The end of cheap food

[flashl]

Rising food prices are a threat to many; they also present the world with an enormous opportunity

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.

A world growing hungry blames us.

[ElboRuum]

1. Just out of curiosity...

...is the government still paying people NOT to grow crops? Just asking.

[flashl]

2. Yes.

Read: The Way We Live Now - You Are What You Grow

[Lasher]

4. Yes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/01/AR2006070100962.html

[Warpy]

5. That's not much of a factor

Rising fuel costs are a big factor, affecting everything from planting and cultivation and harvesting through processing and delivery. Another factor is having to compete with stronger currencies overseas as our foodstuffs start to look attractive priced in cheap dollars. Another factor is drought, affecting growing areas all over the country. It all adds up and food, especially processed food, is becoming more and more expensive.

The lower you eat on the food chain and the closer it is to how it left the field, the cheaper it is, so my advice to everybody out there is to learn how to cook.

[Lasher]

6. All these other factors notwithstanding,

do you think it's a good idea to continue paying people not to grow crops?

[appal_jack]

18. Wow Lasher, your link is a doozie...

Downthread (reply #17) I defend the Conservation Reserve Program's ideals and practices, but after following your link, I see that grain-support payments are now going to subdivision owners who may not even garden, much less farm or protect ecosystem processes on lands too marginal for agriculture. Wow, that's messed-up in the extreme.

-app

[Kolesar]

8. "The Economist" is from Britain where they don't have a deflating currency

...just sayin'...

[NickB79]

10. The CRP land-conservation program is badly misunderstood by non-farmers

In order to enroll land into the CRP program and receive government payments for not farming it, the land must meet several criteria. Top among those is that the land must be marginal and/or highly erodible. Land that is composed of poor, sandy soil, or is located on hillsides, are prime candidates for the CRP. Land that is composed of black soil, on flat land, is generally not eligible for CRP.

Plowing under CRP land would be bad for the environment, and have little effect on food prices. Farmers would have to heavily fertilize marginal land to obtain decent yields, and the extra cost for all that fertilizer has to be passed on down the line to the consumers.

[ElboRuum]

12. Well, clearly that's true in my case...

Thanks for clarifying. Like I said, just asking.

[flashl]

14. The above article makes some interesting points

The smorgasbord of incentives and disincentives built into the farm bill helps decide what happens on nearly half of the private land in America: whether it will be farmed or left wild, whether it will be managed to maximize productivity (and therefore doused with chemicals) or to promote environmental stewardship. The health of the American soil, the purity of its water, the biodiversity and the very look of its landscape owe in no small part to impenetrable titles, programs and formulae buried deep in the farm bill.

...

The fact that the bill is deeply encrusted with incomprehensible jargon and prehensile programs dating back to the 1930s makes it almost impossible for the average legislator to understand the bill should he or she try to, much less the average citizen. It’s doubtful this is an accident.
...

Compared with a bunch of carrots, a package of Twinkies, to take one iconic processed foodlike substance as an example, is a highly complicated, high-tech piece of manufacture, involving no fewer than 39 ingredients, many themselves elaborately manufactured, as well as the packaging and a hefty marketing budget. So how can the supermarket possibly sell a pair of these synthetic cream-filled pseudocakes for less than a bunch of roots?

...

For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system — indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world’s food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the Twinkie, the farm bill as currently written offers a lot more support to the cake than to the root. Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades — indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning — U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy.

[MuseRider]

13. Thank you.

It has never been understood by non farmers, you explained it well. Can you imagine tilling up some of that sandy ground out on the flat prairie?

[maxsolomon]

3. it still looks wierd when corn is called maize

how conveinient that food & energy are not included in inflation calcs.

its just going to get worse as fuel gets more expensive. food is delivered in trucks. at some point, we'll have to prioritize: do you want to drive to work, or eat fresh food?

[eleny]

7. Time to plan a garden for next summer

[Javaman]

9. plan one for the spring. :) why wait. lol nt

[eleny]

11. Here in Colorado I don't plant until first week of June

Our nights can be too chilly before then. But I've had some great gardens planted late, nevertheless. I just get the biggest tomato plants I can find, usually runts that others leave on the table, and enjoy a bounty.

We took out some old roses and that's going to be a perfect spot in full sun and next to an irrigation ditch for tomatoes, some zukes, green beans and other fast growers. Given the cost of things grown far away, the weekly farmer's markets should be the best produce shopping.

Have you ever made zucchini relish? That's some great stuff!

[chaska]

15. I'm looking into raising rabbits....

and of course will be planting a garden in the spring.

And of course the ever popular Raising Catfish in a Barrel. http://www.kurtsaxon.com/foods007.htm

[Mike03]

16. Ethanol makes no sense. The message seems to be getting

disseminated, though, which is good.

It's never too late to stock up on non-perishables. If they seem costly now, wait for a year. People usually laugh at me for making this suggestion, but I think it's wise to have about a year's worth of food and water stored somewhere. Most likely, that is far more than necessary, but it gives you some leeway to help your neighbors, family and friends. It's a safety net.

[appal_jack]

17. k&r and also a spotlight on some neoliberal nonsense

From later in the article:

"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.

(snip)

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."

The Economist author(s) makes some good points about the inadequacies of CURRENT farm subsidies in the US (and to a lesser extent, Europe), but it's far too broad a brush to paint ANY possible farm subsidies as failures using the above examples.

Farmers grow food (and other ag. products) for revenue. Subsidizing individual ag. products probably does not make sense, short of any type of possible future mass-famine that requires grain production to rapidly step-up. I certainly agree that recent US farm policies have caused an over-production of corn & soy (resulting in obesity from HFCS {high fructose corn syrup}, CAFO's {Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations: i.e.- factory animal farms}, pollution, erosion, etc.).

However, GOOD farmers do a lot more than grow & sell ag. products. They preserve open space, run hedgerows on their field borders (minimizing erosion and creating wildlife habitat), and grow cover-crops in the off-seasons (protecting & building soils, and also protecting water supplies). At present, these good farmers are adopting these practices primarily due to their own senses of stewardship and responsibility. I firmly believe that farmers need MORE subsidies to create further incentives supporting these practices.

The quote "Increasing productivity means you need fewer farmers, which steadily drives the least efficient off the land. Even a vast subsidy cannot reverse that." Nonsense! As Wendell Berry has eloquently stated, we NEED more "eyes per acre," watching out for, and protecting the ecological processes that sustain both the farms themselves and the larger society around them. The problem is not with farm subsidies per se, but that US farm policy since World War 2 has been to drive farmers off land, and support corporate consolidation. Farming is applied ecology, and US farm policy of the last 50 years has supported a particularly ugly form of ecological totalitarianism (i.e.- mass monocropping, CAFO's, etc.).

The Doha-round, WTO-style ag. reforms proposed by the Economist are a recipe for further ecological and social disaster, in the industrialized and developing worlds alike.

-app

PS- the CRP program is one nice exception to the general trend of recent US farm policy. Although some critics harp on the "paying farmers to not grow food" angle, Nickb79's points upthread about its benefits are entirely true.

EDITED for clarity & grammar.

[appal_jack]

19. kicking one more time...

...because the 'end of cheap food' will affect us all. It may indeed become another factor in a possible agrarian small-farm revival. On the other hand, it may impoverish many of us. How it plays out will be largely determined by the actions of thoughtful people (like many DU'ers), both rural and urban, in the near future.

PAY ATTENTION, people.

:rant:

-app

[appal_jack]

22. FINE, don't none of y'all pay attention...

Nothing to see here. Just massive changes in the way we grow, distribute, and eat FOOD. More important to slander the other candidates' campaigns, or wring your hands about security guards in CO.

But just so you know, I'll post some of my future price-list here:

Organic Summer Squash:
Neighbors - barter or $2 per lb
DU'ers who couldn't be bothered with food/energy issues in 2007 - $500 per lb.
People who voted for * in 2004 - $75,000 per lb.

Organic Garlic:
Neighbors - barter or $10 per lb
DU'ers who couldn't be bothered with food/energy issues in 2007 - $900 per lb.
People who voted for * in 2004 - $375,000 per lb.

Organic Kale:
Neighbors - barter or $7 per lb
DU'ers who couldn't be bothered with food/energy issues in 2007 - $700 per lb.
People who voted for * in 2004 - $150,000 per lb.

-app

[Chemical Bill]

20. Are they saying...

that ethanol production is undesirable compared to meat production? If everybody gave up eating meat, we wouldn't lack for corn. Perhaps we are short of high fructose corn syrup, so we need to drink less Pepsi?

I for one support ethanol, simply because most of the energy used to make it comes from sources other than oil. While we kill people in Iraq, I support any alternative.

If the corporate media really cared about hungry people they wouldn't support unbridled capitalism. Don't buy their spin.

Bill

[NashVegas]

21. On the Bright Side

Organic dairy prices have remained stable, where I am. Most of the organic produce I buy has remained *relatively* stable. Meanwhile, at the conventional grocers, my favorite Mexican salsa's price has increased by almost 75%.