The World Food Economy : A 40 Year Perspective on the Past , and a Look Forward
That is the starting point of what I consider my own serious deliberation , serious thinking , and serious analysis of how the world food economy works and what goes wrong with it . Some of us in the room are old enough to remember that in 1975 we were just winding down from a very serious world food crisis . It started with rice in Asia in late 1972 — and spread very quickly to maize and wheat right around the world . And the world food crisis corresponded also with an energy crisis , the formation of OPEC , and restriction of oil supplies because of the Yom Kippur war . The commodity boom that we witnessed in the mid-1970s really changed how people in the world were thinking — not just about whether food was going to be available — but the linkages between energy and food going forward .
So , the question is what has changed in those 40 years ? The bottom line answer to that question will be a conclusion that ending hunger has turned out to be a very difficult task . Some of us remember Henry Kissinger stating in 1976 , at the first World Food Conference , that “ within a decade , no child will go to bed hungry .” No one would have to worry about having enough food on the table . There would be no hunger within a decade . We failed miserably in that promise and the question then is why ? That is my topic today .
The Quest for Food Security since 1975
There are two basic questions :
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• What has changed , and what has remained the same ?
• Why is ending hunger so hard ?
Let me take them in turn , starting with some personal landmarks . First is a two-volume issue of Food Research Institute Studies published in 1975 on the “ Political Economy of Rice in Asia .” I did the methodological introduction , the chapter on Indonesia , and the conclusions for that volume . Professor Ammar Siamwalla did the chapter on Thailand .
A book titled Food Policy Analysis that Wally Falcon and Scott Pearson and I wrote was published in 1983 . 2 Amazingly it is still used in courses on the world food economy and on food policy — even though it is > 30 years old and is dated in rather serious ways . On the other hand , the book laid out a framework for thinking about food issues in the context of trade , macroeconomics , and household decision making , while integrating all those components . The 1983 book was really the first time we were able to pull all this together for the profession .
In 1988 , I published a chapter in the Handbook of Development Economics on the “ Agricultural Transformation .” 3 That
2
C . Peter Timmer , Walter P . Falcon and Scott R . Pearson , Food Policy Analysis ( Baltimore , MD : Johns Hopkins University Press for the World Bank , 1983 ).
3
C . Peter Timmer . “ The Agricultural Transformation ,” in Handbook of Development Economics , vol . 1 , eds . Hollis Chenery , and T . N . Srinivasan ( Amsterdam , North-Holland : Elsevier , 1988 ), 275 – 331 .
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