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Food Riots, Food Rights and the Politics of Provisions

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Food Riots, Food Rights and the Politics of Provisions ‘We 5 eat what we have, not what we want’ The policy effects of food riots and eating after the 2008 crisis in Cameroon Lauren Sneyd Introduction The global media generally portrayed riots during the 2007-2008 and 2010-2011 periods simplistically, as caused by food price rises in contexts of poverty and hunger ( Sneyd, Legwegoh and Fraser 2013 ). The main policy response across the African continent at that time was to increase staple food imports and make these 'cheap' foods more available to the urban population, which fit the presumptionthat the food crisis hit the urban poor hardest. Writing for AllAfrica, Simon Maxwell (2009) contended that the food crisis hit African cities and urban diets the hardest: Many Africans were hit hard in 2008 by rising food and fuel prices. With diets already stretched, and resources eroded, the numbers below the povertyline will increase, with long-term consequences. Remember, hunger is corrosive of long-term life chances: it undermines the ability to grow, to learn, to stay healthy and to earn. The first to suffer this time will not be rural people, far from the capital city, losing crops and animals, and often children, to the lack of rain. Instead, jobs will be lost in towns, amongst the vocal and educated. There were food riots in Africa last year. And tensionis rising. What were reported as the food riots of 2008 were actually more complex and significantthan riot events, both in their origins and in their impacts on urban hunger( Hossain and Green 2011 ; Mason et al. 2011 ; Sneyd et al. 2013 ). The African media tended to portray the food riots as being caused by a more complex set of factors, including citizen dissatisfaction and people's ability to mobilize ( Sneyd et al. 2013 ). And some researchers argue that the protests across Africa at that time were not food riots at all ( Branch and Mampilly 2015 ). So simply throwing more 'cheap' food at the problem would not touch the simmering, underlying problems that sparked the protests in the first place. An emergent body of work on the food riots of 2007-2008 suggest that the riots were linked to food inaccessibility on the one hand and inequality, poverty 'We eat what we have, not what we want' and the need for better governance and greater equality on the other (Dia Kamgnia 2011 ; Sneyd et al. 2013 ; Berazneva and Lee 2013 ; Dimova and Gbakou 2013; Hossain et al. 2014 ). This is contrary to a commonly held assumption about the causes of food riots. For instance, the authors of the Foresight Report (2011) assume that a food price rise triggers riots regardless of situation and context, and that it is necessary to produce more food to avoid riots in the future. But the realityis more complex: the food price crises have made accessing adequate food and maintaining nutritious diets more difficult for urban dwellers and connects them more deeply to a globalized food system (Pinstrup-Andersen 2010; Legwegoh et al. 2015 ; Clapp and Scrinis 2016 ). During the crisis, it seemed that it was easier to fill people's bellies than tackle a more complex set of factors such as disenfranchisement,marginalization and accessibility. In Cameroon, the distinction was no different. Drawing on interviews in marketsand households in three cities in Cameroon, it was learned that the rice subsidies introduced during the crisis changed people's diets and the local forest food economy in negative ways, replacing traditionally diverse diets with refined white rice-based dishes. The reliance on imported rice creates a vulnerable urban population, especially when world prices for rice remained volatile after 2008 ( Moseley, Carney and Becker 2010 ). The reality of relying on the world market for rice has had a considerable impact on urban dwellers realizing food security and has set the stage for a nutrition transition in this Central African country (L. Sneyd 2013 , 2016b). Methodology and approach Two questions guided this study: What was the impact of the 2008 food riots in Cameroon on food security? What was the long-term impact of the food riots and rice subsidy on people's diets after 2008? To answer her research questions, the author made five field visits to Cameroon from 2010-2013 to conduct urban food security research and to ask questions about the 2008 food riots and impacts on 1 local food economies after the price spikes. During the field visits, over 100 elite interviews were conducted with officials from the Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO), World Food Programme (WFP), the World Bank and the InternationalMonetary Fund and relevant government officials and local researchers. In addition to the in-country fieldwork, the study employed mixed methods, includinga review and analysis of media sources, reports and academic studies. The author also hired a team of 12 local researchers to conduct qualitative interviews with urban food traders and their customers on food security, dietary change and the 2008 unrest. These interviews were primarily managed in urban food markets during the wet and dry seasons in 2012-2013. In total, 409 people were interviewedfor the study. The data collection happened in two phases. In the first phase, 371 interviews were completed; and in phase two, 38 in depth-interviews were completed. The two phases covered 24 markets in three cities - the French-speaking capital and smaller English-speaking cities. See Table 5.1 for markets and number of interviews from the first phase. Lauren Sneyd Table 5.1 Market and number of interviews in Cameroon Country and City Market Name # 1 ntemews (n = 371) Southwest: Buea Soppo/Buea 17 Muea 11 Ekona 6 Mile 4 13 Muyuka Muyuka (formerly Soppo) 16 Mutengene Mutengene 19 Mutengene 2 8 Limbe Limbe 32 Likumba 12 Centre: Yaounde Mokolo 54 Mvog Mbi 37 Nkol Eton 19 Mvog-Betsi 25 Elig-Edjon 29 Essos 37 Biyem-Assi 11 Huitieme 25 The multi-focal approach was adopted to capture 'sounds from the ground' or impressions from people who may have been involved in the unrest, to learn more of the lived experience of the unrest and impacts on household food security.Interview questions ranged from questions about household size, employmentand family assets to questions about household food shopping, what happens when food prices are high and what the households does when there is not enough money to buy food. Also included were questions about the foods that are commonly consumed when food prices are high and questions about the cheapest meal consumed in the household and the most favorite meal. Questions were also asked about what was remembered about the riots of 2008, what foods do you need to feel food secure and happy, and how has your diet changed over time. The quotations from individuals from the markets are not outliers but are representative of the theme under discussion. Accompanying the quotes from the surveys is the market name and the date the quotation was recorded. The author has not changed the quotes, relying on the informants' recorded account. Table 5.2 characterizes the data by age, gender and reported class based on employment, income and assets. The data predominately represents middle class (65 per cent) females (86 per cent) between the ages of 20-40 (54 per cent). The data depicts a variety of occupations, primarily food vendors (~171) on precariousincomes in the informal sector. However, household interviews were also conducted with house cleaners (26), business owners and employees (17) teachers(18), civil servants (12), housewives (12), nurses (7), secretaries (7), students (8), lawyers (4), retirees (4), journalists (2), professors (2), aestheticians (2), hotel industry employees (2), a doctor, a naturopath, a landscaper, a builder, a prison guard, a taxi driver, an accountant, a freelance writer and a decorator. The Table 5.2 Characterization of interview data by age, gender, class Interviews Total # % Interwews Total # % Households Total # % (n = 367) (n = 371) (n = 197) Age < 20 3 0.8 Male 54 14.5 Poor 44 22.6 Age 20-40 197 53.7 Female 317 85.5 Middle 126 64.6 Age 40+ 135 36,8 Rich 16 8.2 No answer 32 8.7 No answer 9 4.6 participants represent a middle class in Cameroon from popular neighbourhoods, where contingent employment, employment in the informal sector, short-term employment as civil servants or seasonal workers on plantations are the norm ( Bernards 2015 ; L. Sneyd 2015 ). The majority of urban dwellers in Cameroon spend more than half of their income on food (from 50-75 per cent). This does not leave much room in the budget for other basic needs (Sneyd 2016a; 2016b). Households in the highest income group spend 25 per cent of their income on food. By contrast, those in the lowest income group spend 66 per cent of their income on food. The households interviewed mentioned various Coping strategies they adopt when food accessibilitychallenges arise. They eat fewer meals, a smaller quantity of food and lower quality food, and consume less diverse diets. When factoring in dependents and household size this study includes over 2,111 individuals. The author makes no claim from this case study that data are representative of the wider populations of these cities or quantitative rates of food insecurity in these cities. Instead, the data represents a snapshot into the lived and daily realities of food provisioning for residents of YaoundéLimbe and Buea. 2 The data from the interviews were organized using dimensions established by Olivier de Schutter, the former UN special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, to better understand the food security situation in Cameroon (see also A. Sneyd, Legwegoh and L. Sneyd [2015] ).
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