photo credit: TracyJones

Food, Food, Everywhere - And Not a Crumb to Eat

According to recent reports, nearly a billion people are severely affected by the high cost of food. Yet the problem doesn’t have to do with the simple economic equation of supply and demand. Indeed, these same reports note that while the cost of food has been rising sharply around the world there also has been a parallel increase in the amount of food being produced. [extern] According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), despite record production in 2008 food prices are expected to remain high, cutting off access to commodities for the world’s poorest people. From this, it’s clear that the present food crisis has little to do with supply and demand and instead is mainly due to other influences such as ineffective trade policies, market speculation, and the rising cost of energy, namely oil.

A prime example of this sad state of affairs is the situation in Hungary. The economy of this Central European country was mainly based on agriculture as it has few natural resources. In fact, for the most part of the last two centuries it was considered the bread basket of the region; its high quality agricultural products were exported throughout Europe and beyond. Thanks to the past two decades of neo-liberalism, which has sought to turn Hungary into a logistics center for the movement of goods and services between east and west, this agricultural focus has been lost. As a result, rural communities lie in a dilapidated state and the country now imports most of its food. What it does export is often cheap commercial trash, as exemplified by the tainted paprika scandal of a few years ago.

As in the rest of the world, the global rise in food prices has hit Hungarian consumers hard. The paradox, however, hasn’t been lost on most Hungarians. For years farmers have complained about cheap imports which have been putting them at a disadvantage. Unlike other European countries, such as France, Germany or The Netherlands, the government in Hungary has given little support to the agricultural sector. Indeed, many accuse the government of selling out the interests of its own rural communities for that of multinational companies which have sought to buy up cheap Hungarian land. As a result, the past few years have seen farmers en masse slaughtering their herds, digging up their orchards and vineyards, and allowing their fields to go barren since to make a living from agriculture has grown steadily difficult. At the same time, the price of food has been on the increase.

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