Presentation at the FAC/IDS food price workshop, February 2012 http://www.future-agricultures.org/events/food-price-volatility

1. What FPV means, why it matters and for whom:
what we have learned from qualitative crisis
monitoring since 2009
Naomi Hossain, Participation Team IDS,
based on work with partners in BRAC Development Institute, Rural Community
Network, SMERU, Oxfam GB, University of Manchester, University of Sussex, and
colleagues and partners in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kenya, Northern Ireland, Jamaica,
Yemen, the UK and Zambia, funded by DFID, Joseph Rowntree Foundation &Oxfam GB
Presentation to Future Agricultures Consortium workshop
Financial Markets and Food Price Volatility
February 6 2012, IDS

2. Qualitative ‘crisis’ monitoring, 2009 -
-Initial aim: to gather evidence of the human impacts of the
FFF ‘crisis’
-Approach 2009-11:
-Selected community ‘listening posts’, repeat visits to 8 since 2009 (2
each in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kenya, Zambia)
- Not only poorest communities
- Qualitative & participatory
- Focus on social impacts (neglected
by quantitative measures)
- From 2012
- 10 countries with Oxfam’s GROW campaign
- sharper FPV focus
- sharper focus on impacts on
informal social protection & Research participants in Notun
unpaid care Bazaar, Dhaka and Bekasi, near
Jakarta

3. Some headline reflections on FPV:
Food price spikes more of a ‘shock’ than the financial crisis
- although second round financial crisis impacts were felt
- & people felt the effects of commodity price falls
Living with FPV is the distinctive new mark of the globalisation
of poverty
The numbers lie because people on low incomes adjust, but poverty
and nutritional estimates ignore
- the decline in people’s wellbeing
- the increased effort needed to provide nourishment - because
this is (mainly women’s) unpaid care work & adjusting to food
crises is just part of women’s natural altruistic instincts ...
FPV has had incredibly powerful effects on popular politics

4. Food
shopping
(recall food basket
method)
Lower right: In 2011, Mrs
Banu’s weekly food shop
contained no lentils or soap,
less tasty fish, but more
2011
rice. The 2011 basket cost
her Tk 185.50 (US$1.56);
February 2010 Dhaka
the same items in 2010
would have cost Tk 134
(US$1.13). But if she had
not adjusted her weekly
food shop, her 2010 food
basket would have cost Tk
280.50 (US$3.85) in 2011 February 2011
Rubber farmers in South Kalimantan
prices. in Indonesia have been enjoying
high rubber prices

5. FPV matters to all, but take particular note of:
The urban poor, who are rapidly growing in number globally
- time to revisit questions of urban bias?
Unpaid workers in the care economy
- what does FPV mean for women’s empowerment?
Informal sector workers
- formal social protection fails this group in particular
Low-paid formal sector workers
- hence all the industrial unrest
Who benefits - ?
- no evidence that small farmers benefit
- widespread popular perception that speculators and
grain dealers do well because they hoard and profiteer

6. Why FPV matters:
Some enduring poverty, nutritional and human development
impacts, more so when prices remain high
But also unmeasured effects of volatility per se: on
-The burden of the unpaid work of nourishing hhs
-Women work longer, harder hours with a range of knock-on effects
-It is only ‘resilience’ because women don’t complain or show up in
the official statistics
- Social cohesion, sociality, social support
- Raised stress levels, loss of pleasure in everyday life
-The sense of social mobility, of making progress
All of which combines to build:
A powerful popular grievance against
Governments that fail to protect people
against food price volatility