Food access and injustice. Revisiting the controversy over the 2008 food crisis in light of 2022

ABSTRACT

At the beginning of the 21st century, the agri-food sector entered a cycle of rising prices with frequent food crises. We critically approach the explanations for the 2008 and 2021/22 crises in order to expose the dynamics between medium- and short-term trends that underlie them. We consider the main factors that contribute to the explanation and expose the link between the low productivity of agricultural work, the increase in costs associated with hydrocarbons and the demand for biofuels as the combination that centrally accounts for the process underlying both episodes. We observe that certain disruptive factors in world trade such as the COVID-19 pandemic or the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, as well as climatic complications, can induce abrupt price increases when interacting with the aforementioned medium-term causes.