food disaster

"There will be bread, there will be milk, and everything will be fine!" Russians today will believe this line from the movie "Lenin in 1918". Because under global sanctions, they still have plenty of natural gas and fertilizers.

And Ukrainian ports have a backlog of 25 million tonnes of wheat produced last year.

The Black Sea is like a drooping corner of the mouth, surrounded by war, famine and death. Originally, Ukraine and Russia, known as granaries, loaded huge amounts of wheat from the docks on the northern shore of the Black Sea, and transported them to Europe, North Africa, East Africa, and West Asia, where there are hundreds of millions of people and food cannot be self-sufficient.

The Russian-Ukrainian war has exacerbated global food shortages. The Covid-19 pandemic, tight capacity, high energy costs, and a series of natural disasters such as droughts, floods and wildfires have tightened global food supplies and pushed up prices.

At present, the war has entered a state of consumption stalemate. The World Food Program predicts that 45 percent of Ukraine's population will suffer from food shortages. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said recently that more than 500,000 people are already living in a state of famine, and the number of people in the world who suffer from severe food insecurity is 276 million.

More than 20 countries around the world have banned grain exports, and Indonesia has also curbed palm oil exports after India, the much-anticipated second-largest producer, banned exports of wheat. Before the next planting season, food trade is likely to shrink again due to the new ban, with faster rises in energy and fertilizer prices and worsening food inflation.

As a net food exporter, the EU faces only rising cost pressures, not starvation. The ones who are really hungry are developing countries in parts of Africa.

In 1993, The New York Times published a photo that shocked the world, called "The Hungry Little Girl": a vulture staring at a bony, dying African child. According to Titanic's law, the lower the social status of the poor, the higher the death rate when a disaster occurs.

Opening up the Black Sea route is imminent

Close to the route of Da Gama, with Sri Lanka as the center, the hungry continent of Asia and Africa was divided into two parts. In general, wheat is eaten in the west and rice is eaten in the east.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Russia is the world's largest exporter of wheat, with Ukraine in fifth place. The two countries together account for 19% of global barley supply, 14% of wheat supply and 4% of corn supply, and more than a third of global grain exports.

Russia is sanctioned, making it difficult to export food. Ukraine's Black Sea port is blocked by Russia.

The decline in Russian and Ukrainian grain exports is the first to have disastrous effects on Africa and the Middle East.

The Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea are not large, and the food in Eastern Europe goes by sea, and the cost is very low. Moreover, the Middle East and Eastern Europe both rely on wheat as the main food, and they also have the dietary habit of partially replacing the staple food with corn. Last year alone, more than 40% of Ukraine's wheat and corn exports were sold to West Asia and North Africa, which are often plagued by drought.

Most of the wheat in Lebanon, Libya, Tunisia and Syria comes from Russia and Ukraine. Armenia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Eritrea import almost all wheat from Russia and Ukraine. Together with the countries above in West Asia and North Africa, they will compete with larger buyers - including Turkey, Egypt, Bangladesh and Iran, where more than 60 percent of the wheat comes from the two warring countries.

However, all of the above countries can only bid for smaller supplies. Because, as the world's largest wheat producer and consumer, China's purchases this year will be much higher than in previous years. In early March, the Chinese government revealed that last year's severe floods delayed the planting of a third of the wheat crop, and the upcoming harvest was not optimistic.

Wheat in Russia and Ukraine is not so easily substituted. Stocks are tight in the United States and Canada, South American grain producers such as Argentina and Brazil are tightening export controls, and Australia is running at full capacity, according to the United Nations. Wheat prices have risen 70 percent in the past year.

In the next three months, Ukraine needs to ship out 25 million tons of grain storage. Ukraine only exported about 1.2 million tons in April. If the stored grain cannot be exported, the new grain harvested in August will have nowhere to store and can only rot. Without the Black Sea route, only about 500,000 tons of grain can be transported from May to August.

Land transportation of grain is too restrictive. The EU had planned in mid-May to ship 4 million tons of grain each month from Ukraine through neighboring countries. However, the railway gauges in Ukraine and the EU are different, and the train has to change the wheel chassis, or change the train. A total of 467 freight cars can be handled per day at eight rail crossings where Ukraine shares borders with Poland, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. At the same time, the train transit has to submit all kinds of cumbersome documents, often delaying 4 to 10 days.

Private companies are reluctant to send trucks to Ukraine because of the lack of insurance and the risk of being bombed by Russian troops. And the trucks can handle up to 1 million tons of grain per month.

Barges are also not very efficient. Although it is possible to go to Romania along the Danube and be shipped in the Port of Constanta, it would take 50 ships and trains combined to fill the ships. After working hard for a long time, it was finally able to carry about 70,000 tons of grain.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he will allow Ukrainian grain ships to leave the port of Odessa if the European Union lifts sanctions on Russia. In the past, Ukraine's main grain export ports included the ports of Chernomorsk, Nikolayev, Odessa, Kherson and Yuzhny.

For grain ships to pass through the Black Sea, Turkey also needs a "nod". President Erdogan publicly expressed his cooperation, and Guterres also mediated behind the scenes to establish a crisis team. Previously, Russia and Ukraine were all covered with mines in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, and now they are accusing each other of "not clearing mines". Russia says Ukraine has the responsibility to clear mines around the port of Odessa, and Ukraine says it is unable to clear mines because Russia took the opportunity to attack the southern part of the country.

Egypt, the world's largest wheat importer, has decided not to wait. Before the Russian-Ukrainian war, Egypt spent an average of $3 billion a year to import wheat, and now it is approaching $6 billion. Starting in March, Egypt announced a devaluation of its currency and sought a loan from the International Monetary Fund. The Gulf states, fearing unrest in the most populous Arab country, sent emergency funds of about $22 billion.

Egypt "escaped" India's ban and "snatched" 500,000 tons of wheat, which was only a drop in the bucket. The key to its "food independence" is the reform of agricultural technology and the bread subsidy program. The former requires several years of operation, and the latter is achieved through the government's "uniform purchase and underwriting". In a country where more than half of the population meets the definition of poverty, providing cheap bread is the minimum way to avoid famine and ensure stability.

Hidden food hegemony with diverse means

In the hit movie "Jurassic World 3", the biological company Biosyn used genetic modification technology to create crazy locusts that did not eat their own crops, which once overshadowed the huge variety of dinosaurs. The film strongly criticizes the behavior of big companies that destroy the ecological balance and cause food crisis. The number one villain looks exactly like Apple CEO Tim Cook, which can be considered to reflect the general anxiety of the whole society about "gene editing" and even "high technology". .

The world food crisis is not just a temporary problem caused by a single factor such as the "GMO revolution" or abnormal geopolitics, but an "inevitable" result of the fusion of multiple factors and the development of the international food system over the past two hundred years.

The United States is the primary controller of the entire international food system. Its food hegemony is built on the basis of food aid, "green revolution", free trade, "transgenic revolution", biofuels, food financialization and other means, as well as the combination of multiple forces such as enterprises and capital.

Huge grain subsidies ensure the competitiveness of the United States in the international market. Since 1933, the United States has continued to strengthen agricultural subsidies. Subsidies mainly go to large farmers, and small farms are accelerating their withdrawal from the market. The grain giants made huge profits and began to take a monopoly position.

Both food aid and food embargoes can be used as weapons to intervene in other countries' food production systems. The Agricultural Trade Development and Aid Act, signed by former US President Eisenhower, uses grain as a political bargaining chip. As long as a state-owned workers' organization or a suspected left-wing opposition is found, the strategic grain reserve can be used to "send warmth". In the late 1960s, 79% of U.S. grain exports went to third-world countries, because "as long as you give the hungry people some bread, they will obey."

The “green revolution” is an upgraded version of food aid—developing developing countries that rely more heavily on the United States by importing new breeds of infertile hybrid seeds, expensive fertilizers and agricultural technology. "Green" exports often include a variety of political and economic additional conditions, such as the development of agriculture according to the plan, and the strengthening of population control.

After the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, taxes on agricultural products, textiles, and automobiles between the United States, Mexico and Canada were gradually eliminated. At that time, the price of imported corn from the United States was only half of the domestic protection price in Mexico. Under the huge price difference, Mexican farmers could only go bankrupt.

The "GMO Revolution" is like an upgraded version of the "Green Revolution", and it is the core of American food hegemony: hardware and software are sold together. Genetically modified seeds are patented seeds with "gene use restriction technology". When used with fixed herbicides, they can effectively control the growth of weeds and resist pests. Among them, seed and pesticide technologies are monopolized by a few companies, and buyers need to pay high "technology license fees".

Food energy is also one of the reasons for the food crisis. The United States, the European Union and Brazil are all pushing for biofuels to wean themselves off oil. The corn, which was originally used for raising livestock and directly eaten by humans, was transformed into industrial use, resulting in the phenomenon of industrial grain competition, which directly triggered the 2007-2008 food crisis.

The financialization of food has deeply bound the dollar to food. Before the 1990s, U.S. agricultural futures were primarily used for commercial hedging, imposing restrictions on transactions by non-commercial participants. After the 1990s, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) began to shift to a laissez-faire policy, allowing for the first time an exemption from restrictions on speculative trading in agricultural products. In 2005, the CFTC simply expanded trading limits on the quantities of wheat, corn, oats, and soybeans that can be bought or sold on the futures market.

In addition, the US government also provides subsidies to encourage farmers to use agricultural insurance. A large amount of financial capital has entered the agricultural product futures market, increasing the volatility of agricultural product prices.

It cannot be ignored that the role of large enterprises is sometimes larger than that of the state.

70% of the world's wheat is controlled by six agricultural companies. 98% of the bagged tea trade is controlled by one company. Four multinational grain companies, ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus of France, also known as "ABCD" according to their English initials, control the absolute pricing power of grain.

The four major grain merchants have been established for more than 100 years. They have a skilled capital operation model and adopt a closed-loop control over all aspects of grain planting, production and sales. At present, 80% of the world's grain trading volume is monopolized in the hands of these four major grain merchants. They go long and short, buy low and sell high. They can also lobby the government to direct farmers to plant certain crops to meet the "national interests".

Man-made famine, history repeating itself

While wheat has captured the attention of the world, most of the grain currently leaving Ukraine is maize.

There are two reasons that prevent the "outward movement" of Ukrainian wheat. One is that Ukrainian peasants are hesitant to sell their ration, wheat, remembering the great famine of 1932-1933. Millions of Ukrainians died in that disaster. Also, Ukrainians don't eat corn much. Second, Europe is self-sufficient in wheat and does not need Ukrainian wheat very much. By July, EU countries will be busy exporting their own summer harvests, and they will not have time to take into account what happens to Ukraine.

The Great Famine in Ukraine 90 years ago was a combination of nature and politics. The collectivization of agriculture was resisted by the peasants, and the Stalin government suppressed the peasants and banned any grain from entering the Ukrainian countryside, prohibited the sale of commodities and agricultural products, and confiscated the peasants' surplus grain, rations and seed grains. In the spring of 1933, there was a large-scale drought in Ukraine, and the Soviet Union banned the movement of victims and blocked the border between Ukraine and the Don River.

Later generations generally believed that the death toll of the Great Famine in Ukraine was between 2.5 million and 4.8 million, while the documentary "Soviet Story" put it at 7 million. When the famine occurred, Ukraine continued to export grain.

Also in the movie "Lenin in 1918", a peasant came to the Kremlin and asked Lenin to find "the truth of the peasantry", he said, "What will you do if we peasants don't give you food"? Lenin said, "If you don't give it, we will force you to give it! If you dare to use force, we will use force to destroy you. This is the truth I give you."

Sylvie Brunel, president of Humanitarian Action Against Hunger International and a professor at the Sorbonne-Paris IV University in France, addresses this theme in his book Famine and Politics. He reiterated the thesis of Nobel Laureate in Economics Amartya Sen: The cause of famine is not that there is not enough food produced, but that people who need it are unable to obtain food in a timely and efficient manner.

Simply put, the food crisis or famine is not because of insufficient supply, but because of the uneven distribution of rights or even deprivation. This is still the case in the 21st century. If the world's food is distributed fairly, everyone can get 2,700 calories per day, which already exceeds the physiological needs of 2,000 calories.

Brunel classified famines into three types. "No famine" refers to the fact that famine broke out either due to natural factors or due to policy mistakes, but in order to maintain the regime, the government involved denied that there was a large-scale famine. The Essalbia famine of 1973-1974, the Bangladesh famine of 1974, and the Cambodian famine of 1975-1979 are examples.

"Showing the famine" means that the government uses the sympathy of the international community to exaggerate the extent of the famine and defraud international aid. The victims are only hostages in exchange of interests. Such was the case with the Sudan famine of 1986-1988.

"Man-made famines" refer to famines that take millions of lives when food production is plentiful. The famine in South Asia in 1943 and the famine in Ukraine in the 1930s proved this statement.

It can be said that today's food crisis is also a "man-made famine". Food is "enough", enough to provide all people with the calories necessary for life, however, the food gap between rich and poor countries and the inner class of countries is growing, the food system does not protect the hungry poor, war and The embargo can easily choke the survivors - it's like a scene in Polanski's film "The Pianist", a Jewish family in a concentration camp, the father carefully cuts a small cube of sugar with a knife into six pieces, then It was their family's last meal. No one cares about their lives and dignity, and they are only used as bargaining chips in a certain ideological sense.

Writer Fang Long once said that human history is the history of a hungry life constantly seeking food. The questioning of the food crisis seems to return to Malthus' view that as long as human beings are still reproducing, famine is inevitable. So, is the human will still useful?