Reports

Climate change is making extreme weather – like droughts, floods and heat waves – much more likely. As the 2012 drought in the US shows, extreme weather means extreme food prices. Our failure to slash greenhouse gas emissions presents a future of greater food price volatility, with severe consequences for the precarious lives and livelihoods of people in poverty. This research shows how extreme weather events in a single year could bring about price spikes of comparable magnitude to two decades of long-run price rises. It signals the urgent need for a full stress-testing of the global food system in a warming world.

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ib-extreme-weather-extreme-prices-embargo-05092012-en.pdf

As financing for climate change adaptation in developing countries begins to flow, it is essential that the governance of funding at the global and country level be shaped so that the needs of the most vulnerable can be met. The core issue is country-level ownership of adaptation finance. Providers of adaptation finance must put developing countries in the driver’s seat, while the countries themselves must exercise leadership and respond to the needs of those most affected by climate change. Most importantly, civil society and vulnerable communities must be able to steer and hold accountable the way in which adaptation finance is used.

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Owning-adaptation.pdf

Owning-Adaptation-summary.pdf

Futures prices for food staples rise by 50% as droughts hit harvests. The world is battling a record number of food-related emergencies and facing US$4.1bn funding shortfall. Millions of the world’s poorest people will face devastation from today’s rocketing food prices because the global food system is fatally flawed and policy-makers can’t find the courage to fix it. Policy-makers have taken cheap food for granted for nearly 30 years. Those days are gone.

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Media advisory – Food Price Crisis.pdf

Did you know that 90 per cent of the global grain trade is controlled by just four companies? Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus – collectively referred to as “the ABCD companies” – are central to the modern agri-food system. This report considers the ABCDs in relation to several global issues pressing on agriculture: the “financialization” of both commodity trade and agricultural production; the emergence of global competitors to the ABCDs, in particular from Asia; and some of the implications of large-scale industrial biofuels.

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rr-cereal-secrets-grain-traders-agriculture-03082012-en.pdf

Every time you open your fridge and food cupboards, you step into the global food system. Sounds odd, but it’s true. The system is an enormously complex web of all the people, businesses, organisations and governments involved in the production, distribution, sale and consumption of food. Irrespective of who we are, or where we are on the planet, the food we eat is made available by this global food system.

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The Food Transformation final report.pdf