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I've noticed that most writers, even Lester Brown,
tend to put everything in terms of grain, even though most state-of-the-art
nutrition advice contains little grain. I'm wondering how long it
will take to get some attention to "what-if" many people move to vegetables +
(small amounts of) grass-fed animal protein. Seems like that's a much
healthier diet, as well as more sustainable. It's a shift I've made in the
last year, and I don't feel like I'm "missing" anything.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2008 11:47
AM
Subject: [Livingontheland] The end of
cheap food
The end of cheap food
>From The Economist print
edition
Rising food prices are a threat to many; they also present the
world with an enormous opportunity
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10252015
Dec
6th 2007
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.
In the
trough
That, at least, is the lesson of half a century of food policy.
Whatever the supposed threat-the lack of food security, rural poverty,
environmental stewardship-the world seems to have only one solution:
government intervention. Most of the subsidies and trade barriers have come at
a huge cost. The trillions of dollars spent supporting farmers in rich
countries have led to higher taxes, worse food, intensively farmed
monocultures, overproduction and world prices that wreck the lives of poor
farmers in the emerging markets. And for what? Despite the help, plenty of
Western farmers have been beset by poverty. Increasing productivity means you
need fewer farmers, which steadily drives the least efficient off the land.
Even a vast subsidy cannot reverse that.
With agflation, policy has
reached a new level of self-parody. Take America's supposedly verdant ethanol
subsidies. It is not just that they are supporting a relatively dirty version
of ethanol (far better to import Brazil's sugar-based liquor); they are also
offsetting older grain subsidies that lowered prices by encouraging
overproduction. Intervention multiplies like lies. Now countries such as
Russia and Venezuela have imposed price controls-an aid to consumers-to offset
America's aid to ethanol producers. Meanwhile, high grain prices are
persuading people to clear forests to plant more maize.
Dearer food is
a chance to break this dizzying cycle. Higher market prices make it possible
to reduce subsidies without hurting incomes. A farm bill is now going through
America's Congress. The European Union has promised a root-and-branch review
(not yet reform) of its farm-support scheme. The reforms of the past few
decades have, in fact, grappled with the rich world's farm programmes-but only
timidly. Now comes the chance for politicians to show that they are serious
when they say they want to put agriculture right.
Cutting rich-world
subsidies and trade barriers would help taxpayers; it could revive the stalled
Doha round of world trade talks, boosting the world economy; and, most
important, it would directly help many of the world's poor. In terms of
economic policy, it is hard to think of a greater good.
Where government
help is really needed
Three-quarters of the world's poor live in rural
areas. The depressed world prices created by farm policies over the past few
decades have had a devastating effect. There has been a long-term fall in
investment in farming and the things that sustain it, such as irrigation. The
share of public spending going to agriculture in developing countries has
fallen by half since 1980. Poor countries that used to export food now import
it.
Reducing subsidies in the West would help reverse this. The World
Bank reckons that if you free up agricultural trade, the prices of things poor
countries specialise in (like cotton) would rise and developing countries
would capture the gains by increasing exports. And because farming accounts
for two-thirds of jobs in the poorest countries, it is the most important
contributor to the early stages of economic growth. According to the World
Bank, the really poor get three times as much extra income from an increase in
farm productivity as from the same gain in industry or services. In the long
term, thriving farms and open markets provide a secure food
supply.
However, there is an obvious catch-and one that justifies
government help. High prices have a mixed impact on poverty: they hurt anyone
who loses more from dear food than he gains from a higher income. And that
means over a billion urban consumers (and some landless labourers), many of
whom are politically influential in poor countries. Given the speed of this
year's food-price rises, governments in emerging markets have no alternative
but to try to soften the blow.
Where they can, these governments should
subsidise the incomes of the poor, rather than food itself, because that
minimises price distortions. Where food subsidies are unavoidable, they should
be temporary and targeted on the poor. So far, most government interventions
in the poor world have failed these tests: politicians who seem to think cheap
food part of the natural order of things have slapped on price controls and
export restraints, which hurt farmers and will almost certainly
fail.
Over the past few years, a sense has grown that the rich are
hogging the world's wealth. In poor countries, widening income inequality
takes the form of a gap between city and country: incomes have been rising
faster for urban dwellers than for rural ones. If handled properly, dearer
food is a once-in-a-generation chance to narrow income disparities and to wean
rich farmers from subsidies and help poor ones. The ultimate reward, though,
is not merely theirs: it is to make the world richer and fairer.
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