food security in UAE

Food security

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Introduction

In the period of 2007-2008, there was a steep rise in food prices. Since then, the graph of food insecurity in parts of world has been increasing steadily. Due to that incident, food insecurity has been a problem to the undeveloped and poor countries only; the effects were global and affected the developed countries too (Abuzeid & Hamdy 2004) .

This piece of work digs deeper into the issue of food insecurity in the Middle East. It contains several chapters containing information that was derived from an original fieldwork study. The problem of food insecurity in the Middle East region is new since this place has been known for its food abundance for many years. Because of adopting modern development policies, this region has started experiencing food insecurity hence becoming a contrast to its past whereby it was a food basket and could cater for the food needs of its population and the nearby areas as well (Lofgren & Richards 2000).

It is a fact that the Middle East is one of the regions in the world that is experiencing rapid development. With such high rates of development, the region has been forced to deal with both the deliberate and undeliberate effects of modernization. Some of most noticeable effects has been the high rates of birth and sharp rise in the population, biasness in urban policy-making that has led to rural neglect and rural-urban migration, and the planned expansion of the state that has led to introduction of policies based on the interests of the state. While concentrating on such developments, the stakeholders have put less effort on improving agricultural standards that has led to a big gap between national food demand and the available domestic food.

Agricultural products were highly costly in 2007-2008. The same trend occurred in 2011. As a result, there was an increased concern over that negative trend and led to discussions across the globe on the issue of food security. There was an alarming 83 percent in international food prices by 2008 over a period of three years according to the World Bank. The impact of this increase was immense in the Arab states given the fact that such countries import over 50 percent of the calories annually. After a year of releasing the stated statistics, the World Bank went ahead to urge the Arab countries to be prepared for any future food crisis. In less than two years later, food prices reached one of their all-time high once again. Despite the rise in prices being a global effect, the Middle East suffered devastating consequences. This was the case since an approximated one quarter of the region’s population is poor. To make matters worse, seventy-five percent of the poor people live in rural settings where there is an uneven access to decent food.

In order to counter the problem, all the Middle East states agreed on one. They were to subsidize food prices by big margins in order to make it affordable for the poor people in the region. One may argue that this unified agreement could have been of such events like the “bread riots” of the early 1990s and part of 1980s as well as the recent Arab Spring uprisings that the regions has experienced since 2011 (Wright & Cafiero 2011). Apparently, the subsidized prices, although heavy, did not seem to salvage the situation because the international food price shocks always translated to price hikes in the domestic market in different parts of the Middle East region. As one of the statistics, in the period of between 2006 and 2011, for instance, prices of food went up by an estimated 10 percent every year in Iran, UAE and Yemen while in Djibouti, Lebanon, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, the rise was by over 15 percent.

It is important to note that the rise in food prices on the international level led to similar trends in the domestic markets across countries in the Middle East within a short time. However, the situation was different when it involved reduction in world food prices whereby it took so long to reflect the change domestically.

Various reasons were attributed to the ever increase in food prices. Experts on the other hand did not agree on a single factor that could have led to the increase in prices. In reality, the steep rise in prices was because of a collection of different factors that involved structural, supply side dynamics that included a slow-down in cereal productivity globally(Wright & Cafiero, 2011). Other factors included diversion of agricultural land for production of bio fuel, insufficient cereal stocks, export bans on important agricultural products or other trade restrictions, the high cost of petroleum together with high cost of fertilizer and production energy, and speculative investment on agricultural commodities. Increased demand for food also contributed to the increase in prices.

This demand came about because of the increasing global population and the ever-changing pattern of food consumption in the various developing countries. On comparing between the time before 2008 when food prices escalated and afterwards, the current prices are still higher despite the gradual drop in the prices since 2008 (Wright, Brian, and Carlo 89).

Conclusion

Experts continue to suggest that the increase in food prices as a trend will continue. They base their arguments on the fact that not much has been done to deal with the factors that led to the crisis. On the contrary, there has been an increase in encouraging programs dealing with bio-fuel production in grain-producing countries. Such steps like not enhancing global grain reserves and not keeping up with the pace of growth of demand for food have also been experienced in recent years. The issue of food insecurity is very likely to continue in the Middle East due to the poor structural factors that are present. Populist regimes in the Middle East that have brought about the issue of land reform programs have led to widespread fragmentation of arable land. For instance, 90 percent of landowners in UAE own land that is less than 1 hectare.

References

Abuzeid, M., & Hamdy, A, 2004. Water Crisis and Food Security in the Arab World: where we are and where do we go. Cairo (Egypt), 14th Apr, 76.

Lofgren, H., & Richards, A, 2000. Food security, poverty, and economic policy in the Middle East and North Africa (Vol. 5, pp. 1-31). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Wright, B., & Cafiero, C, 2011. Grain reserves and food security in the Middle East and North Africa. Food Security, 3(1), 61-76.