8 Ways to Fix the Global Food Crisis

Farming in the Sauri Millennium village in Kisumu, Kenya. Rural financing programs have allowed small farmers to support themselves.

Corn used for ethanol.

Corn growers vigorously dispute that ethanol has been more than a minor factor in the food price rise. Indeed, they have been producing plenty more corn—enough to devote 44 percent more bushels to ethanol while increasing corn exports 11 percent and keeping bushels devoted to feed and food about level in 2007. But many economists say that with so much of the corn crop now devoted to ethanol—23 percent, compared with 7 percent in 2001—the price of corn is following the price of oil upward. Since grains are substituted all over the world, they say corn's rise has indirectly contributed to the rise of other grains.

But the corn ethanol lobby makes a key point: "The crises the world is facing today—food, economic, or environmental—all have a common denominator: the ever tightening world oil market," says Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association. That's why some are calling for greater investment in the next generation of biofuels—those made from nonedible sources such as grass, timber waste, and even algae. The U.S. Department of Energy, cofunding several plants that aim to produce this "cellulosic ethanol," predicts commercial production in 2012.

Improve Food Aid

wrenching photographs of emaciated children. Money to help them. Most Americans, if they think at all about food aid, know the basics but probably don't ever consider the logistics of how aid is collected, transported, and distributed. Nearly all foreignbound food aid given out by the United States—some $2 billion annually—comes from the surpluses of American crops; that's what Congress requires. Typically, the surplus commodities are purchased by the U.S. government, loaded onto U.S. carriers, and shipped to an intermediate destination, often thousands of miles away. There the food is handed over to a humanitarian agency, which transports it to its final location and sells it at a greatly reduced price or gives it away.

Many aid organizations, however, have begun to view this process as inefficient or counterproductive. Shipping Texas-grown sorghum to an African refugee camp can take five to six months and can incur substantial fuel costs. Says the charity Oxfam America: "While America provides half of the world's food aid, this generosity is undermined by legal restrictions and bureaucracy, as food aid must be purchased in the U.S. and transported on U.S.-flagged ships." And because of budget rules, even if Congress authorizes the $770 million of emergency food aid just requested by President Bush, the money won't be available until October, when the new fiscal year begins.

Worse, some agencies fear that developing economies are being hurt long term by the unintended consequences of U.S. aid policy. The prolonged presence of American commodities in struggling countries, they argue, overwhelms local markets and drives down prices, making local farmers less likely to expand production and improve yields. In part for that reason, care, one of the world's largest charities, announced it would begin phasing out U.S. government financing.

A better form of aid, some experts say, would be not food but money to buy it. Cash, says World Food Program spokesperson Jennifer Parmelee, "enables us to purchase closer to the area in which we want to deliver the food, which means it will be at a lower price, it will cost less to transport it, and it gets there faster."

Many agencies feel that such a change would best serve the hungry. Congress, however, has preferred aid policies that help constituents in the Farm Belt states sell off their surpluses. The Bush administration has proposed that American aid agencies buy up to a quarter of their food from regions located closer to areas of need, but lawmakers would most likely approve only a fraction of that amount.

Produce Higher Yields

The average African farmer uses one tenth as much fertilizer as her westernized counterpart. She—most are female—applies little or no pesticide or fungicide to her crops, and her soil has been so overtilled that her annual yields are woefully puny.