A Global Food Security Game was held November 9–10, 2015 in Washington, DC. Players with considerable influence and deep expertise in agriculture, trade and economics, climate and the environment, diplomacy, and security represented national and international governing bodies and organizations and the private sector. During the game, players encountered a decade marked by food price and supply swings amidst burgeoning population growth, rapid urbanization, severe weather events, and social unrest. Recognizing their influence over global conditions, players took action—and, in the process, shaped the world.
The game’s dynamic design allowed players to experience a chain reaction of consequences resulting from their choices.
The game was set between the years 2020 and 2030, a period that was near enough to be familiar, but distant enough to allow players to focus beyond current policy debates. The longitudinal nature of the game presented players with the opportunity to realize the impacts of their choices in the context of the environment-food- stability nexus. The players were organized into eight teams. Six of the teams represented Brazil, China, the European Union (EU), India, the United States, and Continental Africa. The seventh team represented Business and Investors, and the eighth team represented Multilateral Institutions (e.g., World Bank, United Nations, Non-Governmental Organizations). The interests of and events in other key regions, such as the Middle East and Central Asia, were represented within the underlying background scenario and through events that emerged as the game proceeded.
Prior to game conduct, players received background information relevant to each team’s unique geographic and climatic situation, national security issues, and economic and political status. Based on this information and the evolving state of the world—driven to a large extent by their own actions—players confronted a variety of significant decisions and tradeoffs. Teams were afforded the ability to employ national, bilateral, and/or broadly cooperative approaches to addressing the world’s growing food security challenges. Based on team actions and external stresses, a panel of experts (the “Adjudication Cell”), relying on qualitative and quantitative judgment, updated the state of the world to illustrate for players the results of their combined actions. The game proceeded in this manner over four rounds until the scenario advanced roughly ten years.
The press release of the event was published on the Big Ag corporation Cargill website and revealed that the food shortage simulation that the decade between 2020 and 2030 would see two major food crises. During this time, prices would rise 400% of the long-term average, there would be a number of climate-related weather events, governments would be toppled in Ukraine and Pakistan, and famine would force refugees from Myanmar, Chad, Sudan, and Bangladesh.
The solution the ruling classes came up with was more theft. They intend to steal more from everyone after causing the food shortages. In the simulation, one governmental solution was a tax on meat and another “solution” was a global carbon tax.
On Monday and Tuesday, 65 international policymakers, academics, business and thought leaders gathered at the World Wildlife Fund’s headquarters in Washington DC to game out how the world would respond to a future food crisis.
The game took the players from the year 2020 to 2030. As it was projected, the decade brought two major food crises, with prices approaching 400 percent of the long term average; a raft of climate-related extreme weather events; governments toppling in Pakistan and Ukraine; and famine and refugee crises in Bangladesh, Myanmar, Chad and Sudan.
Climate, hunger, civil unrest and spiking food prices came together at the Food Chain Reaction game in Washington DC this week. Cooperation mostly won the day. Along with WWF, the Center for American Progress and the Center for Naval Analyses, Cargill was one of Food Chain Reaction’s organizers. The company was represented in the game by Corporate Vice President Joe Stone.
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Over two days, the players – divided into teams for Africa, Brazil, China, the EU, India, the U.S., international business and investors, and multilateral institutions – crafted their policy responses as delegations engaged in intensive negotiations. -Cargill
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