becoming more dependent on commodity imports
in order to meet a dramatic increase in the demand for soybeans, feed grains, meat and non-traditional
commodities and food.
The Role of Speculation
a) For three years before the food crisis, investment in agricultural commodities increased dramatically.
Recent studies have shown that investments in agricultural commodities often bid up its value, creating
higher food prices.
b) Economic liberals argue that speculation can be good as it gives farmers incentives to increase production,
but HILs and structuralists disagree, arguing that the increased prices hurt the hungry.
c) c) Most structuralists condemn speculative investment derivatives in agricultural production for pushing
food prices beyond the impact of normal supply–demand conditions and increasing the chances of hunger
in developing nations.
Biofuels
a) Many states hoped biofuels would consume surplus agricultural commodities, allow farmers to maintain
price levels for their products, and weaken the pressure for governments to provide subsidies and trade
protection.
b) Biofuel production was substantially promoted in the years leading to the crisis, leading to declining
commodity reserves and higher food prices.
c) Today, biofuels remain a heavily politicized issue. Many studies have raised questions about their
efficiency and connection to rising food prices.
d) Many economic liberals have mixed views about biofuels. Some believe that they warrant continued tax
incentives, preferential government purchases, and state-sponsored research grants.
e) By the winter of 2008, many had admitted that biofuels were not as efficient as hoped and might have also
contributed to rising food costs and hunger.
f) Others argue that still not enough is known at this time about the efficiency, effects, and costs of biofuels.
More than a few experts (including the libertarian oriented CATO Institute in Washington, DC) question
the greenhouse emissions associated with biofuels.
Mercantilists Cross Paths with Economic Liberals
1. Mercantilists tend to either support or reject biofuels based on their impact on national political and
economic interests. For them, as ethanol production increased, wheat production decreased, leading to
higher wheat prices, more hunger, and greater instability.
2. A decrease in the production of wheat in the United States contributed to higher international wheat prices.
Because the United States supplies a quarter of the world’s wheat, U.S. food donations to the World Food
Program and other aid organizations decreased. In response countries, including Ukraine, Argentina,
Kazakhstan, and Vietnam, embargoed commodity exports in order to meet local demand.
3. To promote greater stability, mercantilists favor establishing governance and sustainability standards with
other nations. However, conflicting domestic interests make this difficult to establish.
4. At the 2008 Rome Food Summit, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
argued for fewer protectionist trade policies so that farmers could benefit from higher food prices, while
calling on all states to phase out mandates for biofuels.
5. Lack of agreement on a new international set of biofuel standards has been rooted in a variety of conflicting
national and domestic interests and pressures.
6. Many states argued that regulation measures are restricted by national farm support measures. During the
global food crisis, consumer groups have become more critical of declining reserve supply levels and food
price hikes.
Structuralists
1. Some mercantilist concerns about biofuels overlap with those of structuralists who worry that increasing
support for biofuels will eventually concentrate land ownership and corn production on industrial farms
while emptying the breadbaskets of the United States, China, Argentina, and Brazil.
2. Increasing use of biofuels helps promote corn production, drive food prices, decrease food quality, and
leaves nations vulnerable to drought and other weather-related phenomena.
3. Biofuel production also requires industrial agriculture, reducing the number of small farmers and
weakening self-sufficiency.
4. Structuralist elements of the Food Summit report called for making food security, protecting poor farmers,
promoting broad-based rural development, and ensuring environmental sustainability the primary goals of
state biofuel policies.
5. Finally, many worry that attempts to diffuse biofuel production throughout the developing world will
increase environmental damage and widen income gaps, both within developing nations and between the
rich North and poor South. To critics such as Raj Patel, these trends ultimately enhance the economic
power of agribusinesses and their influence in developing nations.
6. It is unclear how much biofuels alone were responsible for food crisis of 2008. Many supporters and
detractors of biofuels wait for the development of new technology that converts biofuel from
nonagricultural to biomass, algae, and other energy resources. Meanwhile, given the conflicting state and
nonstate actor interests at stake, states have not been anxious to either regulate biofuel production or agree
to international standards.
Box. The Future of Alternative Biofuels.
a) Today, many researchers are working on the second-generation sources of biofuel such as biobutanol and
synthetic diesel derived from switchgrass, garbage, and algae, instead of agricultural commodities.
Experiments are being conducted all over the world.
b) Some involve cellulite biomass derived from nonfood sources such as wood chips, sawdust and other tree
waste, citrus peels, coffee grounds, and single-cell fungi as sources of ethanol production.
c) In Colorado algae can be grown on ponds at wastewater treatment plants.
d) In the United States the EPA’s main argument is that second generation biofuels a technical challenge and
too expensive to commercialize.
e) A Spanish company called Ecofasa is making biodiesel fuel from trash from general urban waste.
f) Scientists working with the New Zealand company Lanzatech have developed a technology to use
industrial waste gases, such as carbon monoxide from steel mills to produce ethanol.
g) Scientists in Minnesota have developed co-cultures of Shewanella and Synechococcus that produce a long
chain of hydrocarbons directly from water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight.
h) A major issue for these new technologies will be the application in developing countries that are sorely in
need of energy to produce and process commodities and food products.
Genetically Modified Organisms and Industrial Agriculture and Development Models
a) Since the end of World War II, many neoliberal-oriented Western development experts and OELs have
argued that economic growth and coordination between industry and agriculture would gradually transform
the food system and solve hunger problems.
b) GMOs have become one of the most popular and yet controversial elements of the agro-industrial model.
c) Today, consumers are expected to benefit from a second “gene revolution” that is spreading transgenic
organisms from North America into many developing countries.
d) Many OEL oriented GMO supporters in at least twenty-nine countries often cite increased efficiency and
nutritional value along with a decrease in environmental impact as their immediate benefits.
e) Economic liberals Avery and Avery argue that despite environmental limitations, the only way to produce
enough food for a growing population is to allow TNACs to intensify GMO production through industrial
processes.
f) Agricultural exports help earn foreign exchange, which in turn helps food-deficit nations import corn,
wheat, and rice produced more efficiently in other nations. Foreign exchange brings millions out of
poverty, and supposedly increases food security.
g) Industrial production methods that include GMOs require capital-intensive, rather than labor-intensive,
agricultural systems, which reduce inefficiencies and lead to wider profit margins. Laborers are then freed
to move into other employment
h) Opportunities by TNAC foreign investors in GMOs also help save on fertilizer use, transportation, and
marketing.
i) The vast majority of GMO crops are engineered to resist either insects or herbicides, decreasing farmers’
use of the chemicals, while others claim that the widespread adoption of the technology has actually
increased total herbicide use. Despite reports to the contrary, scientist
j) William Atkinson argues that there have been no documented adverse effects of GMO food on humans.
HILs Shift the Food and Hunger Agenda.
a) In the last decade, HILs have become much more critical than OELs of the supposed benefits of the agro-
industrial development model.
b) Most HILs would agree that industrial agricultural systems are contributing to the destruction of
ecosystems, are exacerbating global warming, are too dependent on fossil fuels, and are likely to widen the
gap between rich and poor.
c) Yet when it comes to GMOs, HILs have mixed views. For example, Paul Collier claims that the ban on
GMOs has slowed down the application of technology to agriculture, leading to lower yields and higher
food prices. For Collier, there is no better alternative in the face of overpopulation and environmental
change.
d) For other HILs, the argument that GMOs produce more food may have been made in haste.
e) Some HILs are of the agro-industrial development model because it contributes to environmental
destruction is too dependent on fossil fuels, and widens the gap between the rich and the poor.
f) There is evidence that the emergence of “superweed” plants is closely related to the GMO crop species that
take on the herbicide resistance through interbreeding.
g) For many structuralists today’s rich core states have dominated trade networks since the sixteenth century,
colonizing and exploiting peripheral regions of the world for their resources and labor.
h) Since the mid-1960s, the major commodity exporting nations have disposed of their huge commodity
surpluses as part of their trade and aid programs.
i) In the mid-1970s, developing nations were encouraged to borrow money to finance their industrial
development programs, often requiring them to reschedule their debt and/or submit to the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) that favored investment
in high value crops.
j) Many states that had been food exporters were forced to rely on imports to feed their people, which often
undercut the price of domestic commodities, helped drive smaller farmers out of business (“de-
peasantisation”), and increased dependence on food imports.
k) Many companies have focused on export markets and in many cases GMOs have played a major role in
increasing commodity production. Meanwhile, the locals have predominately subsisted on substandard
diets and the remainder of local staple crops.
l) Finally, some HILs but many more structuralists are spearheading a shift in the global food production and
distribution on two distinct, but interrelated fronts. First is the promotion of food sovereignty which
emphasizes access to and control over the means to produce one’s own food instead of food security, which
emphasizes only economic access to food and macro-level policies that either produce or import enough
food to meet basic nutritional standards.
m) The international grassroots peasant movement La Via Campesina (The Way of the Peasant) is an
example of a group that brings local and national small farmer organizations together to advocate, protest,
and demonstrate for major changes in the control over the inputs of food production, equality and social
justice, and control over the distribution of food at both the local and international levels.
n) Support for a more sustainable food system and promoting greater food security are taking place locally
more often in both small and large communities all over the world.
o) Recently, more experts have accepted the idea that markets alone are not likely to solve the problem of
hunger, and that rather than access to markets, the rural poor need access to land and technology to grow
food for the local community.
p) Mercantilists tend to view the agro-industrial model and its component parts of trade, aid, and use of GMOs
as being both helpful and damaging to domestic and international objectives. They tend to regard GMOs
are usually politically neutral, even if they help complicate many national wealth and security situations.
q) Mercantilists are also usually divided about the utility of food aid and its connection to hunger. Many
mercantilist-realists emphasize the use of food aid during the Cold War and even after to help selective
governments that are supportive of U.S. interests.
r) Today, many mercantilist-realists have mixed views of development efforts by IOs and civil society to
resolve issues of poverty and hunger through economic development. After 9/11, for some it is in the
interest of the industrialized nations to increase food aid and agricultural assistance to states like Pakistan
and Afghanistan, can improve social stability. In other cases however food aid increases poverty and often
strengthens terrorist groups.
War, Disease, Corruption, and Government Mismanagement
a) These four factors are interrelated and usually appear together, particularly in the poorest nations,
especially in Africa.
b) OELs usually focus on corruption and government mismanagement more than the other two conditions
contribute to hunger. William Easterly for one focuses on both foreign aid and national officials in poorer
countries who are in league with corrupt businessmen or investors. Large bureaucracies often offer
opportunities for nepotism and siphoning off funds to those they are supposed to regulate. Ministries of
agriculture at the federal state and local levels often drain off public funds to elites and their friends when it
comes to lucrative programs for fertilizer imports, subsidization, and food distribution.
c) Easterly and other OELs assume that economic development will help solve many hunger issues.
d) Peter Griffiths in The Economist’s Tale arrives at the opposite conclusion. He and many structuralists
agree with HILs and mercantilists that corruption usually benefits not only local elites but international
corporations and shipping companies. More importantly, though, it was the ideological environment of
neoliberal ideas at the time during the Reagan administration promoted economic growth and deregulation
of the domestic and international economy that spurred on a good deal of corruption and mismanagement.
e) When it comes to diseases and wars, most scholars agree that they are directly responsible for hunger, if not
starvation. While the WFP has been trying to feed people, fighting in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region makes it
hard to help. Food prices are high, in part because food convoys are hijacked.
f) While the WFP has been trying to feed people, fighting in Ethiopia’s Ogaden region makes it hard to help.
Food prices are high, in part because food convoys are hijacked.
g) Most experts also point out that when these societies and their governments collapse, civil strife, violence,
hunger, and other calamities such as AIDS are most likely to result.
CONCLUSION
a) After World War II, the primary issue involving food and hunger was whether supply would keep pace
with increasing demand. From the early 1980s until now, economic liberal solutions were offered to
combat hunger, with only marginal success.
b) Food itself has often been used to achieve a variety of state political and economic objectives. As the
number of hungry people in the world remained relatively constant, the role of IOs in helping to feed more
people was relatively weak and ineffective because states were not willing to give IOs much authority.
c) Bigger than normal food shortages between 2005 and 2012 that supposedly contributed to a global food
crisis have helped clarify a few issues related to food and hunger policy. The dramatic spike in prices was
not related to real production shortages as much as it was to a perfect storm of factors, including
speculative investment, increased pressure on production due to water shortages, income growth in many of
the emerging economies, biofuel and GMO production, and the persistence of war, famine, and disease.
d) A broader approach to food and hunger is evolving, considering food sustainability, energy and
environmental issues, and social justice.
Key Terms:
• food sovereignty
• genetically modified organisms (GMOs)
• transnational agri-business corporations (TNACs)
• Community Supported Agricultures (CSAs)
• Green Revolution
• Food First
• demographic transition
• biofuels
• de-peasantisation
• La Via Campensina
Teaching Tips:
• As is often the case, people have many misconceptions about the nature of the food and hunger problem. Stress
to students that one of the main arguments of this chapter is that food and hunger are not a problem of mainly
population growth vs. food supplies, as Malthus thought, but often a result of state policies and market
behavior. Different explanations generate different solutions, with millions of hungry people caught in the
middle.
• Ask students to study a particular hunger situation related to drought, disease, war, or poverty. Ask them to
identify the political, social, and economic factors that shape the situation. Have them use the three IPE
perspectives to hone in on important points or ideas. Once they have done so, ask them to put forward one or
two proposals to solve the problem. Coming up with a solution should not be an easy task.
• Ask students to provide specific examples of ways that state policies and market actions in any country
contribute to hunger and keep food supplies from getting to the people who need them the most.
• Finally, ask students if they tend to support one or more of the three IPE perspectives about hunger, especially
when it comes to solutions, more so than the others, and why. This should generate a good deal of discussion, if
not debate. It could also be the basis of a term paper or long essay.
• There are a number of videos and documentaries available that deal with the political and economic dimensions
of food and hunger issues. Consider showing one of them (see IPE text website) to the class and using it to
develop in more detail a particular aspect of this issue.
Sample Essay-Discussion Questions:
1. Outline the overpopulation/lack of production thesis about world hunger and discuss some of the consequences
of this argument for dealing with the hunger problem. Whose problem is it? What is and should be done about
it?
2. Outline the political-economic thesis about hunger and discuss some of the consequences of this argument for
dealing with the hunger issue. What do “food firster” types think should be done about it?
3. Of the two theses about world hunger—the overpopulation and lack of production thesis and the political-
economic thesis—which do you most subscribe to? Explain.
4. Outline the dominant themes and concepts applied to the hunger problem from the perspective of each of the
major approaches to IPE: mercantilism, liberalism, and structuralism.
5. What is the tragedy of the commons and how does it apply to the IPE of food and hunger?
6. Of the six major cause(s) of the 2008 global food crisis, which would you argue contributed most to the crisis?
Explain. (Note: students may choose more than one factor.)
7. Define and discuss the difference between food security and food sovereignty. Which do you personally like
the most? Why? For an essay, apply these concepts to either a particular nation or region of the world.
8. After reading the entire chapter, discuss the extent to which you feel that the hunger problem can be overcome.
What are the major political-economic fault lines or dilemmas one has to consider if the problem is to be
solved?
Sample Examination Questions:
1. One major thesis of the chapter is that food and hunger in the world today are mainly the consequence of:
a) rapid population growth rates
2. The Green Revolution refers to
a) the rise of environmentalist political parties in Europe.
3. When it comes to food policy, structuralists subscribe to the idea that
d) science, through GMOs, is the key to ending world hunger.
4. The tragedy of the commons occurs when
5. Which two events of 1973 deepened the impact of the 1972 world food crisis?
a) the devaluation of the U.S. dollar and the United States’ withdrawal from Vietnam
6. What do mercantilists believe regarding food and hunger policies?
d) Overpopulation cannot be overcome and soon we will not be able to raise enough food to feed the world.
7. The demographic transition occurs when
a) the rate of population growth increases.
8. Which of the following is not one of the accepted causes of the 2008 world food crisis?
9. Many OELs support agro-industrialization because
d) agro-industrialization decreases developing nations’ dependence on food aid.
10. Which of the following policy prescriptions would OELs say has the best chance to solve world hunger in the
short term?
a) food aid
d) Biofuels’ promise to make all nations energy self-sufficient did not happen soon enough.
12. Which of the following is not a major concern of many mercantists and structuralists when it comes to biofuels?
a) That they will eventually concentrate land ownership and corn production on industrial farms while
emptying the breadbaskets of the United States, China, Argentina, and Brazil.
13. Which of the following is not a claim of those who support GMOs?
a) They increase production efficiency and nutritional value in many commodities and food products.
14. In the case of corruption and mismanagement, which of the following is mismatched?
a) William Easterly: foreign aid often contributes to nepotism and the siphoning off of funds to state and local
15. If you wanted to help promote sustainable food production and food security at the local level, what would is
something you could do?
a) start your own garden
