To feed the world adequately, let food range free across borders

The UNFAO recently calculated that there were no physical reasons preventing global food production from keeping pace with human population growth. So, with sufficient land and water to feed the extra 2.3 billion mouths expected by 2050, and ever-more efficient farming techniques, why has the number of malnourished people recently increased to more than one billion? Because getting food past government barriers and to those who need it most continues to be a struggle in many developing countries.

The current food scarcity in several East African nations is not caused by drought, climate change or population pressure. Rather, these countries are unable to deal with dry conditions because their governments have continually discouraged investment in agriculture and kept food prices artificially high. They do so by refusing to trade food freely with their neighbors and the rest of the world.

Focusing on food production is meaningless if food cannot be transported and sold freely. The 2006 Horn of Africa famine is a telling example. While crops were abundant in South-West Kenya, people in the North of the country were starving. This is an oft-repeated pattern. Famines, such as the one in Bangladesh in the 1970s, are caused by bad policies.

With weak rule of law and high intervention in the economy, many African countries are hardly investment- or business-friendly environments. But farmers are hit especially hard: overall, African farmers pay 60% more in export taxes than other African businesses. Perversely, many developing countries fight all global trade, with barriers four times higher than in high-income countries.

Export restrictions and bans begin by keeping domestic food prices artificially low, but this is true only for a short while. Farmers soon lose the incentive to grow more, so crop prices rises, both domestically and abroad. This is exactly what has happened in the Ukraine and Argentina, two countries with fertile lands and weather fit for farming.

If Ukrainian farmers were allowed to sell to international customers, they could easily double cereal production and export 50 to 80 million more tons a year — enough to feed 50 million people in China. Argentina could easily produce 30 million more tons of cereal for export every year — if it weren't for steep export taxes.

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