Global Food Prices Still Need Sustainable Solution

The 842 million people currently hungry need a sustained solution to unpredictable agricultural productivity that renders food unaffordable to them.

The recently released Food Price Watch by the World Bank shows global food prices are starting to show signs of stability, recording a drop of 12 percent year on year between June to October this year. But as this blog post from Business Recorder points out, considering the record highs of last year, a subdued price-level this year does not mean the problem has a long-term sustainable solution. The idea is that the short-term food-price stability doesn’t imply that policy-makers should sit back and relax. 

Bearing in mind the success story of vast farms in Brazil cerrado that stabilized soybean prices, one long-term solution could be super farming (farms typically exceeding 10,000 hectares). China and Singapore are also projected to develop an extensive 145,000 hectares “food zone” in the northeastern province of Jilin, China. Similar projects are also reported to kick-off in Indonesia. While super farming can’t be guaranteed to rule-out the menace of unprecedented food price-hike, it will at least make a dent in it, besides producing employment and poverty reduction and efficiency gains as by-products.

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