Marginal Revolution’s Professor Tyler Cowen explains in the New York Times:
RISING food prices mean hunger for millions and also political unrest, as has already been seen in Haiti, Egypt and Ivory Coast. Yes, more expensive energy and bad weather are partly at fault, but the real question is why adjustment hasn’t been easier. A big problem is that the world doesn’t have enough trade in foodstuffs.
The damage that trade restrictions cause is probably most evident in the case of rice. Although rice is the major foodstuff for about half of the world, it is highly protected and regulated. Only about 5 to 7 percent of the world’s rice production is traded across borders; that’s unusually low for an agricultural commodity.
26 comments ↓
Hmmm - the solution to food shortages is not to just make more food available, it’s to lower significantly the world’s population. Sure, we can create more farmland (for a while, anyway), but farmland is disastrous for ecosystems.
The solution to these food shortages is to completely halt meddling government from its trade obstructionism and its general interfering nature. God forbid we might actually use farmland to grow food, instead of subsidies fuel!
The solution is as Eudaemonion says. If people were just allowed to trade freely, there would be more than enough food for everyone.
There would be more than enough food for the current “everybody” but in a few years’ time more Amazon forest/Murray-Darling water/box-ironbark etcwould have to go to provide for all the new “everybody”s.
Sure, the planet can probably keep providing enough food for “everybody” until there is no non-farmland left, but who wants a planet like that?
Ever wondered why it’s rare to find a national park on flat, well-watered country with good soil?
I’m not sure you’re correct here Antish. European and American farmers are paid NOT to produce anything because of the way world trade operates, and now good farm land is being turned over to bio-fuels, while Indonesia razes its forests not to plant food crops but to grow oil palms. A massive change in the way world trade operates would do a lot to alleviate the food shortage right now, but if the population really reaches an insane 9 billion, nothing will halt the catastrophe.
So what do you propose? Why not sterilise all the picaninnies, eh Antish because they are breeding like rabbits?
Please explain how you stop people breeding.
That’s an easy one Phil. People who have died of starvation are incapable of breeding
Is that true Antish? You want black and brown people to starve to death so you can maintain your lifestyle?
Who cares about national parks when people are starving. They should turn all the national parks into farms.
*sigh* Who said anything about stopping non-whites breeding? I want EVERYONE to seriously slow breeding. Currently the greatest per capita destroyers of the planet are Australians, most of whom are white.
I do agree that more food could be produced by the current amount of farmland, but that will no longer be enough is a generation if unrestrained population growth continues.
Strider, I suspect that you’re being disingenuous, but if you’d read what I wrote you’d notice that practically no Australian national parks are on good food-producing land. It’s already too late for most of the ecosystems (and aboriginal cultures, by the way) of the well-watered, fertile land in Australia. The tropics all over the world are rapidly going the same way.
If land was used to produce staples instead animal farming or cash crop production and you’ll find that there would be more than enough food to go around.
Foreign debt is what causes countries to clear rainforests to grow cash crops or grazing, which ultimately create deserts. Nitrogen run off from cattle farms has destroyed water ways. All the environmental devastation leads people to create national parks, rather than preserve a balanced ecosystem through sustainable development.
All of this demand is coming from developed nations - which China is fast joining. I don’t think the world’s poorest are eating meat or using corn to create biofuels.
I agree, Alplanet. However will it be easier to drastically change the eating habits of the first world, or drastically change the reproductive habits of everyone? It’s a tough call.
One of them has to happen, or goodbye earth.
If the change is in the first world, then there’s still the problem of overpopulation regarding natural resources other than food. It isn’t trade barriers that caused the Asian rhino or the Perisan lion to become extinct, for example.
This article would seem to agree with Eudaemonion
Are We Running Out of Food?
http://mises.org/story/2958
Yes, but it’s a pretty silly article. For example:
“As for Krugman’s last argument, that farmland usable for food is now being used for the growing of biofuel feedstock instead, this is a question mark. In a free market, if there were a shortage of food and if the necessarily associated high prices of food gave that market signal, land used for any other item — biofuel feedstock, car lots, movie theatres, houses, or whatever — would be converted to use for farming.”
That’s precisely what’s happening - shortage of food is driving up prices. Doesn’t bother first-worlders much, does bother third-worlders. If the price of food rose high enough to make it worthwhile turning first-world housing lots into farms, most of the third-world and many in the first world would be long dead.
It’s very simple, Antish.
If food prices rise (for whatever reason), the price signals will lead to more food being grown and more land/property being used to grow food because food becomes a more profitable use than, say, biofuels.
The problem is that the market is distorted by governments who interfere with tariffs, quotas, trade restrictions, etc.
Yes, but I’d much prefer that “more food being grown” (that is, destroying more ecosystems) didn’t happen.
Also, the ‘lag’ between prices rising and these new farms coming on-line doesn’t bother me much (I couldn’t offhand tell you how much a litre of milk or a loaf of bread costs) but it causes hunger or starvation to poor people. An incredibly inefficient way of running the planet.
“However will it be easier to drastically change the eating habits of the first world, or drastically change the reproductive habits of everyone? It’s a tough call.
One of them has to happen, or goodbye earth.”
Merely goodbye most- perhaps all- of the human race and all of quite a few other species too, Antish. There’s no reason to think the earth will be affected; we don’t run it.
Cinna - true. I tend to use ‘earth’ to mean the biosphere rather than the whole thing.
‘…but it causes hunger or starvation to poor people. An incredibly inefficient way of running the planet…’
But subsidies, tariffs, quotas, and trade restrictions are all fine and dandy,right Antish? They do not contribute to hunger for poor people? Its always the evil and capricious market that is the problem.
If you say so. Actually, a lot of the current problem is caused by the evil and capricious OPEC. Higher fuel/fertiliser/hebicide/pesticide prices means higher food prices.
The high oil price has more to do with the WEAKENING of the American dollar and American foreign policy than it has to do with the cartel.
Cartels are bad, however. Very, very bad.
Today’s oil prices would become a pipe dream if it weren’t for our beloved ally Saudi Arabia, who routinely publish hugely inflated oil reserves numbers.
The problem isn’t the amount of reserves in the ground, it’s the amount of oil coming up out of the ground that’s (half of) the issue.
If what JDsg and Anwar say is true then rising oil prices is a great thing because the price signals will lead to better and more efficient ways of pulling the remaining oil out of the ground.
Not just that Randall, it has also lead to the big auto companies finally looking for ways out of this whole by investing in hybrid (short term solution) and research into hydro cell technologies.
Exactly. If you are really scared about peak oil then you should welcome higher oil prices.
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