Commentaries | May 28,2022
Jul 9 , 2022
By José Luis Chicoma
A combination of domestic and global forces has pushed Peru into an acute food crisis, despite the country’s natural strength as a source of diverse, nutritious agricultural products. In fact, the country is a microcosm for a global food system that has proved woefully unequal to today’s challenges, writes José Luis Chicoma, former minister for Production for Peru and a former Yale World Fellow.
Peru is a food paradox. One of the countries that gave the world potatoes, tomatoes, and quinoa is teetering on the brink of a food crisis that looks set to be among the most severe in Latin America. With food insecurity (defined as a lack of reliable access to sufficient nutrition) already affecting almost half of the Peruvian population, today’s global fertiliser shortage and rising energy and food prices have sparked protests and social unrest.
Both Russia’s war in Ukraine and Peru’s own political leadership are to blame. Peru’s government, with its fifth Agriculture minister in less than a year and facing serious corruption allegations, has done little to find an alternative to Russian fertiliser, even though the country’s two main staples – rice and potatoes – are heavily dependent on it. But Peru’s challenges are also tied to problems besetting the world food system. Solutions thus will require multilateral action.
While current conditions have made matters worse, the Peruvian food system has been broken for decades, owing to global and domestic forces that have promoted export-oriented industrialised agriculture, homogenized diets, and dependence on imports for staple foods. In the process, Peru has sacrificed smallholder agriculture, food security, and biodiversity. Small-scale agriculture receives almost no state support, even though the sector employs more than 80pc of agricultural workers and accounts for 57pc of Peru’s total food supply. Most smallholder farmers must manage a vicious circle of low capacity, meager incomes, and food insecurity.
By contrast, the agricultural-export sector has grown substantially, turning Peru into a major global supplier of produce such as blueberries, avocados, and asparagus. The industry has long been a high political priority, securing substantial public investment, preferential tax treatment, and trade agreements that provide access to new markets, while domestic agricultural production is left exposed to subsidisded imports from rich countries.
These trends have been fueled by a decades-long global drive toward specialisation and trade liberalisation, a process that included agriculture adjustment policies forced on the developing world in the 1990s. Even though Peru is not a net food importer, its dependency on imports has increased from 10pc to 17pc between 2008 and 2021, especially in basic staples such as wheat. And while the country boasts dozens of native crops that are nutritious and easy to grow, these have fallen by the wayside as diets heavy with processed foods have become the norm globally.
As a result of these trends, the global food system’s domination by a small number of mega-corporations is mirrored in Peru. In a country with a deep love for rotisserie chicken, the poultry industry is concentrated in the hands of just two companies, and another company dominates the entire wheat-processing and oilseed industries. The same goes for dairy, which is controlled by a company that also happens to be the largest landowner in the country. Such concentration results in lower incomes for suppliers, many of them small-scale producers.
At a time when people need real food and the planet needs the Amazon, Peru is clearing forests to grow palm oil (used to produce processed food) and biofuels for cars. And now that high energy prices and biofuel mandates have created a surge in demand, the pressure on forests is likely only to increase.
To overcome the Peruvian food paradox, the Peruvian government must play a significant role in accelerating the transition to agroecology and sustainable fishing and aquaculture, and in elevating small-scale producers as a political priority. Pursuing these goals will also help protect biodiversity, increase the country’s resilience to climate change, and promote healthy, inclusive diets based on Peruvian produce. In particular, the government should source goods for its food program exclusively from small-scale farmers and fishers, and subsidise these diets with higher taxes on ultra-processed products.
But major changes are also needed well beyond Peru. Leadership from multilateral bodies like the G7 will be necessary to fix the broken global food system. To its credit, the G7 recently expressed a desire to “ensure that structures are permanently altered in such a way that developing countries are more able in the future to be self-sufficient, instead of being dependent on the global market.”
Achieving that worthy goal will require investments of at least 14 billion dollars a year – a fraction of the 540 billion dollars that governments spend annually on food subsidies (most of which are harmful to the planet and people). Yet, at the G7’s June 26-28 summit in Elmau, Germany, its members committed only five billion dollars to address food insecurity this year.
Policy shifts are also needed to support local small-scale producers instead of fostering industrial global food supply chains. We must curtail the power of big corporations within the global food system, and promote a shift to healthier, more sustainable food for human consumption – rather than allowing our agricultural systems to be oriented around the production of animal feed and fuel.
Our planet already produces more than enough food to sustain humanity. But our food systems are not fit for purpose. In Peru and elsewhere, financing, domestic political reform, and multilateral leadership hold the key to fixing what is so clearly broken.
PUBLISHED ON
Jul 09,2022 [ VOL
23 , NO
1158]
Commentaries | May 28,2022
Fortune News | Sep 10,2022
Viewpoints | Aug 19,2023
Viewpoints | Mar 04,2023
Fortune News | Aug 14,2021
Photo Gallery | 97473 Views | May 06,2019
Photo Gallery | 89696 Views | Apr 26,2019
My Opinion | 67414 Views | Aug 14,2021
Commentaries | 65845 Views | Oct 02,2021
Editorial | May 02,2024
Feb 24 , 2024 . By MUNIR SHEMSU
Abel Yeshitila, a real estate developer with a 12-year track record, finds himself unable to sell homes in his latest venture. Despite slash...
Feb 10 , 2024 . By MUNIR SHEMSU
In his last week's address to Parliament, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) painted a picture of an economy...
Jan 7 , 2024
In the realm of international finance and diplomacy, few cities hold the distinction that Addis Abeba doe...
Sep 30 , 2023 . By AKSAH ITALO
On a chilly morning outside Ke'Geberew Market, Yeshi Chane, a 35-year-old mother cradling her seven-month-old baby, stands amidst the throng...
May 2 , 2024
For successive generations of Ethiopia's tax authorities, the chore of tax collection...
Apr 27 , 2024
The Prosperity Party (PP) - Prosperitians - is charting a course through treacherous...
Apr 20 , 2024
In a departure from its traditionally opaque practices, the National Bank of Ethiopia...
Apr 13 , 2024
In the hushed corridors of the legislative house on Lorenzo Te'azaz Road (Arat Kilo)...
Apr 28 , 2024
A dire situation unfolds across public universities, where students face the harsh re...
Apr 28 , 2024 . By MUNIR SHEMSU
A European business lobby in Ethiopia issued a scathing review of the tax system last...
Apr 28 , 2024
The Federal Supreme Court has recently ruled in the prolonged commercial dispute surr...
Apr 28 , 2024 . By MUNIR SHEMSU
Transport authorities placed blame on driving schools and vehicle inspection centres...