Video: The causes of the global food crisis

Philip McMichael on the causes of the global food crisis

24 August 2012

Philip McMichael

The global food crisis seems the result of moving to increasingly unsustainable, simplified and industrialised agriculture, neoliberal foodspeculation and landgrabbing.

About Philip McMichael

Professor of Development Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Research examines capitalist modernity through the lens of agrarian questions, food regimes, agrarian/food sovereignty movements, and most recently the implications for food systems of agrofuels and land grabbing. He is author/editor of numerous books (including Biofuels, Land and Agrarian Change, Routledge 2011, co-edited with Jun Borras and Ian Scoones), and articles (including ‘The land grab and corporate food regime restructuring’, Journal of Peasant Studies 2012).

Recent publications from Agrarian Justice

A Landmark Victory for Justice: Biowatch’s Battle with the South African State and Monsanto Published by Biowatch South Africa, this is a book about access to information, the right to know, and action in the public’s interest – a must-read for anyone campaigning for environmental or social justice.	The right to say no As European Union (EU) member states consider the implications of environmentally risky shale gas development (fracking), negotiations are underway for a controversial EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) which would grant investors the right to challenge governments’ decision to ban and regulate fracking.
Land concentration, land grabbing and people’s struggles in Europe Land grabbing is widely assumed to be happening only in the global South, but an in-depth analysis by a team of researchers shows that land grabbing is also expanding into Europe.	Sons and Daughters of the Earth In the face of violent dispossession and incorporation into an exploitative labor regime, indigenous peasant families in northern Guatemala are struggling to access land and defend their resources as the basis of their collective identity.