Soaring food prices bite hard across Asia
Pastor Dale Morgan
Soaring food prices bite hard across Asia*
by Staff Writers
Sydney (AFP) May 6, 2008
From the rice paddies of Asia to the wheat fields of Australia, the
soaring price of food is breaking the budgets of the poor and raising
the spectres of hunger and unrest, experts warn.
A billion people in Asia are seriously affected by the surging costs of
daily staples such as rice and bread, the director general of the Asian
Development Bank, Rajat Nag, has said.
"This includes roughly about 600 million people who live on just under a
dollar a day, which is the definition of poverty, and another 400
million who are just above that borderline," he said.
Globally, the World Bank last month estimated that 33 countries were
threatened with political and social unrest because of the skyrocketing
costs of food and energy.
Across Asia, workers made a campaign against high food prices their May
Day battle cry last Thursday in marches through cities including the
capitals of Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.
While the demonstrations were mainly peaceful, concern is growing over
the potential for political instability and unrest if high prices persist.
"Once people get hungry they start also getting quite desperate and take
desperate measures," Damien Kingsbury of Australia's Deakin University
told AFP.
India's top farm scientist and architect of the 1960s "Green
Revolution," Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, has said India needs a
second agricultural revolution to boost food supplies or face huge
social turmoil.
Experts blame the high food prices on a confluence of factors, including
increased demand from a changing diet in Asia, droughts, the rising use
of crops for biofuels, and growing energy and fertiliser costs.
In Australia, which usually ranks second after the United States as a
global wheat exporter, several years of drought cut harvests to just 13
million tonnes last year from an average of 22 million tonnes.
So while consumers are struggling, Australian farmers are not getting
rich on the backs of the poor, said National Farmers Federation chief
executive Ben Fargher.
"It's been the worst drought in our history and many, many farming
families are under significant financial and emotional stress and it
will take our communities a long time to recover," he said.
And even in a relatively prosperous country like Australia, people are
feeling the squeeze in the supermarkets, prompting the government to
launch an inquiry into how to stem rising grocery prices.
Around the rest of the region, the impact varies from traumatic to minimal:
-- AFGHANISTAN: Millions of Afghans are finding it "problematic" to meet
their basic food needs with prices of the staple, wheat, doubling in
some areas over recent months, the World Food Programme has said.
About 400 people demonstrated in eastern Afghanistan last month,
blocking a key road linking the eastern town of Jalalabad to the capital
Kabul and demanding the government step in to control prices at food
markets.
-- BANGLADESH: One of the world's poorest nations, Bangladesh has been
hit by a doubling in the price of the main staple, rice, in the past
year and many low paid workers say they have been forced to make do on
only one meal a day.
Last month about 20,000 garment workers rioted near the capital Dhaka
for higher wages to cover food prices.
-- CAMBODIA: Soaring rice prices have forced the World Food Programme to
indefinitely suspend a programme supplying free breakfasts to 450,000
poor Cambodian schoolchildren.
-- CHINA: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told a meeting of the State Council
last month that high prices were the biggest problem in the domestic
economy.
"The inflation is led by food price rises, which especialy hurt the
poor," said Ma Qing, a Beijing-based analyst with the CEB monitor group.
"So the pressure (on maintaining social stability) is certainly quite
large."
The finance ministry announced a special 100 percent duty on exports of
fertilisers and the raw materials used to make them in order to ensure
domestic supply over the ploughing season and "guarantee this year's
grain harvest".
-- INDIA: A general strike against spiralling food prices paralysed
Kolkata on April 21 as thousands of police were deployed across West
Bengal state to stop protests turning violent.
New Delhi has already slashed food duties and banned exports of lentils
and other staples, and will not hesitate to further "sacrifice revenues
to control prices," Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.
-- INDONESIA: Anger over rising food prices was a focus for some 10,000
Indonesians who took to the streets of the capital Jakarta for Labour
Day rallies.
High prices for rice, cooking oil and soybeans helped drive Indonesia's
annual inflation rate to 8.17 percent in March.
-- JAPAN: In resource-poor Japan, which relies on imports for 60 percent
of its food, companies have hiked prices on everything from beer to
beef, mayonnaise and "miso" paste made from fermented soy beans in
recent months.
Although Asia's largest economy has been struggling for years to end
deflation, rising food and commodity prices have not been welcomed
because of the pain they inflict on small businesses and low-income
households in particular.
-- MALAYSIA: Anger over rising prices was a major factor in March
elections which saw the ruling coalition lose a third of parliamentary
seats and five states in its worst results in half a century.
-- NEPAL: Nepal last week banned the export of grains as prices soared.
"There is a high possibility of food crisis in a poor country like ours
where domestic production is not enough," said Hari Dahal, a spokesman
at the ministry of agriculture.
-- NORTH KOREA: North Korea's food crisis has already seen some people
starve to death in remote rural towns, according to an aid group which
works in the impoverished communist nation, South Korea's Good Friends
organisation.
Prices of staple foods have almost tripled over the past year.
-- PAKISTAN: Analysts say public anger over food shortages, particularly
wheat flour for the staple roti bread, was a factor in the defeat of
President Pervez Musharraf's allies in elections in February.
-- SOUTH KOREA: Rising rice prices abroad have almost no impact on South
Korea, which imports less than five percent of its annual consumption
and heavily subsidises its rice farmers.
-- SINGAPORE: Singapore is the wealthiest economy in Southeast Asia but
charities say inflation is driving more people to join queues for free
meals. Consumer price inflation reached 6.6 percent in January-February,
officials said.
-- TAIWAN: Taiwan is self-sufficient in rice so international prices
have no impact. However, domestic rice prices hit a 26-year high earlier
this year due to typhoons affecting the harvest.
-- THAILAND: In Thailand, export and domestic rice prices have risen
about 50 percent in a month. Some farmers have taken to arming
themselves and staking out their fields at night to protect their
precious crop from rice thieves.
In a phrase particularly chilling for Asia, the World Food Programme has
described rising food prices as a "silent tsunami".
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