Center for a New American Security

The global food crisis is perhaps the least reported big event of the year. It stands to kill far more people than the cyclone in Myanmar or the earthquake in China. First it will kill through starvation, and then through the conflict over resources that it spawns. At a conference of experts that Kip observed on Afghanistan several weeks ago, all agreed that rising food prices were the single thing capable of throwing the country into utter and perhaps unrecoverable chaos. The same might be true of nuclear-armed Pakistan as well, not to mention several dozen other weak or failing states.

Keith Bradsher and Andrew Martin of the NY Times yesterday authored an article detailing how the diminishing investment in global food research since the Green Revolution has contributed to the crisis. The highlights:

This is a stark example of the many problems that are coming to light in the world’s agricultural system. Experts say that during the food surpluses of recent decades, governments and development agencies lost focus on the importance of helping poor countries improve their agriculture.

The budgets of institutions that delivered the world from famine in the 1970s, including the rice institute, have stagnated or fallen, even as the problems they were trying to solve became harder.

“People felt that the world food crisis was solved, that food security was no longer an issue, and it really fell off the agenda,” said Robert S. Zeigler, the director general of the rice institute....

Now, a reckoning is at hand. Growth of the global food supply has slowed even as the population has continued to increase, and as economic growth is giving millions of poor people the money to buy more food.

With demand beginning to outstrip supply, prices have soared, and food riots have erupted that have undermined the stability of foreign governments. World leaders are scrambling to respond. On May 1, President Bush asked Congress for an extra $770 million to pay for food aid and to help farmers improve their productivity.

But cuts in agricultural research continue. The United States is in the midst of slashing, by as much as 75 percent, its $59.5 million annual support for a global research network that focuses on improving crops vital to agriculture in poor countries. That network includes the rice institute.

Robert Bertram, who oversees the funding for the United States Agency for International Development, said he was still trying to stop the cuts and argued that research to improve crop yields was “like putting money in the pockets of poor people, and I mean billions of poor people.”...

In Africa, where yields have remained stagnant since the 1960s, efforts to bolster them have been hampered by cuts not only in research but also in programs like fertilizer distribution...

Adjusting for inflation and exchange rates, the wealthy countries, as a group, cut such donations roughly in half from 1980 to 2006, to $2.8 billion a year from $6 billion. The United States cut its support for agriculture in poor countries to $624 million from $2.3 billion in that period.

“Agriculture has been so productive and done so well, people have kind of lost sight of how fragile it really is,” said Jan E. Leach, a plant pathologist at Colorado State University who works with rice. “It’s as if we have lost track of the fact that food is linked to agriculture, which is linked to human survival.”...

Yields soared [as a result of the Green Revolution], and by the 1980s, the threat of starvation had receded in most of the world. With Europe and the United States offering their farmers heavy subsidies that encouraged production, grain became abundant worldwide, and prices fell.

Many poor countries, instead of developing their own agriculture, turned to the world market to buy cheap rice and wheat. In 1986, Agriculture Secretary John Block called the idea of developing countries feeding themselves “an anachronism from a bygone era,” saying they should just buy American.

For the long warriors of the 21st Century, food security cannot be an issue on the back burner. Jared Diamond makes a compelling argument in Collapse that such poor resource management was, for instance, the deep cause of the massive genocide in Rwanda.

In Afghanistan, rising prices may result in further entrenching the opium economy as the sure way to provide the cash needed to import grains. This would be bad news for the counterinsurgency effort, which needs to weed the populace and the government off of the proceeds of opium if we are to have a shot at winning.

The current food crisis will both exacerbate existing conflicts and contribute to new ones. Solutions will require not only the military but also the other elements of national power acting in a concerted, unified effort to manage these conflicts. Thinking about items like new investment in agricultural research will be required. Family planning may be an important and politically sensitive topic. The political challenges remain daunting to preparing for conflict, however.

Congressmen like to pose next to us men (and women) in uniform working with our job-producing, high technology weaponry.

Posing by rice institutes doesn't quite have the same cachet (and even less, being the lead on administrative reform of the Departments of Defense, State, Agriculture, Transporation, etc.).

Since November of last year, it has become quite clear to me that food security is going to be a major issue in Afghanistan. As with much in Afghanistan, it is an issue that ISAF and UNAMA (not to mention the government of Afghanistan) have failed to grapple with and which will, I believe, further undermine the influence and authority of all those involved in the counter-Taliban effort.

Unrest in Pakistan has made shipment of goods into Pakistan more difficult. This was the original impetus for increasing grain prices in Afghanistan beginning November of last year. Moreover, in recent months, the Pakistani government in response to its own shortages and price inflation has sought to limit the export of wheat into Afghanistan. At times this has taken on elements of using food as a weapon to ensure continued instability in Afghanistan.

Failure to develop and implement a comprehensive counternarcotics policy (and to hold Karzai to account for government appointments of men involved in the narcotics trade to include his brother) has resulted in disincentivising the production of grains while incentivising the production of opiates and hashish (hashish production has been incentivized by some of the rewards for not growing opium that do not penalize crop replacement with hashish).

Meanwhile well meaning World Food Program grain imports into Afghanistan have pushed down the price of grains (further disincentivizing local production) while the UN's distribution system at the same time has put control of grain into the hands of local strongmen who have used cereal as one of many forms of patronage. This, in turn, tends to divide communities on the sectarian basis by which these strongmen have been appointed and further exacerbate divisions which the Taliban can exploit.

Maybe in our considerations on how to pressure Iran as a result of food prices (I would hate to point out that as our unsustainable oil consumption and irresponsible fiscal policies have driven up the dollar-denominated price of oil to inflation-adjusted historical highs which ensure that Iran is unlikely to starve whatever our food policies are), we can consider how to alleviate a food crisis in Afghanistan which, if generalized enough in effect, could be the spark for national uprising that has not yet occurred in spite of our uncoordinated and, often, counterproductive policies in the country. We should remember that radical land reform in Afghanistan ignited rebellion against Amin as a result of famine in addition to the challenge to traditional life. It was this that required Soviet intervention and the general nature of the uprising that ensured they could not win.

The NY Times yesterday ran an editorial suggesting US culpability in an impending world food crisis. The basic argument is that rising demand for grains has been increased beyond a sustainable level as a result of environmentally-suspect drives to increase ethanol use in the US and elsewhere.

In Afghanistan in particular, but also in Iraq, food prices became a major and predictable issue over the winter. As always, ISAF charged with Economic Development and Reconstruction as one of its Lines of Operation and the recipient of most of the money we spend in Afghanistan, did little to nothing to prepare for it. Meanwhile, all through the winter, Afghan newspapers and news shows drew attention to the issue. With children dying and starving in the streets in Ghazni (the focus of several Afghan television reports) and elsewhere, it is imperative that we do something. Unfortunately, while ISAF could have done much to prepare for the crisis, the challenges ahead are daunting and larger than ISAF.

In Afghanistan, the ongoing food crisis is related to several factors, many of which were predictable. Unrest and insurgency in Pakistan have made the transport of goods from Pakistan to Afghanistan more difficult. Increased insurgency in Afghanistan has resulted in more difficulty in transporting goods. Increases in world oil prices have further causes increased transportation prices for food. The worst winter in Afghanistan on record (admittedly, a very short record going back only a decade) exacerbated transportation issues. Meanwhile the droughts of the 1990s compounded by deforestation, erosion, and global warming essentially eradicated the herds that provided dairy and meat for Afghan nomads. Additionally, activists worldwide have highlighted for several months an impending food crisis driven by, among other things, increased ethanol demands and rising meat demands by a larger Chinese middle class. Finally, massive imports of food by the World Food Program have resulted in depressing food prices, which provides an incentive for growing narcotics and a disincentive for producing wheat and other cereals.

With marginal food supply already resulting in more starvation in Afghanistan, the possibility that food insecurity could exacerbate insurgency is real and growing. A low harvest yield this year followed by increasing food prices may well provide the last straw for national insurgency under a new narrative that emphasizes Coalition presence in Afghanistan and the starvation of Muslims under a regime that finally was supposed to bring stability, development, and peace.

Unfortunately, the two main areas to address the problem have little to do with Afghanistan. The first area that must be addressed is trade access to Afghanistan. This will mean increasing licit trade with Iran, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan while developing a comprehensive Post-Musharraf approach for stabilizing Pakistan that admits errors and does not insist on continuing the same failed policies in the FATA. Obviously, Russia's help will be needed to assist with the other Stans. Frankly, road construction in Central and South Asia will be as important to establishing a stable Afghanistan as will internal road construction.

Second, and less likely, is the pressing need for the development of a sound energy policy. US energy consumption and irresponsible energy policy are having second and third order effects in our conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq (not to mention Venezuela and elsewhere). And, while gaining independence from Middle East oil is a nice campaign slogan, oil remains a fungible commodity while current worldwide supply meets worldwide demand. This is not something that can be solved by, say, more drilling in Alaska. Kip will save a rant on why global climate and environmental sustainability are pressing issues (if you're interested, Jared Diamond's Collapse, it is a must-read), but cynical energy policies aimed at large scale Mid-Western industrial farming conglomerates will in the long-run result in more dead Americans in Afghanistan by supporting the Taliban's narrative that we are there not to help Afghans but as colonizers.

Kip most certainly does not have all the solutions. What he does know is this. To combat the emergence of a new insurgent narrative tied to hunger and to combat starvation itself in Afghanistan will require a comprehensive approach by the governments supporting the Afghan government. And, soon, it will require the American people to actually be asked to sacrifice something if they wish to prevent a terrorist haven from reemerging in Afghanistan and, possibly, bringing down nuclear-armed Pakistan in the process.