Buy essay on “The Politics of Hunger” by Paul Collier

The article under consideration is entitled “The Politics of Hunger: How Illusion and Greed Fan the Food Crisis” and written by Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University and includes five parts structurally divided by subheadings, the first part serving an introduction of the issue and the final one drawing a detailed conclusion.
The work generally embraces a wide range of questions within the issue of the global food crisis and food security. It logically and consistently describes the history of the issue and its present-day features as well as paints a picture of obstacles, findings and recommendations in tackling the issues of the present-day food system imperfection. Paul Collier draws parallel between the impact of food prices’ increase on the US and Europe and its shocking influence on the developing countries where continuous riots take place. From here on the scholars starts defending the view-point that the current policies of the industrialized countries, including beggar-thy-neighbor restrictions, will result in aggravating the situation.
The scholar from the very beginning attracts attention to the scale of the issue under consideration and in the course of the work gives convincing arguments on the significance of well-established policies that are economically and politically beneficial on the global scale, expanding of large commercial farms, GM-crop ban cancellation and giving up America’s romantic idea on growing its own fuel making ethanol or other biofuels from American grain in particular. The author emphasizes the challenge trying to find the root causes the of the situation and claims that it rests on the political difficulty of confronting the lobbying interests and illusions rather than technical difficulty.
Collier views the root cause of high food prices in the rapid economic growth of Asia that considerably increases the world’s demand for food. Analyzing the food crisis of the recent years, Collier sees its direct connection to the poor farmers’ inability to integrate into the global markets, therefore peasant agriculture remains vulnerable to global food shortages, peasants unwillingly do the job and their number diminishes. On the other hand, crowded in slums urban poor are also exposed to hunger that provokes riots all the time. Thereupon the scholar touches upon the problem of heredity, as he describes the children’s malnourishment that may lead to “tomorrow’s nightmare for the developing world”.
The scholar attempted at considering the problem from different angles and the main point lied not only in informing the readers of the role of the great powers in the process of food crisis combating and present-day agricultural issues, but generally in discussing the challenges and at once suggesting possible reasonable solutions for each point, the obstacles to food system’s efficient functioning and providing the recommendations that may contribute to finding better solutions to adapt modern agriculture to fast-changing conditions. The scholar keenly gives the Brazilian model of successful commercial agriculture as an example and trying to be objective and unbiased he shows not only the benefits of commercial agriculture with GM-technologies implementation but also its drawbacks.
Collier calls for actions, he urges to agonize over the priorities and draws a persuasive trustworthy conclusion on the necessity to root out the populism that blocks the policies needed to address the food crisis. The scholar logically presents the convincing arguments substantiated with latest data on world hunger and insisting on shattering romantic illusions, so that readers will not remain indifferent to the ideas he considers fruitful on the way to shaping a just food system worldwide.

 
Works Cited
Collier, Paul. “The Politics of Hunger: How Illusion and Greed Fan the Food Crisis”, Foreign Affairs, 87 (6). 66-79.