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Jennifer Clapp
Jennifer Clapp examines the key actors and forces that influence global food security and agricultural sustainability. With a focus on the interaction of international politics, economics and policy, she unpacks the complex dynamics of the world food economy.
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The US Food Aid Debate: Major Reform on the Horizon?

April 30, 2013
Jennifer Clapp
US policy makers, lobbyists and development organizations are in throes of debate over the Obama administration’s proposal to reform US food aid. The proposal, incorporated in the President’s 2014 budget, calls for a shift of some $1.4 billion of the food aid budget from Title II of the Food for Peace Act situated in the Farm Bill (and thus part of the US Department of Agriculture budget) to various development and emergency accounts controlled by USAID. It also would allow up to 45% of that shifted budget to be spent on foods purchased locally in developing countries.
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Banks on the Counter Attack in the Food and Finance Debate

February 15, 2013
Jennifer Clapp
Last September, the World Development Movement estimated that Barclays earned some $785-million from financial speculation on food commodities in 2010 and 2011. And last month a new WDM report estimated that Goldman Sachs’ earnings from food price speculation in 2012 were over $400 million.
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Position Limits for Agricultural Commodity Derivatives: Getting Tougher or Tough to Get?

December 5, 2012
Jennifer Clapp
For those following the debate on commodity market speculation and its relationship to food price volatility, these are interesting times. Recent months have seen important developments in both the US and the European Union as regulators seek to reform financial markets in a bid to reduce excessive speculation in agricultural commodities. The regulatory outcomes in these jurisdictions will influence whether we end up in a race to the top or a race to the bottom with respect to the rules that govern financial investment in agricultural commodity derivatives.
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New UN Hunger Numbers No Reason for Complacency

October 16, 2012
Jennifer Clapp
It turns out that the number of hungry people on the planet was not as high as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations originally thought it was. We were told in 2009 that the number of hungry people had surpassed 1 billion. But last week, the organization revised its numbers downward.
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Financialized Agriculture: The New Realm of Social Activism

August 30, 2012
Jennifer Clapp
With food prices already facing upward pressure this summer as the US faces a severe drought, the campaigners have lambasted banks and other financial institutions for seeking to profit from such a volatile situation.
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Not Enough: Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security at the Three Summits

June 27, 2012
Jennifer Clapp
It has been encouraging to see the promotion of an environmentally sustainable approach to agriculture and food security endorsed by three recent high-profile summits: the Rio +20 Conference and the G20 Leaders’ Summit this month, and the G8 Summit last month. But they did not offer up anywhere near the kind of public financial support, or the regulatory framework, required to implement it.
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G20 and Food Security: Keep the Focus on Economic Policy Reform

May 28, 2012
Jennifer Clapp
When the G20 put food security on its agenda for the 2011 Cannes summit, many analysts were initially optimistic. As the world’s leading economies, the G20 has the potential to make important economic policy changes that could help improve access to food for the world’s poorest people.
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The 2012 Food Assistance Convention: Is a Promise Still a Promise?

May 25, 2012
Jennifer Clapp
In late April 2012, the long-anticipated new Food Assistance Convention (FAC) text was finally agreed upon. First negotiated in 1967, the FAC defines global rules for food assistance by major donors. As an international treaty, it is both unique and significant.
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The G20’s Food Security Agenda: Making Positive Change or Passing the Buck?

May 1, 2012
Jennifer Clapp
When it comes to food security and agriculture, the G20 seems to be all too willing to take the credit while passing the buck. It wants to set the agenda on world food security. But it has been reluctant to require the G20 governments themselves to coordinate regulatory changes to address high and rising food prices or put the kind of money needed into agricultural investment in the world’s poorest countries.
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Undernutrition and Overnutrition: Who is Feeding Whom?

March 9, 2012
Jennifer Clapp
Both undernutrition and overnutrition are forms of malnutrition, and both harm human health and impose enormous costs on society. Transnational food corporations are intimately involved both in feeding the overnutrition crisis through their investment in the global snack food industry and in their investment in new food products to treat the crisis of undernutrition.
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