Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 03/2009

The Feeding of the Nine Billion: Global Food Security for the 21st Century

Alex Evans

January 2009

Chatham House

Abstract

Between mid-2007 and mid-2008, the issue of rising global food prices moved to the very forefront of the international political agenda. Tens of millions more people were pushed into hunger and poverty as a result; civil unrest flared up in locations all over the world; over thirty countries introduced export restrictions on food, even as many importing countries attempted to tackle the issue through subsidies and price controls.

This report - a longer follow-up to an April 2008 Chatham House Briefing Paper entitled Rising Food Prices: Drivers and Implications for Development - sets out to look beyond the immediate causes and impacts of the global food price crisis of recent months, towards the medium and longer term.