Can controlling food prices reduce the percentage of undernourished in a population?

As we travel around the world, we often find that food is more expensive in developed countries. For example, Statista records showed that a Big Mac in Switzerland cost USD7.54, but is only USD1.89, ¼ the price in India. Doesn’t it mean that people in less developed countries have access to cheaper food and thus is able to afford to maintain a nutritious diet? Unfortunately, the truth cannot be further away. Even when food prices are low, people living in less developed countries are mostly earning sufficient income to support their basic needs.

In Asian Development Bank (ADB) paper on Food Prices and Population Health in Developing Countries published in 2013, it was reported that rising food prices pose an harmful effect on the health and nutrition of a population, especially those in developing countries. When people are earning just enough to bring food to the table, rising prices is going to erode their purchasing power and forces them to reduce their quality of food intake.

Other than increasing the prevalence of malnutrition, rising food prices can also lead to many socioeconomic problems. Detailed in an article by non-profit humanitarian website IRIN, food price hikes forces people to take extreme measures to put food on the table. Men may work longer and harder, females may have to work odd jobs at night to supplement income, and children could stop schooling to save on education fees. To exacerbate the problem, people chose to take up riskier, but higher paying jobs, e.g. in gold mining instead of farming which could potentially ease food prices.

Food is our basic need and eradicating hunger is one of the Millennium Development Goals set up by the United Nations (UN). Is the world having the right policies such that countries with have more undernourished people maintains low food prices? Pulling crowd sourced food prices from 8 developing countries, let us examine this question.

Inferring from the visualisation, if Brazil, the only country with negligible percentage of population undernourished is used as a benchmark, it is truly shocking that Kenya, the country with the highest percentage of undernourished has so many common food items priced significantly higher. However, if we were to take one step down to Pakistan, the situation seems much better. Interestingly, similar to Kenya, food prices in Nigeria are relatively high but the country is able to keep the undernourished population low.

Additionally, it must be noted that countries facing relatively high food prices in the sample size, Nigeria and Kenya are in Africa. Rice and potatoes, staples in many countries is a lot cheaper in Indonesia, but the country still fared worse than Nigeria in controlling its undernourished population.

Controlling food prices in a country seemingly does not directly translate to a drop in the number of undernourished. Does the people have access to the food? Are the majority of the food being exported instead? What can be done to the higher food prices in Africa? Would raising the income of the population be a better strategy to reduce hunger?

Tough questions, but they are food for thought.