The Global Food Crisis and Women: Making a Difference

Mariama Williams (Integrated Policy Research Institute)
marriamaw@hotmail.com

Remarks to the Annual General Meeting

MATCH International
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
September 19, 2008

Today poverty reduction agendas and women's empowerment issues are caught up in a series of global challenges in the form of the crises of the three "Fs‿: the food, fuel and financial crises that are rocketing the global economy. These three crises are critically inter linked and inextricably intertwined.

For example, rising oil prices induces demand for bio fuels as well as engender rising cost for fertilizer production, crop drying and transportation. Crisis in the financial markets engender increase commodity speculation as index funds, pension fund, hedge funds and investment banks seek portfolio diversification from financial assets. Central banks attempts to deal with financial crisis involving decreasing interest rate and expanding the monetary supply with the consequential inflationary impact on prices as well as depreciation of the dollar. Since the dollar is still the major currency in the food market this has significant negative impact on food prices. At the same time, rising oil and food prices impinges on household budgets impacting all forms of expenditures including mortgage payments.

In the final analysis, all three of the crises are of man-made origins and are expressions of significant co-joint economic-political and social failures of national and global international financial and economic institutions. They are clear evidence of systemic government-market-institutional failures to combat and deal with the excesses of de-regulation, rapid and uncontrolled accumulation and greed both in the North and the South.

Underlying these failures are the pervasive and damaging effects of a corrosive fundamentalist economic and social ideology that premised the market and key market actors as the key arbitrators of social and economic goods. It also privileged and held sacrosanct the 'right to do business' and profit maximization, unfettered by social, development and governmental obligations. These rights and privilege dominate over fundamental human rights, the welfare of the majority and the provision of the basic services essential for human functioning, which are critical for life.

Unfortunately for the poor and disadvantaged, these three crises are not equivalent in their impacts on the lives of countless girls, boys, men and women in the south. They also do not command a similar sense of urgency and policy responsiveness by economic decision-makers. Undeniably, the global food crisis, which has never fully claimed significant attachment to the global attention span, has now been shunted to the margin of policy responses in the wake of the much hotter and more dramatically unfolding financial crisis. Yet it is the one with the most significant and potentially deleterious impacts for women's lives. To put it simply it is a matter of life and death.

Undeniably, the financial crisis poses significant negative feedback and pass through effects for the food and fuel crises to the extent that:

  1. it worsens global economic and trade situations and
  2. through its impact on the prices of commodities and fuel.

Since time does not permit a proper analysis of these inter-linkages, I will confine the rest of my remarks to the topic of the global food crisis.

Now what are the dimensions of this crisis, which some have termed a 'global developmental crisis of unprecedented scale', a 'silent tsunami' and a 'perfect storm'.

I. Overview: nature, causes, consequences and approaches to the present global food crisis

In a nut shell: Rising prices and growing shortages of staples such as wheat, rice, corn, maize and soybeans as well as other foods and cooking oils are threatening to push about 100 million people into poverty and hunger. In addition, grain stockpiles of rice, wheat etc, which along with potato provide over half the plant based calories of the diet of most people, have declined sharply. The prices of wheat and maize have risen by about 130% since the mid part of 2007. The price of rice has more than doubled since January 2008.

Bear in mind that before the manifestations of this crisis 854 million people in 82 countries suffer from food insecurity while over two billion suffer from malnutrition and under nutrition. In addition, about 18,000 children died daily on average due to direct or indirectly to consequence of malnutrition

Jomo Sundaram of the UN asked the question: why is this a crisis? Does it mean there is a lack of food? No, people are not going hungry due to lack of food. There is enough food. (For example, Latin America and the Caribbean have a 31% surplus in food, FAO April 2008). Some people simply cannot afford to buy food .The UN also warns that the world will need at least $500 million in immediate aid in the first half of 2008 to avoid serious famines.

This present global food crisis is multi dimensional having impacts on economic, political and social, human development, human security, human rights (the right to be free from hunger), gender, as well as, peace and security. There is likely to be decline in standard of living (even among the middle classes), the near poor will be pushed into poverty. There is also likely to be an increase in the premature deaths of young, old and the infirm, who are likely to suffer more from lack of access to food. In addition, as noted by the World Food Program (WFP), HIV will rise for a number of reasons. First, lack of food undermines treatment and increase risky behavior. It is well noted that undernourished people are more likely to die during the first three months of antiretroviral therapy than well nourished people due to the medication side effects (WFP). Second, pregnant women with HIV are more likely to transmit the virus to babies (WFP). Dr Soto of World Vision notes that "only with proper nutrition will the drugs have full impact in keeping HIV-positive children and adults health and alive. Thus there is an urgent need to ensue food security and nutritional support now in order to bolster the fight against HIV and Aids'. And fourth, an added dimension to the HIV linkages is the continued and rapidly rising phenomenon of impoverished girls and women turning to transactional sex for money to feed families as a critical aspect of their survival strategy.

With the exception of the HIV linkage, the gender dimensions of the food crisis have not been fully explored. Yet women are persistently a large percentage of those suffering from chronic hunger and food security. 7 out of 10 of the world's hungry people are women and girls (UN INSTRAW). 45% of women in developing countries suffer from anemia, which is linked to malnutrition. Pregnant and nursing women have specific needs for proper food intake (UN INSTRAW). This is particularly important given the horrific numbers of women who die daily from childbirth related traumas. (According to UN INSTRAW about 300 women die daily during childbirth) It is also widely documented that young women and children are vulnerable to the risk of permanent malnourishment.

Research also shows that men and women are differently affected by global food crisis as producers and consumers due to the reality that men and women have different set and stocks of resources to respond to the rising price (Cheryl Morden, IFAD). Most all data from developing countries show that women play a vital role in processing and preparing food (Morden).

Women have also played prominent roles in protesting against the escalating costs of food in the nearly forty countries from Haiti, to Indonesia to Somalia that have experienced such protests.

Undeniably, the proximate and immediate cause of the emerging food crisis is rapid rise in food prices. Underlying the obvious demand and supply dynamics are long term structural as well as short term developments such as speculation and the rush to food based bio-fuel as alternative source of energy. How did we go from a situation of major increase in crop yields and food production in wheat, rice and corn from 1960 to the 1980s and abundant food and falling food prices in the 1970s? Even in the 1990s food supply grew faster than population. As noted by many CSOs and NGOS, 'things were so good that food security fell off the global agenda.'

Why is it that we are now faced with dwindling food reserves and food supply rate that is well below population rate (United States Department of Agriculture, USDA). The answers are manifold--there are multiple levels, multiple causes and multiple culprits in this tragic drama: demand growth, lack of fiscal capacity in the south to increase public spending for increase food production and agricultural productivity, cut back in funding to agricultural research institutions, decline in spending on plant breeding programs to improve productivity, loss of variety from gene banks (GRAIN, FIAN and UNCTAD). A somewhat illuminating categorization accompanies this presentation.

But underlying this broad mix of causally related factors are the result of years of mis-management and dubious economic and social policy related initiatives driven by the international financial institutions (IFIs) such as the World Bank and the IMF. Since the 1980s, the IFIs have been on a neo-liberal free market binge globally, leading some erstwhile uncritically southern governments over the proverbial cliff. IMF and World Bank policies for agricultural development focused on deregulation of agricultural trade, and trade liberalization that pushed for elimination of subsidies to farmers, government elimination of marketing, storage, transportation and credit support. So farmers were purportedly left alone to 'let the market work'. Note, however, that even as southern governments were in-cautiously reducing subsidies to the farming sector, the Northern governments continued to protect their farm sectors with the very same but much more gigantic subsidy strategies.

The outcomes of the IMF, the Bank and their progenitors, the regional development banks, were also aggravated by drop in ODA for agricultural development which fell in real terms after 1980. This was accompanied by decrease in loans for agricultural development. The World Bank, for example, cut its lending from $7.7 billion in 1980 to about $2billionin 2004.

Not to be forgotten was the concerted push to export production to ease balance of payment constraints in many countries. In this framework, as so noted by a former US DA Secretary Brock, the idea of developing countries feeding themselves is an "an anachronisms from a by gone era'; they should just buy American. So the net result is that many African countries that had a surplus in cereals twenty five years ago now are import dependent on food. (Forty years ago Haiti was self sufficient in rice today, it imports this commodity from the US.) With the rise of the price of staple food of around 60%, people in developing countries who spend and average of 70% of their income on food, compared to the 15-18% spend by households in the North, are feeling quite stressed.

Causal Factors in the present Global Food Crisis

Long term Structural (in the making since 1980s & almost three decades of neglect of agriculture):

*Note: China and India are usually flagged here. But their demand has not risen significantly from recent historical trajectories in the last 12 months to create the problem (). Furthermore, China has a surplus in its food trade (2000-2006) and is still a net exporter of cereals. India is also a net exporter of food products including meats and dairy and cereals. In any event, both nations still have significant numbers of under nourished citizens ().

In sum, demand side factors include: consumption of food, bio fuels, speculation by traders and financial speculation. Supply side factors include: production fall off— due to urbanization, climate & stagnating yields and dumping--, oil prices, fertilizer prices and export restrictions.

As can be imagined, there are a rash of proposals and solutions at play in the global debate. At the national level, countries are seeking to lower tariffs to reduce the impact of higher prices on imported food. At the same time, net food importers are restricting food exports to protect their own domestic food security. But as seen in the case of bans on the export of rice (currently about 2/3 of rice is off the market), such measures only put more pressure on supply resulting in higher prices.

Meanwhile, the IMF-WB-WTO alliance, while arguing that rising prices will induced production in the South are also pushing for the elimination of subsidies by the North. This group also propose rapid conclusion of the ill-fated and badly misnamed Doha Development Round of trade negotiation as panacea to the crisis. This is dangerous on a number of grounds. Most importantly, eliminating tariffs now in the midst of the crisis (instead of 10 years ago, under the Uruguay round of trade agreement) will cause a rise in prices, not lower prices in the short run.

Secondly, as been noted by many astute observers, the WTO is not capable of bringing down food prices. The Doha round cannot solve this problem because it is part of the problem. As noted by a plethora of NGO and CSOs reports, existing WTO and bilateral and RTAs push across the board liberalization which worsened the volatility of food prices. These have only increased dependency on international markets and decreased investing local food production (GRAIN, TWN). Trade liberalization--that magic bullet for economic development and growth--has eroded the ability of some governments to feed themselves (Mexico, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Mali). Elsewhere, in countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Philippine, Jamaica and Honduras, the removal of tariff barriers have only lead to the dumping of heavily subsidies commodities and undermined local food production.

The data speaks for itself: The South have become net importers of food. Two-thirds are net food importers and vulnerable to volatile world prices. Doha proposal will only increase this dependence on food import even as agriculture TNCs benefit from high prices. [They control this trade. Cargill: April 2008 net 3rd earnings rose 86% to $1.03 billion, Bunge's 2007 4th quarter earnings increased 77% (over 2006) and Archer Daniel Midland (ADM's 2007 increased 65%.]

The recent Comprehensive Framework for Action (CFA) offered by the UN High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis (July 2008) is suppose to deliver a prioritized plan of action for addressing the current global food crisis that aim to give governments, IGOs and CSOs a menu of policies and action from which to draw appropriate responses. But it relies heavily on the neo-liberal framework and analysis that is at the heart of the present problem. Thus its scope for offering real serious creative ways out of the situation is at best limited. Such pathway would have to include critical markers that promote solutions that are permanent, sustainable, equitable and balanced for the men and women in poor countries.

Like the CFA, the recent High Level Conference on World Food Security and the Challenges of Climate Change and Bio Energy (Rome, June 2008), is also grounded in a framework resplendent in prescriptive analysis that calls for reduction of agricultural subsidies, increased food aid, concessionary financing to developing countries, analysis of the impacts of bio-fuels and attention to the structural causes of the crisis and the avoidance of ban on food exports by food exporting countries.

While these approaches give the nod to structural causes underlying the global food crisis, they fall short in their analysis and prognosis by focusing on the simple demand and supply dynamics and so end up with the same set of single-minded over reliance on liberalization, pro- market and capital intensive agricultural production oriented policy handles that cannot credibly handle the crisis.

Ultimately, a proper assessment of the emergence and evolution of the crisis must distinguish between long term structural causal factors and presenting symptoms. It is only through such proper assessment and accountability that genuine, long lasting sustainable solutions can emerge. Otherwise, we are left with 'stop gap, inefficient and counter productive measures that ultimately negatively impact the people who are most acutely suffering from the crisis today'.

By and large a critical and important dimension that is never significantly addressed is the gender and women's empowerment dynamics of the crisis. This is moment therefore presents extreme dangers for the forward momentum of women's social and economic empowerment. But it also, as noted by gender and agricultural experts such as Badden, Meinzen-Dick, Morden and Quisumbing , present potential for exploring and appreciating women's role and contribution to agricultural production and the improvement of that sector's productivity.

II. Gender and the Food Crisis

Before we can really appreciate the depth of the problem of lack of gender analysis and perspective in developing solutions to the problem of the food crisis, let us first review some of the stylized facts about women and agriculture with the aim of highlighting the potential long term impacts on women in the development context.

Stylized facts on women and food production/agriculture

Gender discriminations impedes agricultural productivity and rural development.

Yet in many cases women are not recognized as farmers.

Since time does not permit an expanded gender analysis of the global food crisis a useful but tentative framework for exploring how the global food crisis impact women is appended to this document. Sufficeth to note here that such an approach must begin by exploring how the food crisis impacts critical areas such as functioning, capabilities, and women's abilities to meet the corresponding opportunities, challenges and constraints.

A tentative approach to assess the gender dynamics of the current Global Food Crisis.

A. Functioning

B. Capabilities and economic rights: Subsistence farming and livelihood impacts:

C. Gender challenges and opportunities in the crisis

III Towards Real solutions to the Global Food Crisis

As discussed above, since the emergence of the global food crisis, there have been much debate and a few specific attempts at developing priorities and strategies for resolving the situation at the multilateral level. For the most part these plans and proposals are being considered in spaces dominated by the actors who are implicated in the unfolding crisis. Hence the solutions being proposed are not significant points of departure but rather are stop gap measures and medium term fixes that tinkers at the margin. This is so even when they are elaborated in a framework that purports to deal with structural issues.

There are also a significant numbers of NGOs and CSOs thoughtful comments on these proposals as well as their own counter proposals.

In general, CSOs' such as Action Aid, GRAIN, FIAN, TWN, Oxfam, CUTS, vantage point is grounded in food self sufficiency and sovereignty rather than simplistic appeal to food security. Human rights engendered land reform and policies and projects that seek to shift the balance of power to rural and small holder's perspective priorities and concerns dominate this vantage point. An emerging five point framework around which a cohesive and coherent framework for elaborating a real transformative solution to the global food crisis from the point of view of NGOs, CSOs and social movements include:

However, even the CSOs do not start from and are not grounded in gender analysis and women's empowerment perspectives. None of the reform modalities and measures in the discussion focuses on shifting the balance of power in favor of rural women. This includes greater emphasis on increasing women's access and ownership of land (land tenure and security) especially for indigenous women and female heads of households. Thus there is a need for a radical departure from gender blind or so called gender neutral policies that do not take into account women's roles, contributions priorities and concerns in food production and household welfare for women. There is therefore urgent need for gender sensitive and women's empowerment perspectives and policies that take into account the priorities—in terms of access to resources and benefits such as land, water, credit and all inputs for production. This must be differentiated for different groups of women according to age, ethnicity, race and class in the different development context ( Badden, Morden et al).

This include details analysis of the barriers to rural women farmers and how to overcome these in the short, medium and long term. It also include interlinkages with issue such as water and energy availability and access and affordability. As suggested by Sally Badden of Oxfam, a proactive gendered approach would also require comprehensive outreach to deal with related issues of basic health care, child care, reproductive and sexual health and other social reproduction issues.

At the heart of CSOs and gender advocates' proposals (Oxfam, AWID, Feminist Task Force, Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristan, Gender and Education Office (ICEA), IGTN, DAWN) is the fundamental question of what is agricultural development? What is it for? Who does it serve?

Also missing in the broader CSO-NGO approach to the global food crisis is an in-depth discussion and plans and strategies that focuses on the ecological and environmental balance that many countries must necessarily anchor reform and rehabilitation of the agricultural sector on. This includes the issues of waste management, soil regeneration and restoration of ecological balance.

These latter two elements of gender sensitivity and ecological sensitivity add to additional dimensions to the above five pointed NGO-CSO-Social movement discussion towards a real solution to the global food crisis.

From this vantage point, a real solution to the crisis must perforce focus in the short term on stabilizing food production and distribution to meet global demand for healthy, adequate and affordable food needs. In the medium to long term there must be transition towards a different model of agriculture that is ecological and environmental sustainable, equitable (pro poor) and gender sensitive.