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The Food Crisis, Industrialized Farming and the Imperial Regime
Author(s) -
VAN DER PLOEG JAN DOUWE
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of agrarian change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.63
H-Index - 56
eISSN - 1471-0366
pISSN - 1471-0358
DOI - 10.1111/j.1471-0366.2009.00251.x
Subject(s) - agrarian society , agriculture , economics , liberalization , industrialisation , financial crisis , food prices , food security , market economy , development economics , international economics , economic policy , keynesian economics , geography , archaeology
This paper argues that the food crisis cannot solely be equated with abrupt food price increases or seen as merely market induced. The unprecedented price increases of the first half of 2008, and the extremely low prices that followed, are expressions of a far wider and far more persistent underlying crisis, which has been germinating for more than a decade. It is the complex outcome of several combined processes, including the industrialization of agriculture, the liberalization of food and agricultural markets and the rise of food empires. The interaction of these processes has created a global agrarian crisis that has provoked the multifaceted food crisis. Both these crises are being accelerated through their interactions with the wider economic and financial crisis.