Food prices soaring
Posted by diedo on April 15, 2008
Well, in the past few days, news on the soaring global food prices has been trickling down towards me through various papers, both on- and offline. Apparently IMF top cat Dominic Strauss-Kahn used the world ‘war’ to describe possible consequences of continuing pressure on the world food market. It made a sufficient impact to make its way through most news outlets in the Netherlands (which is where I am) and on the Internet, but not enough to do so in one day. It slowly became ‘news’, I guess.
Anyway, failing crops, political instability in some countries, increases in growing of biofuel crops and increasing consumption of the Chinese are the most common factors named to explain the phenomenon this year. Oddly enough, no mention is made of already high global population and strains on the food market, nor of any other previous years in the past when food prices were relatively high. Internet outlets that allow comments on the other hand, do quickly clutter with comments on overpopulation or less nuanced comments blaming Africans for their own predicament.
In any case, it still isn’t real news by most standards and this year’s poor food situation has yet to spark any real public debate. If you wish to keep yourself posted, head on out to the IMF website for news on food prices and such. They don’t have an RSS news feed, so I can’t do it for you.
Concerning this blog; WordPress added some new features, so I’ll be able to structure this site in a much more efficient way. Which I will. My first two book reviews are almost done, and I expect to post them this weekend. I also started to write an essay for an essay contest at my university. Hopefully it’ll be better than the competition and I may be able to raise awareness on the topic within my community. I already thought of a titillating (sp?) title to catch attention, hurt some feelings and polarize opinion. Which is what any respectable essay title should do, right? I’ll post it when it’s done, but that’ll be in May or June.
Oh, if you read this, post something. It’ll make me feel better.
agentsmith952 said
Actually, this is making the news over here quite a bit. It was the headline at foxnews.com and the ever popular/scorned drudgereport.com has had several top headlines about it today, particularly this one from the UK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/14/ccview114.xml
Still, you have to ask yourself this: if cropland used for biofuel production and energy costs weren’t uncontrollably soaring, would we be in this position? I would have to argue that this crisis has little to do with there being too many people and everything to do with horrible choices driven by mass hysteria in regards to other topics that can be left for another debate (I actually blogged about that very thing in critiquing an article back in late February). As that article stated, the amoutn of corn needed to fill a 50 liter tank with ethanol could feed a child for a year. We have the means to feed the people of this world. Policy is what’s killing those means.
But, everyone is free to form their own opinion on the matter.
P.S. – I haven’t forgotten about your email to me! A string of circumstances and my general forgetfulness always makes for a bad combination…
Diedo said
The White House made a statement today as well, so right after I posted this today, it made new headlines at major news networks here as well. Still, because of the global nature of this event and delays between consequences, its much more difficult to grab peoples’ attention, notwithstanding gloomy press statements by the IMF, FAO, etc. every few days.
On biofuels; I definitely believe they’re a factor, maybe even a governing factor these coming years, but I believe it only exposes the vulnerability of the global system, but doesn’t cause it.
You know what I find frustrating? There’s simply too much information (and conflicting at that) and it’s hard for me to derive good conclusions for myself. The book I just read by Ehrlich suggested forming circles of concerned friends, each monitoring the topic of their interest and reporting back to the group (e.g. one focuses on biofuels, the other on fertility rates etc.). I thought that was a great idea.
Niek said
“if you read this, post something. It’ll make me feel better.”
Ok I wil:
“You know what I find frustrating? There’s simply too much information (and conflicting at that) and it’s hard for me to derive good conclusions for myself.”
I don’t know much about the phenomenon of overpopulation, but as with any theory: the questions you ask are often more important than the conclusions you draw. Yes, that’s tacky. But true, too. And if nonetheless you feel the irresistible urge to conclude stuff, just state hypotheses and pretend they’re conclusions. If anything, they’ll invite responses. And the more people rack their brain over such a problem, the closer you will come to any kind of truth (even though truth of course has lost all meaning for our (post)postmodernist generation – a term which also has lost all meaning or never had one).
My point? Keep writing!
Pete Murphy said
Diedo, since you do book reviews, I’d like to offer you a free copy of my book. Just send me a shipping address and it’ll be on its way. You won’t be disappointed!
I am the author of “Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America.” I think you may find this book to be very interesting because population density lies at the heart of this new economic theory. To make a long story short, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption of products begins to decline out of the need to conserve space. People who live in crowded conditions simply don’t have enough space to use and store many products. This declining per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty.
For most people who see never-ending population growth as a problem, their concerns are rooted in a concern for the environment. Economists, on the other hand, shrug off such concerns, claiming that man is ingenious enough to overcome any obstacles to population growth. Resources can be used more efficiently and recycled, pollution can be abated, and so on. Making matters worse, they can’t envision how an economy can remain healthy without further population growth. So our government and business leaders hold fast to their “pro growth” approach.
This book, however, finally offers the “ultimate weapon” for environmentalists and anyone concerned about population growth – a solid economic argument for a reduced population. It explains how everyone’s wallet is directly impacted by growth which has become cancerous, driving up unemployment and eroding their finances and quality of life. It’s written in plain language, not economic gibberish, and is aimed at average Americans.
If you’re interested in learning more you can visit my web site at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com. There you can read the preface for free and join in my blog discussio. (The book is also available at Amazon.com.)
Please forgive me for the somewhat “spammish” nature of this reply to your post, but I don’t know how else to inject this new perspective into the debate about overpopulation without drawing attention to the book that explains the theory.
Keep up your efforts to raise concern about this most critical issue!
Pete Murphy
Author, Five Short Blasts
Nathaniel said
I would argue that overpopulation is not an issue. Ethonal may or may no be either.
Right now there is enough food grown worldwide to make every single man, woman, and child overweight. Anything but an indicator that there is a food shortage related to the myth of overpopulation.
For the last several years agricultural development has been decayed or declining in several nations. Mexican farmers make up a number of the rural immigrants seeking to enter the USA (which frequently builds suburbs on former farmland).
The Ukraine was also once the “breadbasket of Europe”. I don’t believe that it is thought of that now yet it still could be farmed. Farms in the Africa and the Caribbean even complain sometimes that western (especially US) produce has been dumped in their market and is putting them out of business.
I think what we could have right now is a system that doesn’t distribute food effectively and the growth in ethonal production serves as a scapegoat. If you look at the years leading up to current ethonal production levels you will find that there has been overproduction of food while hunger has still been present in different parts of the world.