Vulnerabilities of the neoliberal global food system: The Russia-Ukraine War and COVID-19 (original) (raw)
Related papers
This food crisis is different: COVID-19 and the fragility of the neoliberal food security order
The Journal of Peasant Studies
Our analysis situates the current COVID-19 induced food crisis within a longer-term historical perspective on policy responses to past food crises. We argue that the legacies left by these past policies created vulnerabilities in the face of the present crisis, which is characterized by three interlocking dynamics: disruptions to global food supply chains, the loss of income and livelihoods due to the global economic recession, and uneven food price trends unleashed by a set of complex factors. We make the case that the COVID-19 pandemic marks an inflection point and demands a different set of policy responses that work toward fundamentally transforming food systems.
World Bank: Rural Development (Topic), 2020
This paper analyzes the impact of Covid-19 and uncooperative trade policies on world food markets. It quantifies the initial shock due to the pandemic under the assumption that products that are more labor intensive in production are more affected through workers' morbidity and containment policies. It then estimates how escalating export restrictions to shield domestic food markets could magnify the initial shock. The analysis shows that, in the quarter following the outbreak of the pandemic, the global export supply of food could decrease between 6 and 20 percent and global prices increase between 2 and 6 percent on average. Escalating export restrictions would multiply the initial shock by a factor of 3, with world food prices rising by up to 18 percent on average. Import food dependent countries, which are in large majority developing and least developed countries, would be most affected.
Trade, policy, and food security
Agricultural Economics, 2019
Export restrictions in times of pandemic: Options and limits under international trade agreements Joost Pauwelyn 8 Global supply chains will not be the same in the post-COVID-19 world Beata Javorcik 9 Resilience versus robustness in global value chains: Some policy implications Sébastien Miroudot 10 Will the post-COVID world be less open to foreign direct investment? Przemyslaw Kowalski vi 11 An unintended crisis in sea transportation due to COVID-19 restrictions
Food export restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic: Real and potential effects on food security
International Journal of Management and Economics
The purpose of the article is to review and critique the implementation of food export restrictions in times of crisis in addressing food security challenges. The methodological approach was to undertake a narrative literature review to outline the challenge of ensuring food security in times of crisis. We explored the problem of food export restrictions introduced in 2007–2008 and 2020 and assessed the changes in the state of food security at the national level during the COVID-19 pandemic using the Global Food Security Index (GFSI). The trade restrictions imposed in 2020 did not play a key role in the increases in international food prices as was the case during 2007–2008 and 2010–2011. The analysis of GFSI values questions whether food export restrictions have been sufficient measures given the size of the food security challenge during the pandemic, and this is a new contribution of this research. The issue of food export restrictions is underregulated in the World Trade Organiz...
Export Restrictions During the Food Crisis and Covid-19 Pandemic
2020
Although export restriction was applied since the 1920s-30s and is regulated under WTO laws, scholars and lawyers alike have labelled it as an “under-regulated” or “legally-deficient” issue to date. This paper examines this issue by analyzing key provisions – applicable to the world food 2007-08 and Covid-19 pandemic crises – particularly Articles XI and XX of GATT1994 and Article 12 of Agreement on Agriculture 1995. The finding revealed that export restriction, irrespective of its legal status, may be justifiably applied by Members if it satisfies such exemptions or exceptions as, inter alia, temporary application for preventing or relieving critical shortage, necessity for human health or life protection, exhaustible natural resource preservation, and essentialness to acquisition or distribution in short supply. However, key legal concepts such as necessity, preventing or relieving, critical shortage, essentialness, exhaustible natural resources, and short supply remain undefined in WTO laws, thus posing many legal questions on the measures’ legitimacy during the two crises. Moreover, the transparency objective in such measures remains remote from its expected success since related provisions lack operational substance and enforcement mechanisms. Reforms have been proposed at WTO since 2008 to limit the Members’ ability to adopt such measures and promote more transparency, yet they failed to earn agreement. The paper suggests three policy reforms: developing more specifics in controversial legal terms in separate protocols or side agreements, considering inverse-exception in extraordinarily challenging circumstances, and regulating the hidden culprit – export tax. Keywords: Export restrictions or prohibitions, WTO, GATT 1994, and Agreement on Agriculture 1994
Sustainability, 2017
Food security is increasingly influenced by multilateral trade systems and foreign trade policies implemented by national governments. Many of them are now concerned about the sustainability of food supply and the vulnerability of domestic food markets to price volatility, and seek to support domestic producers and protect themselves from increasing food imports. Such restrictions improve food self-sufficiency, but decrease food security. It is important to understand any changes that may have occurred in the food consumption pattern due to trade protectionism and to observe any nutritional implications of these changes. This paper employs the rational food security (RFS) assessment approach, which differentiates sources of food supply on the domestic market, assesses the influence of agricultural and trade frameworks on food consumption patterns, and complies consumption with the appropriate food intake threshold. In the case of Russia, the study demonstrates that the conventional consumption approach to self-sufficiency (FSCA) underestimates the food insecurity level by not accounting for nutrition factors. In addition, the gap between the FSCA and the RFS increases in times of protectionist trade policy and decreases when the agricultural and trade policy framework turns to liberalization. The paper concludes that trade protectionism challenges the sustainability of food supply by decreasing food availability and quality of food products, causes dietary changes, and threatens the food security of the country.
Food Crises (cont'd): What's Wrong with Trade and Investment Rules?
2021
This article looks at the food policy decisions taken in times of national or global food shortages. It finds that food security policy changes follow their own logicregardless of their impact on food pricesand food availability, or theircompatibility with World Trade Organization (WTO)Law or United Nations (UN)Conventions. Basically, governments that try to feed consumers without hurting their own producers are bound to manage imports, exports and food reserves actingas a price stabilisation measures.Regulators prefer scaling-up of social safety nets to public-private partnerships—regardless of WTO market access rights of foreign suppliers, let alone the Rightto Food of foreign cash crop producers and food-insecure consumers. Unfortunately, no lessons were learned from the breakdown of the Doha 'Development' Round negotiations during the first global food crisis (2007–09). The new WTO rules and disciplines were largely ignored at the time.They were disregarded again at the ...
2014
The geopolitics of the Global Food Crisis and international trade has received limited scholarly attention, a significant omission given the major roles of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in structuring world food production and trade flows and as a principal inter-state governing mechanism of the global agro-food system. Analysing recent international policy actions framing the WTO as a ‘fix’ to the Global Food Crisis, this article points to the value of a critical geopolitics of agro-power sensitive to the spatial reconfiguration of production and power in the global agro-food system, problematising geospatial categories such as ‘North’ and ‘South’, and that takes seriously contests for control of geopolitical agents such as the WTO.
Food Security and the Trade via Lenses of Sanctions
Journal of Security and Sustainability Issues, 2019
Our paper focuses on the issues of food security and agricultural trade. Specifically, we tackle the issue of economic selfsufficiency of a country using an example of the import ban on agricultural production as one form of economic sanctions. Our paper attempts to estimate the impact of sanctions in separate regions, rather then on the aggregate country level. We propose an original methodology of estimating allocation of import ban effects based on the OECD Customer Support Estimate (CSE). Our results demonstrate that in case of some agricultural products (e.g. potatoes) consumers in most of Russian regions were net beneficiaries before 2014, but the magnitude of the benefits decreased significantly after the introduction of sanctions. This provided Russian agricultural producers with more support arising from the market price differential. All in all, we find no significant evidence of the import ban impact, however after 2014 the cumulative cost paid by consumers in different regions declined significantly due to other factors, leaving consumers in the position of net beneficiaries. Our results demonstrate that despite the economic sanctions are important, they do not affect food security of neither of conflicting parties.
The World Trade Organization and Food Security after the Global Food Crises
New Policy Space in Hard Economic Times, 2014
This chapter examines the emergent global policy space for food security and its implications for understanding the World Trade Organization (WTO) in a changing global landscape. Despite the collapse of Doha Round negotiations in July 2008, the debate over food security and international trade has intensified at the WTO since 2008. This debate has significant implications for the WTO's role as an international institution as it takes on new governance duties such as participating in new global food security governance institutions. We can also observe shifts in the content of inter-state deliberations on food security at the WTO and the appearance of non-traditional policy actors in these deliberations. This includes for example the growing prominence of the human right to food in the new global food security policy consensus and the political contests between the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and the WTO. These developments illustrate conflicting visions about the role of international trade in addressing world hunger that are emblematic of the political contests driving the global policy space for food security.