The end of cheap food.

[chimx]

This economist article touches on numerous important issues that relate to the world agricultural economy. It touches on the inefficiency of animal husbandry, as well as the folly of biofuels, but more importantly on government subsidiaries for farmers and the effect this has on the rural poor in different countries.

It is worth a read and I would be interested to hear comments.


http://www.economist.com/images/20071208/CLD454.gif

FOR as long as most people can remember, food has been getting cheaper and farming has been in decline. In 1974-2005 food prices on world markets fell by three-quarters in real terms. Food today is so cheap that the West is battling gluttony even as it scrapes piles of half-eaten leftovers into the bin.

That is why this year's price rise has been so extraordinary. Since the spring, wheat prices have doubled and almost every crop under the sun—maize, milk, oilseeds, you name it—is at or near a peak in nominal terms. The Economist's food-price index is higher today than at any time since it was created in 1845 (see chart). Even in real terms, prices have jumped by 75% since 2005. No doubt farmers will meet higher prices with investment and more production, but dearer food is likely to persist for years (see article). That is because “agflation” is underpinned by long-running changes in diet that accompany the growing wealth of emerging economies—the Chinese consumer who ate 20kg (44lb) of meat in 1985 will scoff over 50kg of the stuff this year. That in turn pushes up demand for grain: it takes 8kg of grain to produce one of beef.

But the rise in prices is also the self-inflicted result of America's reckless ethanol subsidies. This year biofuels will take a third of America's (record) maize harvest. That affects food markets directly: fill up an SUV's fuel tank with ethanol and you have used enough maize to feed a person for a year. And it affects them indirectly, as farmers switch to maize from other crops. The 30m tonnes of extra maize going to ethanol this year amounts to half the fall in the world's overall grain stocks.

Dearer food has the capacity to do enormous good and enormous harm. It will hurt urban consumers, especially in poor countries, by increasing the price of what is already the most expensive item in their household budgets. It will benefit farmers and agricultural communities by increasing the rewards of their labour; in many poor rural places it will boost the most important source of jobs and economic growth.

Although the cost of food is determined by fundamental patterns of demand and supply, the balance between good and ill also depends in part on governments. If politicians do nothing, or the wrong things, the world faces more misery, especially among the urban poor. If they get policy right, they can help increase the wealth of the poorest nations, aid the rural poor, rescue farming from subsidies and neglect—and minimise the harm to the slum-dwellers and landless labourers. So far, the auguries look gloomy.

article continues

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10252015

note: while the economist has superb content on international news, their editorial pieces tend to have an underlying free-market slant. Just be aware of that.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I think it's fucking ridiculous that we're wasting food on fueling our addiction to private motor travel. That mnaize should be used to feed the workforce which should be working to get us out of an oil-based economy.

I mean, a third of the total maize crop on biofuels? Stock farming pales in comparison.

If the Sahara was turned into a breadbasket we might be able to have a viable biofuel economy, but we don't and the result is a criminal waste.

[chimx]

I hadn't realized so much was used, but I always kind of had a suspicion. The fact that a you could feed a person for a year from the tank of VG1917's hummer really puts it into perspective.

[Vanguard1917]

The solution is to free food production and distibution from the market system, something which this Economist editorial clearly can't evisage. Thus it praises the rise in food prices as an 'enormous opportunity', because it can't see beyond the workings of the current system.

Of course, the person who started this thread also does not believe that social transformation is required to end world hunger; he thinks that the problem of world hunger can be solved, or at least alleviated, by everyone in the West turning vegetarian!

[chimx]

Of course, the person who started this thread also does not believe that social transformation is required to end world hunger

Libel.

[Lenin II]

They say the price of food has risen due to ethanol subsidies? It’s fortunate that we are researching biofuels, but for all the wrong reasons and all the wrong ways. We are not doing it for global warming or cleaner air; we are doing it to feed the cosmopolitan chauvinist love for hummers and gas-guzzlers, and the invention of new fuel will do nothing to stop the widespread waste and overproduction.

[Red October]

The solution is to free food production and distibution from the market system, something which this Economist editorial clearly can't evisage. Thus it praises the rise in food prices as an 'enormous opportunity', because it can't see beyond the workings of the current system.

Of course, the person who started this thread also does not believe that social transformation is required to end world hunger; he thinks that the problem of world hunger can be solved, or at least alleviated, by everyone in the West turning vegetarian!


Do you actually own a hummer? If so, why?


Biofuels are a stupid idea. A gallon of corn ethanol takes more energy to produce than it provides. And isn't is also polluting?

[RebelDog]

I wonder how many people know that Indonesia is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world? Well it is, and its down to a practice that can only be described as insanity. Whilst the west gets its 'environmentally friendly' biofuels, and governments claim to be doing something by increasing biofuel uptake, the actual greenhouse gas release using the method below is up to 30 times what it would be if the fossil-fuel equivalent was burned. Another indication that the global free-market is out of control and solving these major problems are beyond the capabilities of capitalism.

Here is a New Scientist editorial from December on the issue:


CARE to hazard a guess which country is the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China? Chances are you didn't think of Indonesia. It is in the big league of global polluters partly because it is destroying its rainforests, but more importantly because it is draining its peat bogs. Newly drained bogs on the island of Sumatra are releasing more carbon dioxide than western cities of a comparable size. Often the bogs are drained to grow palm oil for use as biofuel in Europe. Here's the tragedy: draining a hectare of bog emits 30 times as much carbon dioxide as is saved by burning the biofuel produced from it in place of fossil fuels.


“A newly drained peat bog releases more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than a western city of a comparable size”


Clearly this is madness, but we should have seen it coming. It stems from the fact that the Kyoto protocol addresses some of our interventions in the planet's carbon cycle yet ignores others. For example, Europe is covered by emissions targets, whereas Indonesia and other developing nations are not. Likewise, the protocol is tough on emissions from burning fossil fuels but takes little account of those from natural ecosystems.
Many scientists argued that this made no sense a decade ago when the protocol was being negotiated. Every source of carbon and every sink should be accounted for, they said, precisely to avoid the kind of situation that has arisen in Indonesia. They were ignored because measuring the movement of greenhouse gases between the atmosphere and natural ecosystems is far harder than counting the tonnes of fossil fuels we burn. But since then the science has improved, and it's now clear that carbon sources such as bogs must be accounted for if we're to have any chance of keeping global emissions in check.


Next week there will be a chance to put things right, when signatories to the Kyoto protocol meet on another Indonesian island, Bali, to begin negotiations on the protocol's successor. The Indonesian government plans to use the 12-day meeting to promote the idea that tropical countries should benefit from protecting their natural carbon stores from deforestation and drainage. They could win carbon credits, just as rich nations do for cutting emissions below their Kyoto targets. The idea has received wide backing from both developed and developing nations.
There is something crucial missing, however. Rich nations face penalties if they don't make their targets: they must buy carbon credits to make up any difference. Indonesia's proposal is all carrot and no stick: developing countries that carry on deforesting and draining, or fail to keep fossil fuel emissions in check, will face no penalties. One likely consequence is that the market in carbon credits will be swamped with an oversupply of credits and too few purchasers. Prices would crash and there would be few incentives to avoid emissions of any sort.
There is a way out: make each country responsible for all its carbon emissions, so that targets would be based on a country's total carbon output, industrial as well as natural. Developing countries with large natural carbon sources will say this is unfair, and they have a point. When you account for Indonesia's peat bogs, its per capita carbon emissions are not much below those of European countries, yet most Indonesians are responsible for far less emissions than the average European. Some allowance must be made to ensure that any targets system does not discriminate against poorer countries' development.
Yet for most developing countries, a scheme of credits and penalties based on total per capita emissions would be an incentive, and would help redress a situation in which the world's half-billion richest individuals - just over 7 per cent of the global population - are responsible for half of all carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, while the 3 billion poorest are responsible for just 7 per cent. It could tie in with the recent proposal from German chancellor Angela Merkel that national emissions quotas should eventually be based strictly on population size, with per capita emissions of rich nations falling until they meet the rising emissions of poor nations.
This is not all going to be resolved in Bali. But delegates should have the central message in mind: that to stabilise the climate we need targets that are both fair and tough, and that account for all emissions, whether from a power station or a peat bog. The atmosphere does not discriminate: a tonne of carbon dioxide is bad news whatever its source.
From issue 2632 of New Scientist magazine, 01 December 2007, page 5

[RevSouth]

Do you actually own a hummer? If so, why?


Biofuels are a stupid idea. A gallon of corn ethanol takes more energy to produce than it provides. And isn't is also polluting?

Corn Ethanol is a fucking sham, Red October is exactly right. The ratio of energy input to output in ethanol is something like 1 to 1.3), extremely slim. Crude oil on the other hand is like 1 to a couple thousand. Ethanol subsidies in the U.S. are a product of lobbyists for the agrocorps, ultimately more polluting than oil is.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Personally I think the whole idea of biofuels is not only a sham, but fatally flawed - We are wasting land that could be used to grow food on sustaining an unsustainable transport system, the private motor vehicle.

[Sleeping Dragon]

You could get the energy to distill ethanol from boron to boron nuclear fusion reactions, just use the inertial electrodynamic fusion device of Bussard. The only reason this is not done is it would collapse the world economy. Energy is not that big of a concern in the real world, only the fairy tale world of backwards capitalism. The universe couldn't be conscious of itself if it wasn't highly energetic. Food isn't cheap because the only way they can force people to be obedient is to deny them food and shelter. Ethanol isn't necessarily more polluting than fossil fuels, it's only due to ignorance, though it is polluting in capitalism it could still be used in the future as a convenient way of storing solar energy that would produce no net greenhouse emissions. It's safer to store than hydrogen.

[MarxSchmarx]

Let's not poopoo the biofuel bandwagon.

It's only a matter of time before ethanol is abandoned for algae diesel:
http://oakhavenpc.org/cultivating_algae.htm

The days of corn/maize biofuels are seriously numbered.