Less than a decade after a worldwide surge in food prices that began in 2008, grain bins are bursting around the globe. But the risk isn’t over, says Quartz, pointing to a meeting called by the Council on Foreign Relations. A majority of the economists and policymakers at the session “believe food prices will spike again within five years. All of them think it will happen within 10 years.”
The CFR fellow who chaired the workshop told Quartz, “The sense of the groups was that there is no fundamental reason why we are going to have consistently high stockpile levels over time.”
Entities such as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization have taken steps to improve international sharing of information on food production and stockpiles. Quartz noted that China, the world’s most populous nation, “is one of the countries that rarely publishes useful data about its agricultural needs.” The workshop participants said food production is controlled by a relative handful of nations. “A financial or agricultural disaster in any one of them could easily derail the market,” said Quartz
Not everyone is as pessimistic as the CFR panelists. “The economists were more optimistic about technological solutions to the problem, like increasing access to drought-resistant crops and improving planting methods and machinery. These are effective ways to raise yields and reduce the dependency on outside suppliers.” Greater food security at the local level would be a hedge against disruptions in other parts of the world.