3005, 2018

How Speculation Contributed to Two World Food Crises

By Sophie Van Hullen|May 30, 2018|Uncategorized|0 comments

The hypothesis that financial speculation was behind soaring food prices in 2007-08 and 2010-11, or at least substantially contributed to it, first surfaced in 2008 when ‘The Accidental Hunt Brothers’ Report by Masters and White (2008) drew a link between institutional investors’ positions in commodity futures markets and the significant and synchronised spike of commodity prices. Prices across commodities almost quadrupled between 2004 and 2008, including prices of key staples

1602, 2018

Political Economy Approaches to Food Regimes

By Sophie Van Hullen|February 16, 2018|Conferences, Talks and Seminars|0 comments

On January 19, 2018 the SOAS Food, Nutrition and Health in Development Research Cluster organises a one-day workshop that brings together topics in contemporary food regime studies examined from a political economy perspective. Topics include inequality and food security, the state and food sovereignty, food regimes and the politics of conflict and financialisation of food and were discussed in four panels covering 11 papers. A full descriptions of the panels

1403, 2017

From Futures Markets to the Farm Gate

By Sophie Van Hullen|March 14, 2017|Reviews|0 comments

A synopsis of a recent article by Dr Hannah Bargawi (SOAS University of London) and Dr Susan Newman (UWE Bristol): From Futures Markets to the Farm Gate: A Study of Price Formation along Tanzania’s Coffee Commodity Chain. Within the social sciences broadly, and within commodities-related research in particular, research has increasingly focused on prices – analysing and evaluating the formation of prices, the transmission of prices, and the impact of prices and price changes

1301, 2017

Inequality and Complexity in Access to Food

By Sophie Van Hullen|January 13, 2017|Conferences|0 comments

FNHD at the DSA Annual Conferences 2016 On Wednesday 14th September 2016 during the Development Studies Association conference held at the University of Oxford, Dr. Deborah Johnston (SOAS, University of London), in collaboration with Nazia Mintz-Habib (University of Cambridge) and Sam Mardell (London International Development Centre) organised a panel on “Inequality and complexity in access to food“. The variety of ways that food can be acquired have been studied by