The High Food Price Challenge: A Review of Responses to Combat Hunger

Released on 8 July, a new report, The High Food Price Challenge: A Review of Responses to Combat Hunger, by the UK Hunger Alliance and the Oakland Institute, reveals that a major initiative, launched by the Group of 8 (G8), in July 2009 is failing to address the global hunger crisis, which currently affects more than a billion people.

The G8 announced the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative in July 2009 to support food security, nutrition, and sustainable agriculture, with a promise of US$20 billion worth of investment over three years.

The report finds that a broad range of measures were taken by governments, international and regional institutions, and donors as well as private organizations in response to high food prices. These include trade and fiscal measures, consumer-oriented responses, and support for food production. The bulk of the response, however, was actually borne by the impacted people themselves, in particular through remittances and family networks.

“Despite lofty aid commitments at international summits, only a marginal proportion of the G8’s financial pledges to address hunger have actually been disbursed,” said Frederic Mousseau, Senior Fellow at the Oakland Institute and author of the report. “The bulk of the response to the food crisis was borne by remittances from migrants to their home country, which outstripped aid to the developing world by a margin of three to one in 2008,” he said.

Based on a thorough review of national and international responses to global hunger and featuring case studies from individual countries and regions that confronted the food price crisis using diverse strategies, The High Food Price Challenge shows that, beyond providing aid money, it is imperative that governments and international institutions rethink their policies to mitigate hunger by, above all:

* Broadening the vision of social protection beyond cash and food transfers into a comprehensive range of measures that include support to local food production

* Scaling up treatment of malnutrition and expanding the scope of nutrition beyond feeding and treatment programs to include responses that recognize the importance of agricultural policies and practices

* Boosting food production in a sustainable way focused on investments in favor of small-holders, the rural poor, marginal groups, and women

* Providing more resources to food and agriculture and ensuring donor announcements on responses to the food price crisis are closely monitored.

The first three sections of the report review and discuss the main areas of response to high food prices: (i) the measures taken to prevent transmission of increased global prices to domestic markets; (ii) measures taken to ensure peoples’ access to food; and (iii) interventions in favour of agriculture. A fourth section looks at international cooperation. The report concludes with a set of policy recommendations based on lessons learnt from the 2008 high food price crisis. The recommendations include: preventing price volatility; integrating remittances; revisiting safety nets and social protection; moving food aid reform forward; scaling-up and broadening the scope of nutrition; boosting food production in a durable way; more funding for food and agricultural issues; reshaping donors’ policies and practices; enhancing coordination and coherence; and enhancing civil society’s advocacy role in order to ensure a comprehensive approach to food and agriculture, inclusive of all relevant sectors and beneficial to all.

The UK Hunger Alliance is a forum concerned with tackling hunger and working towards the achievement of the first Millennium Development Goal. Alliance members who participated in the publication of the report include Action Against Hunger, CARE International, Concern Worldwide UK, Oxfam GB, Save the Children UK and World Vision UK.

The Oakland Institute is an independent policy think tank whose mission is to increase public participation and promote fair debate on critical social, economic, and environmental issues.

Download the report at http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/pdfs/high_food_prices_web_final.pdf.

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