The Geo-politics of Food

We’re used to hearing a lot about the geo-politics of oil, but thanks to soaring prices, the geo-politics of food is emerging as an important global issue:

The race by food-importing countries to secure farmland overseas to improve their food security risks creating a “neo-colonial” system, the United Nations’ top agriculture official has cautioned.

The warning by Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, comes as countries from Saudi Arabia to China plan to lease vast tracts of land in Africa and Asia to grow crops and ship them back to their markets….

Joachim von Braun, director of the International Food Policy Research Institute, said importing nations realised that dependence on the international market made them vulnerable – not only to surging prices but, crucially, also to an interruption in supplies. “They want to secure the supply lines of food,” he said.

The article goes on to note that western officials "worry about countries such as Sudan and Zimbabwe gaining more geopolitical leverage following investment in their agriculture."

This strikes me as an example of both the up and downsides of globalization converging in one place. On the one hand, globalization was supposed to make what happens inside a state more relevant to the outside world. In an increasingly interconnected world, a failed state is no longer a global backwater but the potential breeding ground for international dangers like terrorism or pandemic disease (I tend to think that case is over-stated, for the reasons elucidated here by the folks at CATO, but that's for another day).

On the other hand, greater inter-dependence was suppose to strengthen the incentive for states to cooperate, lest they endanger their economic interests.

If Sudan becomes a "Saudi Arabia of food" then many nations that may feel compelled to take stronger action in Darfur will feel correspondingly stronger pressure not to act, lest the supply of food be interrupted.