Wanted: institutions for balancing global food and energy markets

Abstract The increasing demand for biomass for energy use is further escalating existing food security risks. Managing these risks is a task for global institutions. These should ensure timely investment in the world’s capacity for producing biomass and balance the use of this biomass for foods and...
Ausführliche Beschreibung

Abstract The increasing demand for biomass for energy use is further escalating existing food security risks. Managing these risks is a task for global institutions. These should ensure timely investment in the world’s capacity for producing biomass and balance the use of this biomass for foods and for non-foods. To achieve this, institutional arrangements for global food markets must fulfil two important goals: reduce the short-term price instability of food markets and prevent a structural scarcity of food in the long term. This paper analyses how agro-food markets, energy markets and biofuel markets are currently regulated. As this regulation is ill-suited to manage food price instabilities and balance food and non-food use of biomass, new institutions need to be put in place. A coordinated system of global commodity management — not unlike the Commodity Control Organization proposed by Keynes for the post-WWII era — is proposed to deal with these coming challenges. Ausführliche Beschreibung