Food Problems And Prospects In The Middle East

The fourteenth joint edition of the OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook provides market projections for major agricultural commodities, biofuels and fish, as well as a special feature on the prospects and challenges of agriculture and fisheries in the Middle East and North Africa.

Research report on food policy and projections regarding food security and food requirements in the Middle East and North Africa to the year 2000 - examines trends in food production and trade since 1966; foresees increase in regional disparity between food producing countries and labour exporting and petroleum exporting countries, leading to some staple food shortages. Graphs, statistical tables.

Produced by the Professors World Peace Academy, this collection of essays by Middle Eastern scholars and experts examines the problems of a vast, largely arid region where the demand for food far outstrips the productive capacity of the land. The essays are grouped within five sections: water resources, agricultural production, the food production-consumption gap, problems confronting agricultural production, and prospects and potentials for agriculture and food production. Acidic paper. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

"In Oil for Food, Eckart Woertz analyzes the geopolitical implications behind the current investment drive of Arab Gulf countries in food insecure countries like Sudan or Pakistan. Having lived in Dubai for seven years, and drawing on extensive archival sources and interviews, he gives the inside story of how regional food security concerns have developed historically, how domestic agro-lobbies shape policy making, and how the failed attempt to develop Sudan as an Arab bread-basket in the 1970s carries important lessons for today's investments drive." --

As the reality of a food deficit emerged in the Middle East, rural society and the agricultural sector – once viewed as peripheral to national development – swiftly rose up the policy agendas of nearly every Middle East country. This book, first published in 1982, looks at the complex interrelationships of food production, development schemes and politics in those countries. Dr Weinbaum considers the origins, nature, scope and political dimensions of the potential food shortfall and explores how food deficits could lead to changed international relations among states in the Middle East. He specifically examines the physical and technological limitations to increased food production, then assesses the major social, economic and political hurdles in the way of agricultural development, the effects of – and pressures for – agrarian reform, the bureaucratic policymaking process, and the domestic impact of foreign assistance policies. He concludes with an examination of the linkage between food supply availability and political stability.

‘Food Insecurity and Revolution in the Middle East and North Africa’ studies the political economy of agrarian transformation in the eponymous regions. Examining Egypt and Tunisia in detail as case studies, it critiques the dominant tropes of food security offered by the international financial institutions and promotes the importance of small-scale family farming in developing sustainable food sovereignty. Egypt and Tunisia are located in the context of the broader Middle East and broader processes of war, environmental transformation and economic reform. The book contributes to uncovering the historical backdrop and contemporary pressures in the Middle East and North Africa for the uprisings of 2010 and 2011. It also explores the continued failure of post-uprising counter-revolutionary governments to directly address issues of rural development that put the position and role of small farmers centre stage.

This study analyses both the historic trajectories of agricultural development in the Middle East, and how the globalisation of food production has impacted domestic food security and food sovereignty. The volume draws on original research conducted on the causes and consequences of food security in the Middle East at national and regional levels as well as household and individual levels.