With soaring temperatures in the summer, a lack of sufficient water sources, and the continuing ramifications of both the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the Middle East and North Africa region – one of the world’s biggest food importers – faces conditions that put the region’s food security in jeopardy. But investment in the agricultural sector and regional cooperation in the field are among the policies that could help counter the problem, according to a new report.
In order to tell whether a country’s food security is endangered, one must contemplate the availability of sufficient, healthy and diverse food for all, says Professor Ayal Kimhi, vice president at the Shoresh Institution for Socioeconomic Research, and a member of the Department of Environmental Economics and Management at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
When looking at food prices, he notes, it is important to consider mainly the price of healthy food, adding that quality and safety of food are key parameters as well.
“When any of those is less than satisfactory, the problem of food insecurity arises,” he told The Media Line.
According to a new report released Wednesday by the Shoresh Institution, the state of food security in Israel is better than in most countries, but “the threats to food security arising from climate change, international conflicts and disruptions in global supply chains require better preparation for the future.”
Kaitlyn Rabe, research director at Mondo Internazionale and Sociological & Political Consultant at MInter Group Ltd, told The Media Line that food price inflation levels are a popular evaluator for food security status, and cites The World Bank’s food inflation heat map to illustrate the delicate situation in the MENA region.
She says that, as of November 2022, the countries in the Middle East with the most severe levels of nominal food inflation are: Lebanon, due to an economic crisis that began in 2019 and was exacerbated by the pandemic and the damage caused by the 2020 Beirut port explosion; Iran, due to economic issues partially caused by international sanctions and underinvestment in the agricultural sector; and Turkey, which is experiencing 85% inflation.
She adds that Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Oman are all also experiencing inflation in food prices, but at more mitigated levels.
This list, she clarifies, does not consider countries such as Yemen and Syria, where data on food inflation is not available. These countries, she adds, “are thus still undoubtedly in the most complex situations in terms of food security.”
According to a World Bank report, the MENA region is exceptionally dependent on food imports, as opposed to relying on local agriculture. The World Bank says that, by September 2021, half of the MENA region’s food was imported, rising to as much as 90% in the Gulf countries. This dependence on imports exposes the region’s food security to being affected by global issues.
In addition to food imports being considered to be potentially dangerous, according to the Shoresh Institution report, climate change also poses a great risk to the region’s local food production, since it “is expected to lead to an increase in temperatures, a decrease in precipitation and, above all, more and more extreme weather events.”
The report adds that the eastern Mediterranean is considered to be one of the regions where the impact of climate change is expected to be the most severe.
As for today, says Rabe, the MENA region faces “underdevelopment of the agricultural sector and lack of investment in agricultural technologies,” which leads to a lack of incentives for producers to stay in the sector. This “creates a vicious cycle of lower production levels – fewer agricultural producers – lower production levels, and so on.” This has already been witnessed in Iran, as people from rural areas moved away from the agricultural sector into cities, she adds.
Rabe cited Israel as a country that is setting a great example for making the most of semi-arid terrain through investments in agricultural technologies, which allowed an overall increase in agricultural production, even though there are fewer people working in the sector.
However, its situation is not optimal. Kimhi says that even though Israel does not currently suffer from food insecurity at the macro-level, healthy food in the country is too expensive for low-income families.
This, he says, is an issue that could have been avoided by the government if it had “changed the price-control policy on basic food items that include many non-healthy foods, better protected agricultural land, invested more in agricultural research and development, done more to encourage sustainable cultivation practices, and stopped encouraging fertility by subsidizing large families.”
There are two policies that should be implemented by the Israeli government in the short run to counter the threat, he says.
One, he said, “is changing the price control policy that encourages poor families to eat non-healthy food such as salt, white flour and white sugar.” The other, he adds, is “to expand the food assistance program that currently serves a small fraction of the food-insecure households.”
Rabe says that in the MENA region as a whole, there was a definite push in the direction of agricultural modernization after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. She adds that such modernization will be essential in the coming years “as climate change leads to less reliable rainfall in the entire Middle East and North Africa area.”
However, Rabe notes that most investments have been made within each country’s own borders, and these investments have only intensified as a large part of the region’s grain supplies were threatened by the conflict in Ukraine.
In terms of multilateral cooperation, she cites the example of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which adopted a joint food supply network to facilitate the movement of food and medical supplies across borders in 2020.
Such initiatives, she said, could lead the MENA region to become more autonomous and modern in terms of agricultural production.