Food prices are rising worldwide. They’re rioting in Haiti. Also in much of West Africa. British PM Brown puts the blame on biofuels production. So does the head of the World Bank. Is that the whole answer?
Anything we can do about it?
From the third article cited:
So there seem to be multiple causes. I’ve heard that a long drought in Australia is part of the cause, since Australia exports wheat and rice.
Previous thread on an associated topic: [thread=446546]Whatever happened to the Population Bomb?[/thread].
Stranger
Just to expand on that, rising oil prices increase both transportation costs and fertilizer costs.
There was another thread somewhere about the rising price of oil affecting fertilizer prices and someone leapt in and assured us that the price of fertilizer was, in fact, lower than it had ever been (and likely dropping) and that not only was there plenty of food for everyone, there was getting to be so much food that the price of food was falling and would probably continue to fall.
You know, I can’t stay in these threads. Between agonizing about the power of huge corporate agrityrants like Monsanto and Cargill and the folly of growing corn and soybeans for biofuel - and a few other things - I should just go and get quietly drunk and stay that way for the next 50 or 60 years.
But no doubt I will read this thread through the amber liquid in the bottle, and gnash my teeth and stay sober.
If you can. (Hint: What is whisky made from?)
Shoot. You’re right. Well, I better stock up, eh?
It’s definitely incorrect to “blame it on biofuels” rising food prices have multiple causes. Biofules are certainly part of it, definitely part of it. Almost every farm out there is in it to make money, and if a guy can make more money turning his corn into ethanol than he can selling it to be consumed, that’s going to be the natural human decision.
Rising fuel costs are another big part of it. To produce agricultural product you need to power lots of big machines that cut, collect, till, plant, et cetera. Most all of these machines still run on petroleum-based fuel. To get the food from the fields to a processing factory, they have to be transported by vehicles powered by petroleum-based fuel.
So agricultural goods have the cost of transportation just like all goods-and as fuel prices rise, transportation cost rises. Agriculture directly consumes a good bit of fuel just to produce the good initially, though–so it is going to be even more directly influenced by fuel prices. You have to buy fertilizer and fuel to power your tractors and combines.
Finally, China and India are also a big part of it. China isn’t experience a population boom–but it is experience an economic boom. The Chinese are become wealthier over time–still not up to Western standards per capita, but moving up. Wealthier people means people who want to have more variety in their diets–and it has also lead to China consuming more and more food per capita over the past few years. Thirty years ago most of the Chinese got by on a subsistence level, now a huge portion of Chinese society is no longer dirt-poor and they want more than very basic food stuffs.
It is true however, that we have no real problem with “not enough food.” We have a problem with a huge portion of the planet not being able to buy the food that exists, problems distributing it et cetera. We actually easily could feed the entire world, it’s not food production that is insufficient to do this.
It’s certainly not as simple as blaming biofuel production for the world’s food crisis. For starters, in the U.S. at least, corn especially is grown for a LARGE number of non-nutritive uses - think about how much high fructose corn syrup is used in soft drinks, candy, and other things that people don’t need to consume. I hesitate to think that ethanol crops are thus far making as large a dent in the arable land supply, but it’s easy to target ethanol because of the amount of government support it receives as an alternative fuel source. Not that I think ethanol deserves to be let off the hook (I’d much rather we invest time and money in the development of biodiesel from food waste products, or - dare I say it - actually make the personal fuel cell vehicle a viable option), but to lay all the blame on non-post-consumer biofuels seems a bit naive.
There’s no denying the trickle-down effect that oil prices are having on the worldwide economy, and I think this is a big part of the problem. Another problem that always has been, and probably always will be prevalent when considering world hunger, is the effect that local politics and infrastructure have on food distribution and availability. Haiti, for example, has always faced problems of government corruption and inefficiency, and the impoverished majority has always been the segment to suffer as a result. West Africa has suffered its share of civil strife as well, and in the past this HAS exacerbated hunger issues; the Sahel famine of the 1970s, for instance, was not helped by the fact that much of the international aid never reached the afflicted population at all. These are far from being strictly modern issues.
We must be more responsible with how we use our arable land, this is true. However, we cannot simply grow more food, pump it into some international supply, and assume that it will get to the people who need it most. Diligence and government cooperation on local levels are crucial to relief efforts as well, perhaps even more so than just growing an extra ear of corn here or there.
One more factor: the weak dollar is encouraging export to European and other markets. European buyers are bidding up the price (which they can better afford than we, given the relative strength of the Euro).
In short: I blame Bush. The war in Iraq plays a big part in the rise of fuel costs (which also led to the emergence of biofuels) and in the devaluation of the dollar.
My wife watches the Brazilian news (TV Globo). Pasta and bread prices 9in Brazil) have risen 105% in the past 2 months. Corn and rice have risen as well.
This in a country where the currency (the Reale $R) has risen in value (up 40% against the US dollar).
So my guess is that its is a combination:
-high fuel prices
-short harvests
-increased demand for meat: as china and India grow prosperous, its people are buying meat. Animal feeds are based on grain, so the price rises.
In Haiti it’s a case of all of the above combined with the decimation of local food production after import tariffs were removed. This has been happening over the last few years: cheaper imports of staples like rice, beans and chickens displaced locally grown/reared products. Once the local producers were out of the picture, the importers/traders hiked the prices back up again.
Seem to recall the same thing happened in post-invasion Iraq: The neoconservative CPA abolished all tariffs, Cargill flooded the Iraqi market with imported wheat, and domestic producers were driven out of business. (Story here.)