Since the "Green Revolution" of the 1970's, the price of food has steadily gone down. As agribusiness learned to grow crops more efficiently by mechanizing the farming process,  the food industry came to rely on fossil fuels to drive massive tractors and harvesters; produce chemical fertilizers and pesticides; and transport foods across the globe. But we may be facing the end of an era, as food prices suddenly shot up last year.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO), the food price index rose by more than 40 percent in 2007, compared with 9 percent in 2006—a rate "unforeseen and unprecedented." This dramatic rise in food prices could have devastating effects on the world's poorest people, and the agency is calling for urgent action to help provide the hardest hit small farmers in poor countries with means of local food production.

Pressures from surging energy & oil prices, population growth, biofuel demand, income growth, globalization, urbanization, and global warming are converging at such a rapid rate that there is little relief in sight for the world's poor. 

What's Driving Food Prices?
Amidst the onset of a global food crisis, experts are beginning to take a stab at who most to blame.

The Economist claims the “75 percent jump in food prices since 2005” is a result of "America's reckless ethanol subsidies” driving up the price of corn and other grains. Researchers for the Renewable Fuels Association, however, contend that the link between corn prices and grocery prices is weak.

The same discrepancy is seen between the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Earth Policy Institute (EPI) with respect to forecasting biofuel production. USDA projects that distilleries will require only 60 million tons of corn from the 2008 harvest. But EPI estimates that distilleries will need 139 million tons—more than twice as much. If the EPI estimate is at all close to the mark, the emerging competition between cars and people for grain will likely drive world grain prices to levels never seen before.

Food security and crop yields are further susceptible to droughts and floods associated with early effects of global warming—especially among poorer countries reliant on low-input, rain-fed agriculture.

Other economists increasingly point to China and forthcoming-India’s surging demand for feed, food, and fuel. In their quest to emulate western lifestyles, rapid economic growth is creating long-term inflation in food prices. As newly affluent urbanites in these countries develop a taste for dairy, beef, and pork, they are requiring massive amounts of livestock acreage and feed grains, which might otherwise sustain rural poor families. Due to increasing prices of wheat, rice flour, palm oil and other ingredients, the Chinese will soon be paying up to 40 percent more for one of China's staple foods, a bowl of instant noodles. 

The reverberating wave of rising food prices is also catching up with other members of the globalized food chain: developed countries. Prices of dairy products are dramatically boosting in dairy exporting countries, like Germany, Switzerland and New Zealand, due to the Chinese dairy boom. In the U.S., most notably, wheat prices soared about $10 a bushel, and milk prices have risen about 25%. A University of Washington study appearing in the December issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, shows that because of a 20% rise in fresh produce in the past two years, low income Americans are expected to face increasing pressure to subside on more affordable energy-dense foods—such as those high in processed, refined grains, added sugars, and added fats.
 
At present, Americans spend less (as a percentage of income) feeding themselves than any other people, at the expense of "poorer nations being priced out of the food market,” says Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program.

Ironically, while the poorest countries are expected to suffer from hunger, American may become more vulnerable to obesity rates and chronic diseases from junk food diets.

What Can Be Done?
In taking action toward preventing a global hunger crisis, authorities are focusing on alternative methods to conventional food aid, which generally consists of sending emergency food aid to areas that face famine and malnutrition. Because of globally low food stocks and rising food prices, relief resources are stretched thin.

Many governmental and non-governmental organizations, such as the UNFAO and IFPRI, are universally moving toward helping farmers grow food locally. Improved rural infrastructure and access to seeds, fertilizers and other inputs, can increase self sufficient, diversified, localized crop production. Such has been the case in places like Malawi.

Concurrently, critics of industrialized agricultural production and global trade argue that in order to address rising food prices, malnutrition, and food security, leaders from developed countries must address  issues such as trade barriers, export-oriented crops, and the subsidization of large corporate agriculture while discriminating against small-scale farmers and agriculture oriented to local needs.

Local food advocates also claim that localized food production in both developed and developing nations can do more than reduce malnutrition and dependence on imports, it can help minimize social and environmental impacts by accounting for 'externalities' that have remained unaccounted for in corporate agribusiness since the Green Revolution. In other words, an increase in localized food production systems reduces the ruthless exploitation of labor, animals and natural resources required by so-called 'conventional' food production in order to provide cheap food.

According to Michael Pollan in his book Omnivore’s Dilemma, the permanence of a world food chain dominated by giant agribusiness, chemical and restaurant companies like Cargill, Monsanto and McDonalds, will increase dependence on unhealthy and genetically modified products.  Furthermore claims Pollan, conventional food production, along with the majority of the organic food industry, is “floating on a sinking sea of petroleum,” vulnerable to surges in transportation and hidden external costs. Pollan urges a shift to local food economies for accountability, consciousness, and health.

Emerging into the globalized food-fuel battlefront, it is up to global leaders like the United States-- a leading grain producer, grain exporter, and ethanol producer-- to create more sustainable strategies for the global food market to follow.  Policies focused on subsidizing Big Ag to overproduce a few commodities, such as the recently passed Farm Bill of 2007, will simply not meet the challenge.

A more equitable and enduring approach for the U.S. and other developed nations would focus on reforming status-quo subsidy systems. The Lugar-Lautenberg amendment to the Senate Agriculture Committee's Farm Bill, for example, would broaden the agricultural safety net by making a free revenue insurance program available to all farmers. This would result in the acceleration of consolidating small and mid-sized farms, rebuild local food systems, with savings left over to reinvest in conservation, healthy food, nutrition, farmers markets, renewable energy, and rural development.

In achieving food economy equity, it is also imperative that government policies not exacerbate hunger and poverty for the worlds poorest people. On top of investing in developing countries' rural infrastructure and food market institutions, developed countries could also invest in agricultural science & technology to improve sustainable crop productivity; and create flexible trade barriers so that countries facing food scarcity can trade more, not less. Policymakers additionally could address social protection measures that focus on early childhood nutrition within poor households, and account for food issues within international climate change agendas.

"Above all, we must target the world's most poor and hungry people, to ensure that they do not get left behind in the wake of overall economic growth and global progress," says von Braun.