Commentary-
Commentaryâ
Why The Sudden Food Crisis?
By Dennis Keeney
The world has witnessed with concern the sudden increase in food prices and decrease in availability of food staples, especially in low-income, food-short countries.
Rising prices hit hard at the worldâs poorest people, who are spending as much as 80 percent of their income on food. These price increases are sentencing as many as 100 million more people to hunger and poverty. Arrows are being slung back and forth about the cause of the âfood crisis.â Some place the blame on more affluent emerging countries, particularly China and India. Others blame weather disasters, particularly drought in the wheat-growing regions of China and Australia. And now the nation and the world must cope with the disastrous floods hitting the heart of corn and soybean country in the United States.
What is the truth? Will we ever sort out what brought on the âsilent tsunamiâ â a term used recently by World Food Program director Josette Sheeran? One thing is for sure: Itâs doubtful that rising food prices will come back down soon, if ever. In our human way, we want to find reasons and blame those responsible. Let us not forget: At least 35 million Americans (12 million households) were short of food in 2002, even though our food was still cheap compared to prices in Europe.
The basis of the problem lies with us, a society that assumes food comes from a grocery store and that we could easily feed everyone who comes in the door. We believe we can always push the pump handle harder by improving the genetics of our crops, growing on more acres by using land now protected for conservation, increasing irrigation and moving to highly âefficientâ farming methods that rely on nitrogen and other fertilizers, pesticides and genetically engineered crops. But without good weather, these technological fixes wither in the wind. And the challenges are far different in countries struggling to feed their own.
From 1798 to 1826, British economist and demographer Robert Malthus produced a series of essays on the relation between population and food supply. In essence, he said that the rate of population growth would be exponential, while food supply will increase linearly. In other words, sooner or later there will be more people than food. Of course, in 1800 he had no concept of the ability of technology to increase the supply of food, so the âMalthusian hypothesisâ has not yet hit the Earth. But many think it is only a matter of time, while others feel we can still work through this with technology.
Few are ready to talk about the carrying capacity of Earth and whether we are exceeding it. Perhaps the time has come to realize that Earth is close to being stressed beyond its ability to support the people inhabiting it. It is not just the food we grow, but the damage we are causing to the land by over-farming, the addition of pollutants to the atmosphere bringing on rapid climate change, and the now-generation approach that we must have it all. We have not grasped the concept of sustainability.
There are ways to work out of this trap, but the going will be tough. Local foods must be emphasized worldwide. We must find ways for people in poor countries to again grow their own food â and make enough extra to earn a respectable income.
Climate change is with us, so we must learn to address it while finding ways to slow the use of the atmosphere as a common dumping ground. And rather than blaming developing nations that try to be more like us, we should turn our lifestyles around. If the United States can show ways to live sustainably, âmore like usâ will be a more sustainable world.
This lifestyle must include markedly less use of fossil fuels. The wise development of unused natural resources for fuels and materials for a sustainable lifestyle would help take us off the path of peak oil and toxic chemicals.
Even if all goes well, it will be a long climb back to the happy, comfortable world we knew just a few years ago.
For more than 200 years scientists, demographers and policymakers have been dismissing Malthus. Now we must take him seriously.
Â
(Dr Dennis Keeney is a senior fellow, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, headquartered in Minneapolis, is a policy research center committed to creating environmentally and economically sustainable rural communities and regions through sound agriculture and trade policy. For more information, www.iatp.org. )