Post-Rhetoric Food
Dwi Andreas Santosa
When speaking at the 2019 Asia-Pacific Security Innovation Summit on April 17-18 in Rotorua, New Zealand, this writer disclosed the importance of food in maintaining the security of a country, as well as its political and regional stability.
Many changes in government and revolution have been triggered by food problems.
A long period of drought from 1845 to 1847 precipitated the great European revolution, known as the Revolutions of 1848. The drought caused food shortages as well as skyrocketing prices that tormented the lives of farmers and the poor. Anger culminated as social unrest, which later evolved into a mass movement against the monarchial system. The revolution that initially broke out in France in February 1848 swept across more than 50 countries and became the most widespread revolution in European history. Even though many factors contributed to the revolution, the food problem was the single most contributing factor.
A century and a half later in 1997, drought caused a decline in Indonesia’s national rice production. The price of rice and other food commodities rose uncontrollably. In an effort o reduce prices, the government imported up to 6.4 million tons of rice in 1998, the largest rice import in history. Minor riots spread and grew in Jakarta. The Soeharto government that had been in power for 32 years came to an end, although Soeharto had garnered 74.5 percent of the vote in 1997 to receive the people’s mandate.
Ten years later in 2007, drought hit Australia and parts of the United States. Australia’s wheat production dropped dramatically and around the same time, the US soybean production recorded the largest decline since 1930. The decline in production in the two food exporting countries shook the world’s food prices. The FAO Food Price Index surged in early 2008 to 222, or 2.2 times greater than in 2004, which triggered riots in 13 countries across Asia, North Africa and the Middle East, and 84 people were killed during the ensuing riots.
Food prices then fell sharply from the second quarter of 2008 until 2009. The Food Price Index then rose again in 2010 until early 2011 due to a decline in wheat production in the states of the Russian Federation and in the US corn production (FAO, 2011).
The Food Price Index jumped to reach its highest point of 240 in February 2011. Greater and more widespread riots, chaos and political instability occurred, mainly in countries with a high dependence on food imports. Tens of thousands of people were killed and prompted regime changes in several countries in North Africa and the Middle East, known as the Arab Spring (Lagi et al., 2011). Its subsequent impact was the creation of the largest wave of refugees since World War II. Millions of people were uprooted and fled to neighboring countries, to Europe and to other developed countries.
The latest food disaster occurred in Sudan at the end of 2018, when the Sudanese government increased the price of bread threefold, which caused mass riots in Khartoum that spread throughout the country. On Dec. 20, 2018, eight people were killed in the riots. The protests continued and the military overthrew the administration of President Omar al-Bashir on April 11, 2019.
Rhetoric on food politics
Food has always been an important focus, both for the community and the Indonesian government. Food also became a “sexy” political commodity, especially during the recently ended election campaign period. A Kompas survey found that food was the most important issue among the majority of respondents (51.8 percent) for the next elected president to solve, more so than infrastructure (15.3 percent), natural resources (12.1 percent), the environment (10.5 percent) or energy (5.5 percent) (Kompas, 2/16/2019). Among food issues, food prices garnered the highest response with 45.5 percent, followed by food availability (30 percent) and food security strategies (8.2 percent).
Promises emerged during the presidential campaign and debates to reduce food prices and on affordable food, despite not knowing how this might be achieved. On the other hand, disclosures were made on increased production, an increase in farmers\' welfare and a decline in imports, although the data and reality said otherwise. Importing food has been a frequent resort simply to fulfill the public demand for affordable food, especially when there is a large disparity in domestic and international food prices.
At the international level, high growth in production occurred once in 1960-2000, when actual food prices fell 50 percent, which caused food agriculture in developing countries to become highly unprofitable. As a result, farmers in developing countries suffered, production stagnated and ultimately led to an increase in food imports. Today, around 70 percent of developing countries are dependent on food imports from developed countries.
The agricultural downturn in developing countries has caused a decline in global food production. If grain production increased 2.0 percent per year in 1970-1990, this figure fell to a mere 1.1 percent in 1990-2007 and continued to fall to less than 1 percent. The decrease in production propelled world food prices to a turning point in 2000, and prices continued to increase to cause global food crises in 2008 and 2011 (World Bank, 1960-present).
Rhetoric on fall in food imports
Food imports was a hot topic in the presidential debates and on social media. When it was announced that corn imports had decreased from 3.5 million tons in 2015 to 180,000 tons in 2018, the mass media and the internet responded immediately and strongly to the inaccuracies in the data that was used. The actual data showed that corn imports decreased to 1.33 million tons in 2016 and to 710,000 tons in 2017, and then increased again in 2018 to 1.15 million tons (2015-2018 export-import database, Agriculture Ministry). The policy on limiting corn imports caused a surge in the import of wheat as a substitute for corn in animal feed, which averaged 2.12 million tons per year in 2016-2018.
What about other food imports? The current government inherited a very large volume of food imports – 18.17 million tons (2014) of 21 commodities in the food crop subsector – from the previous government. Amid the claims of decreasing imports, total food imports actually increased to 22.03 million tons in 2018 (2018 export-import database, Agriculture Ministry). The top seven imported food commodities were rice, corn, wheat, soybeans, cassava, garlic, and peanuts, with a combined volume of more than 200,000 tons per year. The top plantation commodity was sugar, with its annual import volume increasing by 5.67 million tons over the last four years, from 21.95 million tons in 2014 to 27.62 million tons in 2018.
As a result of the transition from imported corn to wheat for animal feed, the total volume of imported wheat jumped to 12.5 million tons in 2017 (Index Mundi, 2019) to make Indonesia the world’s largest wheat importer that year. Indonesia was also the largest sugar importer in the world in 2017-2018 (Statista, 2019) with 4.45 million tons.
Solving the food problem
With such a large volume of food imports, it would not be easy for the current government to resolve the food problem if it wins a second term, even to maintain the current import volume. Solving this problem becomes an even more absurd challenge when placed alongside the ideal of providing affordable food for the people. It is very risky to integrate Indonesia\'s food system with the global food system, as regulated by the World Trade Organization (WTO), to ensure a supply of affordable food. It is almost certaing that food imports will increase and Indonesia will become very vulnerable to international movements on food prices, which could cause political instability.
Maintaining food prices is a solution, even if it is not easy to implement. The too-low prices of some food commodities must be increased to a level that benefits small farmers, even though in economic terms it will reduce social surplus, and consumers will suffer more losses than the surplus producers will gain. Once food prices reach a point that benefits small farmers, these prices must be maintained and adjusted for inflation. Under this condition, farmers will grow more passionate about production, and so food production will increase and imports decrease by default.
Many studies suggest that the relatively high price of food is not what triggers political instability and social unrest, but a sharp increase in food prices within a very short time. Therefore, preventing fluctuating food prices is far more important in maintaining political stability than making an effort to bring down food prices. Finally, the government spent Rp 409 trillion on a variety of food subsidies as well as agriculture and food programs in 2015-2018. This budget was much higher than that of the previous government, and has caused food imports to increase further. This pattern, which has been occurring for almost 40 years, must be overhauled by focusing more on the efforts to improve farmers’ welfare.
If this pattern remains unchanged, the results will certainly be the same. Indonesia is becoming caught in the "food import trap" and is thus becoming more vulnerable to the movement of global food prices and the risk of political instability. One media outlet published “What a humble loaf of bread can tell us about the world politics” (Achoh Tebid, Elle Citoyenne, 2019) during the Sudan food crisis. The opinion piece concluded, “It’s a symbol of economic and political security. That loaf has taken down governments and validated policies. Your bread is a symbol of the crucial fault lines of world politics.”
Dwi Andreas Santosa, Professor, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB); General Chairman, Association of Indonesian Seed Banks and Agricultural Technology (AB2TI); Associate, CORE Indonesia
