EP 06 Crisis and the demand for food PT 2: Crisis and food prices

Agroecology in action demonstrates its capacity to feed people, cool the climate, and produce a living wage.

The principals of agroecology are reviewed and the ways in which it meets the challenges that need to be met by contemporary agriculture are established.

The multiple crises of the corporate food regime suggest that an alternative food system needs to be developed. However, the rapid growth of transnational organic suggests that organic agricultural systems are not necessarily the basis by which an alternative food system might be envisaged. As a food production system, a rural development programme and a political movement agroecology has the potential to feed the world, cool the planet, and generate a living wage for all.An agro-food complex constructed upon the basis of organic agriculture need not be sustainable.

The mechanisms by which industrial agriculture increases the likelihood of zoonotic diseases are reviewed.

The ways in which changing patterns in the demand for food might impact upon food prices is reviewed.

The ways in which emerging constraints upon the production of food might impact upon food prices is reviewed, before evaluating the relative merits of both demand- and supply-side explanations of rising food prices.

The challenges produced by the corporate food regime have been amply demonstrated in the 21st century by rising food price inflation since 2007 and the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Food price inflation reflects a combination of demand dynamics and supply constraints that are unique to the corporate food regime, while the marked rise in zoonotic disease reflects the prevalence of industrialized agriculture and the marginalization of small-scale farming in the corporate food regime.Food price increases in the 21st century have been greater than at any time since the 1970s and have dramatic implications of the living standards of those most marginalized by the world food system.

The contemporary world food system has seen the entrance of global finance in an historically-unprecedented way. Since the deregulation of financial contracts in the United States in the 1990s and the rise in global food prices following 2007, global finance has been using a range of financial instruments to seek to make profits from the food system on the basis of speculative investment, while asset management companies discipline the activities of agri-food corporations in order to realize shareholder value.

The configuration of the production, distribution and consumption of food within the contemporary world food system produces planetary challenges that must be addressed

The corporate food regime has witnessed a remarkable and historically unprecedented concentration and centralization of agro-food transnational corporations.