Rising prices signal food crisis

 IN Western Highlands, home to the biggest owners of PNG’s land public transport system, a rather rude awakening happened last week.

Following a number of surges in fuel prices at the pumps, public motor vehicle owners suddenly saw their worst fears being realised: their overheads went far beyond their daily takings. The lucrative PMV business was no longer viable at the fares they were charging.

Through the week, the PMV owners vented their anger on the travelling public. They begged to increase the fares and, when they were flatly refused, the buses simply parked at the side of the roads and refused to budge.

That was the start. 

Soon, this will be a familiar sight in many towns in Papua New Guinea.

Oil and gasoline prices around the world are being squeezed higher by a combination of tight supplies and increasing demand. Oil wells in Mexico, one of the world’s big suppliers after the Middle East, are drying up. Exploration in the Gulf of Mexico has come to a stop following the deep water oil leak. The Middle East supplies are fraught with the geo-political turmoil that is sweeping through the region.

At the same time, China and India’s energy guzzling industries are sucking up every available oil source from around the globe. Demand has overtaken supply.

As a producer of oil, albeit a minor one, PNG can benefit immensely from the increasing price for Kutubu sweet crude but, as a net importer of gasoline, consumers will pay dearly for diesel, petrol and kerosene.

This is bad enough, but it does not affect the bulk of the population. The worst is yet to come. The prices of ordinary foodstuff are going through the roof. 

Population growth, rising affluence in countries like India and China which, together, contain a third of the world’s population and the use of grains and other food products for bio-fuels to feed cars and machines, rather than humans, is taking a heavy toll on the world’s ability to provide food for all the world’s six billion mouths.

Because PNG is heavily dependent on imported food items, including its staple foods like rice, wheat and flour, it is going to be hit where it hurts the most, in the stomach.

On top of this, climate-related weather phenomenon, such as the massive drought predicted for this year and next year, will impact heaviest upon PNG because the bulk of its population still live off the land.

The trend is clear. Whether triggered by world’s excessive demand for scarce commodities or whether triggered by the warming climate which, itself, was caused by human greed in the first place, the world is heading for trouble with the capital “T”.

What’s not clear to many is what to do about it.

It is time to take action.

It is as simple as this. There is no need to call in an army of economists, agronomists or even scientists to strategise for us.

PNG has to live within its means and to make best use of what it has.

Instead of cars, buy a bicycle or a motorcycle or walk, if you can. We have been doing it for generations, anyway.

There is more than enough food. 

If all the governors of the five highlands provinces get together and put in K10 million each to subsidise transport costs to bring in potatoes, sweet potatoes, bananas and vegetables from the highlands to coastal townships, there would be enough local food at affordable prices all year round.

If Morobe puts in money to ensure taro was supplied to those without taro and Milne Bay did the same with yam and the two Sepiks, Western and Gulf exported sago to the rest of PNG, there would be enough food and enough variety – if a little heavy of starch.

There is food security but Papua New Guineans have not gone around to managing it well. There are ways to store perishable products for months and they can be. 

Notice we are not recommending planting of plantations of food crops. There is enough grown in the country. Six million is not a huge population, certainly not as large as any of the big countries in the region.

The savings in food import bill can be used to subsidise transport and refrigeration. One thing we have plenty of is land and, in a nation where there is excess land, it is a tragedy of the first order to be importing food or to face starvation because the imported food bill is too high.