Price Hike? Covering China’s Food Security Strategy

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

Price Hike? Covering China’s Food Security Strategy

This program was hosted by the National Press Foundation with support by the Hinrich Foundation. NPF is solely responsible for the content. 

Global food prices are up 40% over last year, close to the levels during the 2007-2008 food crisis. With one in every six people in the world dependent on international trade for food, China’s massive grain and meat purchases are causing higher food bills and sparking fears of shortages — especially in developing countries. Enter China’s new food security strategy. Panelists addressed China’s revised plans to achieve “absolute” food security and the implications for global food trade. 

Read the takeaways

Guests

Uchechukwu Jarrett

Yeutter Faculty Fellow; Assistant Professor of Practice in Economics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Headshot of Andrea Durkin

Andrea Durkin

Assistant U.S. Trade Representative, WTO and Multilateral Affairs

Durkin is Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for WTO and Multilateral Affairs (WAMA), Ms. Durkin is responsible for trade negotiations and U.S. policy coordination regarding matters before the WTO including the operation of various WTO committees related to subsidies, technical barriers to trade, customs/trade facilitation and other subject areas. As head of WAMA, Ms. Durkin also leads the development of U.S. trade positions in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and other international organizations and intergovernmental forums such as G7 and G20, in coordination with relevant offices in USTR and other U.S. agencies.

Ms. Durkin returns to USTR after nearly two decades in the private sector as an entrepreneur, author and corporate government relations executive. She has served as a non-resident senior fellow and advisor to leading think tanks in Washington, Dallas and Chicago on trade policy, economic growth, and food and agricultural trade. Ms. Durkin proudly taught hundreds of students International Trade and Investment Policy for seventeen years as an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Master of Science in Foreign Service program and served as president of the Women in International Trade association.

Over the span of a decade of previous government service with USTR and the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce, Ms. Durkin led a variety of negotiations that included free trade agreements in the Western Hemisphere, the trade-related aspects of United Nations multilateral environment and public health agreements, and sectoral initiatives in APEC.

Headshot of Joseph Glauber.

Joseph Glauber

Senior Research Fellow, International Food Policy Research Institute; former chief economist, U.S. Department of Agriculture