"The Rich Get Hungrier"

Amartya Sen analyzes the food crisis:

The Rich Get Hungrier, by Amartya Sen, Commentary, NY Times: Will the food crisis that is menacing the lives of millions ease up — or grow worse over time? The answer may be both. The recent rise in food prices has largely been caused by temporary problems like drought in Australia, Ukraine and elsewhere. Though the need for huge rescue operations is urgent, the present acute crisis will eventually end. But underlying it is a basic problem that will only intensify unless we recognize it and try to remedy it.

It is a tale of two peoples. In one version of the story, a country with a lot of poor people suddenly experiences fast economic expansion, but only half of the people share in the new prosperity. The favored ones spend a lot of their new income on food, and unless supply expands very quickly, prices shoot up. The rest of the poor now face higher food prices but no greater income, and begin to starve. Tragedies like this happen repeatedly in the world. ...

There is also a high-tech version of the tale of two peoples. Agricultural crops like corn and soybeans can be used for making ethanol for motor fuel. So the stomachs of the hungry must also compete with fuel tanks.

Misdirected government policy plays a part here... In 2005, the United States Congress began to require widespread use of ethanol in motor fuels. ... Ethanol use does little to prevent global warming and environmental deterioration, and clear-headed policy reforms could be urgently carried out, if American politics would permit it. ...

The global food problem is not being caused by a falling trend in world production, or for that matter in food output per person (this is often asserted without much evidence). It is the result of accelerating demand. However, a demand-induced problem also calls for rapid expansion in food production, which can be done through more global cooperation. ...

What is most challenging is to find effective policies to deal with the consequences of extremely asymmetric expansion of the global economy. Domestic economic reforms are badly needed in many slow-growth countries, but there is also a big need for more global cooperation and assistance. The first task is to understand the nature of the problem.

Comments

[reason]

However, a demand-induced problem also calls for rapid expansion in food production, which can be done through more global cooperation. ...

Raises eyebrows. The rest I think is not particularly controversial.

[Bruce Wilder]

"The first task is to understand the nature of the problem."

Overpopulation? Too much meat?

How about limits on the capacity of the environment to absorb so much methane, so much nitrogen run-off? The collapse of the wild ocean ecology?

[Lafayette]

Punditry is as punditry does – Part 1

Article: The favored ones spend a lot of their new income on food, and unless supply expands very quickly, prices shoot up. The rest of the poor now face higher food prices but no greater income, and begin to starve.

It is relatively facile to take a complex problem and render it simple in order to write an article for Commentary. It is considerably more difficult to take a complex problem and analyze its complexity.

Of course, sitting comfortably in ones study in a small suburban town, it is a considerable luxury to render all complex economic problems simple in order to generate punditry. But, that's just the problem with punditry -- it rarely finds the solution and hits the nail on the head. But, if Cassandras be necessary, the world of punditry is usually willing to oblige ... in spades.

In a few words, talk is cheap .

China has always had a food problem. China will likely always have a food problem. Why? Because despite its enormous size, it does not have all that much arable land -- the mainstay factor in food production. Faced with massive population needs, it is obliged to import. (NB -- So, lets learn this RealPolitik fact regarding China: Don't expect China to interfere with countries upon which it depends for food sources. Uh, like Myanmar ...)

Given this given, China will ALWAYS import foods and those in China who can afford to rise above a primarily carbohydrate diet (that is comparatively cheap) to a protein diet (that is comparatively expensive) will do so.

Once again, we are applying linear foolishness for purposes of generating doomsday scenarios. For instance, it is foolish to believe that China's exports will grow to such proportions as to be able to escalate the larger part of its population out of poverty. We are talking about 1.3 billion Chinese. (Throw in the rest of the Far East and one easily passes the number of 2.5 billion hungry mouths.)

If this will become humanly possible, it will be because China develops and internal Domestic Demand that employs its largely agrarian population. Some do not doubt that China can repeat and exceed Japan's phenomenal growth of the early post-war years. But, can it sustain that growth purely on internal demand? Such an outcome is far from certain.

China's starving people, however, have remained undernourished during the current expansion of the past 15 years, one may note. Instead of running after the prized Olympic Games, to obtain further international legitimacy, China's leadership could have concentrated on its impoverished countryside. Of course, China's leaders today know full well that such a challenge has brought smarter leaders to their knees, such is its complexity.

Deng Xiaoping, the father of Modern China, being one of them. He was confined to his home in his small village by Mao Tsetung, for having failed to solve China's food problem.

Finally, for the moment, advances in genetic transformation of cereal grains have yet to have its impact on the world supply of cereal stocks. The promise is truly enormous in terms of yields and, better yet, the reduction of nasty pesticides that find their way into our water supply.

And seem to affect vision of some pundits. ;^)

[Lafayette]

Punditry is as punditry does – Part 1

Article: The favored ones spend a lot of their new income on food, and unless supply expands very quickly, prices shoot up. The rest of the poor now face higher food prices but no greater income, and begin to starve.

It is relatively facile to take a complex problem and render it simple in order to write an article for Commentary. It is considerably more difficult to take a complex problem and analyze its complexity.

Of course, sitting comfortably in ones study in a small suburban town, it is a considerable luxury to render all complex economic problems simple in order to generate punditry. But, that's just the problem with punditry -- it rarely finds the solution and hits the nail on the head. But, if Cassandras be necessary, the world of punditry is usually willing to oblige ... in spades.

In a few words, talk is cheap .

China has always had a food problem. China will likely always have a food problem. Why? Because despite its enormous size, it does not have all that much arable land -- the mainstay factor in food production. Faced with massive population needs, it is obliged to import. (NB -- So, lets learn this RealPolitik fact regarding China: Don't expect China to interfere with countries upon which it depends for food sources. Uh, like Myanmar ...)

Given this given, China will ALWAYS import foods and those in China who can afford to rise above a primarily carbohydrate diet (that is comparatively cheap) to a protein diet (that is comparatively expensive) will do so.

Once again, we are applying linear foolishness for purposes of generating doomsday scenarios. For instance, it is foolish to believe that China's exports will grow to such proportions as to be able to escalate the larger part of its population out of poverty. We are talking about 1.3 billion Chinese. Throw in the rest of the Far East and one easily passes the number of 2.5 billion hungry mouths.

If this will become humanly possible, it will be because China develops and internal Domestic Demand that employs its largely agrarian population. Some do not doubt that China can repeat and exceed Japan's phenomenal growth of the early post-war years. But, can it sustain that growth purely on internal demand? Such an outcome is far from certain.

China's starving people, however, have remained undernourished during the current expansion of the past 15 years, one may remark. Instead of running after the prized Olympic Games, to obtain further international legitimacy, China's leadership could have concentrated on its impoverished countryside. Of course, China's leaders today know full well that such a challenge has brought smarter leaders to their knees, such is its complexity.

Deng Xiaoping, the father of Modern China, being one of them.

Finally, for the moment, advances in genetic transformation of cereal grains have yet to have its impact on the world supply of cereal stocks. The promise is truly enormous in terms of yields and, better yet, the reduction of nasty pesticides that find their way into our water supply.

And seem to affect vision of some pundits. ;^)

[Lafayette]

Punditry is as punditry does – Part 2

Misdirected government policy plays a part here... In 2005, the United States Congress began to require widespread use of ethanol in motor fuels. ... Ethanol use does little to prevent global warming and environmental deterioration .

Interesting solution - unfortunately to the wrong problem. Yes, take the misguided subsidies away and ethanol production will shift from American farmers to Brazilian farmers (which are more efficient, since they obtain ethanol from sugar cane crops.) But, corn is not the staple of the American diet, wheat is. (Or, why not just plant sugar cane in the south of the US, harvested by Mexican workers. Why is that Mission Impossible? Because it is not immediately Media Telegenic since crops would take a few years to develop?)

Another solution, which goes to the heart of the cereals challenge, may be that if America were to tackle its pandemic obesity problem it could derive substantial results?

Namely, obesity largely depends upon immoderate intake of carbohydrates (and not exercising away the excess calories gathered by Couch Potatoes of all ages.)

For instance:
* Tax carbohydrates that end up in foods prompting people towards more protein foods (soja?),
* Increase the sales tax on all sugar-based foods,
* Forbid the use of TV commercials to sell them,
* Promote a healthy food diet particularly to school children (maybe offering them "pocket money" as an incentive for dieting),
* Institute a discipline of increased Health Care insurance for those who are overweight (by means of programmed inspections) –

Might not these suggestions perhaps reduce America's dependency on cereal/sugar carbohydrates?

[BJ Feng]

More buzzwords, more feel-good phrases, the same old vague calls for "global cooperation and assistance". As if cooperation and assistance were not at all time highs already. In what form? Let me answer for Sen. First, farm subsidies should be eliminated so that poorer countries can have a chance to develop their agricultural sector and generate income through trade. Secondly, assistance should focus on upgrading infrastructure and encouraging local production where possible. The first part is the most important. Many poorer nations don't have the capital or scale to produce food as cheaply as the rich nations with their subsidies. Eliminating these subsidies would go a long way towards encouraging food production.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/28/science/earth/28climate.html?ref=science&pagewanted=print

May 28, 2008

New Climate Report Foresees Big Changes
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The rise in concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human activities is influencing climate patterns and vegetation across the United States and will significantly disrupt water supplies, agriculture, forestry and ecosystems for decades, a new federal report says.

The changes are unfolding in ways that are likely to produce an uneven national map of harms and benefits, according to the report, released Tuesday and posted online at climatescience.gov.

The authors of the report and some independent experts said the main value of its projections was the level of detail and the high confidence in some conclusions. That confidence comes in part from the report's emphasis on the next 25 to 50 years, when shifts in emissions are unlikely to make much of a difference in climate trends.

The report also reflects a recent, significant shift by the Bush administration on climate science. During Mr. Bush's first term, administration officials worked to play down a national assessment of climate effects conducted mainly during the Clinton administration, but released in 2000.

The new report, which includes some findings that are more sobering and definitive than those in the 2000 climate report, holds the signatures of three cabinet secretaries.

According to the report, Western states will face substantial challenges because of growing demand for water and big projected drops in supplies.

From 2040 to 2060, anticipated water flows from rainfall in much of the West are likely to approach a 20 percent decrease in the average from 1901 to 1970, and are likely to be much lower in places like the fast-growing Southwest. In contrast, runoff in much of the Midwest and East is expected to increase that much or more.

Farmers, foresters and ranchers nationwide will face a complicated blend of changes, driven not only by shifting weather patterns but also by the simultaneous spread of nonnative plant and insect pests.

Some invasive grasses, vines and weeds, for example, do better in higher temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations than do crops and preferred livestock forage plants.

Corn and soybean plants are likely to grow and mature faster, but will be more subject to crop failures from spikes in summer temperatures that can prevent pollination, said one of the authors, Jerry L. Hatfield, a plant physiologist with the United States Department of Agriculture, in a conference call with reporters....

[gaddeswarup]

Some of the things which Sen said are in the 1989 Congressional Budget Office Report on Agriculture:
http://www.cbo.gov/publications/bysubject.cfm?cat=17
Excerpts;
"Food security does not imply self-sufficiency at any cost, but having the resources to meet short-term supply disruptions.
....
International trade is a key element of any nation's food security. In general, depending on their specific resource endowment, agriculture-based economies should supply most of their own staple food needs."
"Recent research has found that many developing countries tend to increase their imports of food as their agriculture develops. Two key relationships hold here: advances in agricultural efficiency, often accompanied by greater agricultural output, contribute to overall economic growth and higher incomes; in turn, higher incomes stimulate the demand for food. In many cases, the demand for food grows faster than the supply of food, resulting in greater food imports. These linkages help explain the apparent paradox that impressive gains in agricultural production by developing countries overall have been accompanied by solid growth in their agricultural imports—and notably in their imports of U.S. farm products. The evidence argues strongly that the encouragement of economic growth in developing
countries, including (and in many cases especially) agricultural development makes sense not only from the humanitarian and foreign policy standpoints but also in the narrower terms of U.S. economic interests. These generalizations represent a view now widely held by development economists."

"Like other sectors of the U.S. economy, agriculture depends increasingly on trade with developing countries—that is, the more than 100 countries that have not yet become fully modern and industrialized. Exports of farm products to developing countries have grown fivefold since 1970, representing about 41 percent of all U.S. agricultural exports in 1987. Developing countries buy more than two-thirds of U.S. exports of food grains. Such trade is expected to become even more important in the future."
The report is about 90 pages and seems to be a good primer. The reasons for the remarks in the first quote is that developing countries have to distribute their resources in several sectors. There ia also a lot of discussion in the report about the effects on the poor. The overall thrust seems to be that not all countries should focuss commletely on food security and trade is an important component for overall food security, and is beneficial to US. This is why international co-operation is important but that may be hard to achieve except in times of crises. Note that Japan is now exporting rice that it imported from US for humanitarian reasons (reports from the Center for Global Development).

[evagrius]

"The recent rise in food prices has largely been caused by temporary problems like drought in Australia, Ukraine and elsewhere."

Temporary?

[bakho]

Starvation is a distribution problem. There is plenty of food. Either the people or the food must move. Food is also a storage problem. Most places cycle between plenty and scarcity. Much starvation could be relieved with better food storage practices. This is difficult because it requires cultural changes (education) and "poor people have poor ways". Better storage may require technology that is expensive or unavailable.

People from industrialized urban settings should not be so quick to condemn meat. Feeding excess food to animals in times of plenty and harvesting the animals for food during lean times is a traditional rural mechanism of food storage.

[Stephen Heyer]

bakho: “People from industrialized urban settings should not be so quick to condemn meat. Feeding excess food to animals in times of plenty and harvesting the animals for food during lean times is a traditional rural mechanism of food storage.”

Even more importantly there are very large areas of the world, such as the vast, low rainfall rangelands of Australia that are unsuitable for growing crops, but are quite suitable for rearing large quantities of suitable meat animals. Here in Australia we are even getting the hang of working with the country instead of against it, in other words, quickly moving livestock to areas that have experienced good rain and moving them out of areas that have not.

This is by far the most food productive use of infertile, low rainfall land of this type!

Now, if we can only break with tradition and swap cattle and sheep for the soft footed (does not damage thin, fragile Australian soils) camel with it’s ability to range far and eat rough forage, our dry rangelands can become truly productive. Incidentally, Australia already has a large population of feral camels and we are starting to notice how they thrive in far harsher condition than cattle can tolerate, yet damage the soils and vegetation much less.

[reason]

Steven Heyer...
Not to mention water holes.
By the way I toured the Kimberleys at the end of the dry and noticed that the wild donkeys were thriving while the cattles' ribs were showing. Reason - the donkeys were more mobile and could range further away from water holes. (Similar with camels, kangaroos or emus I imagine).

[reason]

Be that as it may, however, there is no doubt that the preference of chinese for more (mostly grain fed) meat is part of the problem. Marginal extra meat production is mostly grain fed. The same would happen if significant amounts of arable land and water in poor countries were converted from paddies to golf courses. Competition for scarce land resources by the rich potentially means some of the poor starve. Relative price changes are not without consequences.

[hari]

The Nobel Laureate has perhaps lost his marbels, if not, his ability to distinguish between what goes on as domestic agripolitics in emerging markets with population pressure and international cooperation in agri-trade products.

Lafayette has also lost his good logic for puditry - which he condems Sen for.

Commodity prices have been impacted by Fed rate policy as it affects their unit dollar spot price. Start from that global perspective and you'll most likely end up with speculative bubble in commodities as the primary consequence - leveraged by hedge funds, investment banks and their credit financing banking institutions. It's a profitable speculative market!

Of course, agri-sector generally gets secondary priority in emerging markets for reasons known historically - the time lag and efficiency of output from farmgates. Non-agri production sectors attract FDI and govs usually give high policy priority to FDI with technology transfer included.

If policy makers would only understand the strategic concept of self-sufficiency in domestic food production, commodity prices behaviour would reflect a different factor endowment; and current distortions/shifts are clearly a consequence of lack of domestic priority, as far I can see from more than three decades of dealing with trade development, agri commodities in particular.

[Stephen Heyer]

reason: "the donkeys were more mobile and could range further away from water holes. (Similar with camels, kangaroos or emus I imagine)."

Exactly. Kangaroos and emus evolved for this country and camels evolved for similar climatic conditions whereas cattle evolved for, if I remember correctly, temperate broad leaf forests.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed your Kimberleys trip.

[anne]

Stephen Heyer:

Now, if we can only break with tradition and swap cattle and sheep for the soft footed (does not damage thin, fragile Australian soils) camel with it’s ability to range far and eat rough forage, our dry rangelands can become truly productive. Incidentally, Australia already has a large population of feral camels and we are starting to notice how they thrive in far harsher condition than cattle can tolerate, yet damage the soils and vegetation much less.

[Please continue.]

[kharris]

Lafayette,

I think you have misunderstood the impetus for Sen's essay. He is, by reputation, quite sharp enough to fathom the complexity of the problem - to the extent that anyone can. However, the problem has been misrepresented at a popular level in a variety of ways. This essay appears, to me at least, to be an effort to address the popular reader and to undo the harm of earlier misrepresentations. If that is the goal, then writing something that is simple and, at the level of complexity offered, true is a reasonable approach. Like everthing else Sen's essay needs to be read on its own terms to be fairly judged. There is plenty of time for extending the analysis to include greater complexity, but there is no sin in simplifying.

Having read your "complex" analysis, I'm not sure why you bothered to drag out the standard comfy-chair taunt. You have narrowed the view to a single country (simplifying by other means), and mostly gussies up the very point that Sen was making. This seems very much a contrast between general (Sen) and specific (you). The ability to generalize is valuable in any case, but particularly when approaching a popular audience. It is not a fault for Sen to have taken a broader view than the one you prefer.

You also seem to have misunderstood the US food production system. You recognize wheat products on the table, so have concluded that we eat wheat is the staple of the US diet. The distinction between staple and intermediate input is important to understand, because it points out how focusing on what we think of as staples can mislead. A very large part of the fast-food, prepared-food diet includes corn. A very large part of the diet of US-raised beef, pork and chicken is corn-based. The fact that we only see corn in the form of roasting ears and corn chips doesn't mean that corn takes second place to wheat in the US food production effort.

It is not irrelevant that corn ends up in the US diet as Twinkies and burgers, but also as meat and processed food, since corn acreage in the short term (which is what Sen addresses) comes at the expense of beans and wheat, both of which are substitutes for corn in animal feed and to a lesser extent in processed foods.

[Bill Jefferys]

"Agricultural crops like corn and soybeans can be used for making ethanol for motor fuel."

Soybeans can be used to make diesel fuel (from their oil), but not ethanol (no significant sugars to ferment). Just a technical comment; I do not support growing food to put into our fuel tanks.

Used oil can usefully be used for biodiesel after it is no longer useful for food. That's recycling and that's different.

[ddt]

"hari says...

Commodity prices have been impacted by Fed rate policy as it affects their unit dollar spot price. Start from that global perspective and you'll most likely end up with speculative bubble in commodities as the primary consequence - leveraged by hedge funds, investment banks and their credit financing banking institutions. It's a profitable speculative market!"

I don't know how anyone can deny the rampant speculation at this point.

Krugman is wrong to deny the role of speculation in the recent run up. His sole argument is that there are no inventories. The thing is that you can constantly speculate in the futures market by rolling over futures without ever taking possession, yet still drive up prices. I don't understand why Krugman just refuses to recognize this simple fact, as if it were complex.

Here is an excellent pdf of testimony before congress on speculation in the futures market. IMO it's a must read.

Testimony of
Michael W. Masters
Managing Member / Portfolio Manager
Masters Capital Management, LLC
before the
Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
United States Senate
May 20, 2008
http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/052008Masters.pdf

[Francois]

"(NB -- So, lets learn this RealPolitik fact regarding China: Don't expect China to interfere with countries upon which it depends for food sources. Uh, like Myanmar ...)"

Myanmar? A source of food? In the past maybe, when they were the biggest producer of rice per capita in the world. But now?? They IMPORT the stuff, thanks to the incredibly corrupt and vile government they have to endure.

China does not want instability; it is what they fear above anything else.

The only reason Myanmar is of econ interest to China is energy and geopolitics.

[reason]

bakho...
to be honest, I don't know how your comment helps. Yes in a sense this IS a distribution problem. But since when has international redistribution been on the political agenda. I personally think it is time economists decided that treating food (and drinking water) as in the same class as say DVDs (i.e. just another product) is a mistake. The problem is that limitations in relative purchasing power, have much more serious consequences. Land can be used to produce food, or ethanol, or palm oil, or cotton, or wool or just for recreation (or as a reserve to preserve bio-diversity). The costs of such allocation decision are not born evenly. So yes it is a distributional problem, but an especially urgent one.

[hari]

Jamie is arguing today in his (WP) Op-Ed that in the final analysis globalization is the way forward to irradicate global poverty (my summary).

He's actually reviewing a report from Brookings dealing with current debate on globalization. Jamie argues that global poverty is the real issue of our time (I agree); and, inspite of population pressure and whatnot, quantitative leap by emerging (Asian) economies illustrates positive impact of trade liberalization and investments (FDI) to overcome poverty.

[donna]

I feed my excess food to my worms in my worm bin, and then toss them into the garden along with their waste to enrich the soil and improve my garden. Anything the worms can't eat goes into the larger compost bin to decompose along with grass clippings and green waste, and then gets worked back into the garden. If this were practiced on a large scale, we could reduce some of our use of fertilizers and grow a lot more food. My entire yard is now organic and I use no chemical fertilizers. My "arable land" was a foot of top soil on decomposed granite hillside, so I put in raised beds so I could grow some garden crops. But no, simple organic solutions can't possibly be part of the answer....

[anne]

Donna:

"I feed my excess food to my worms in my worm bin, and then toss them into the garden along with their waste to enrich the soil and improve my garden."

Nice.

[anne]

Though I am wild about Amartya Sen, there is a peculiar emptiness about this essay with the possible exception of a denial of supply problems which I am not thoroughly convinced about but hope will prove quickly to be the case with significant productivity growth found. I am still reading United Nations reports that show disturbing supply problems, though possibly of a quickly passing nature.

[ken melvin]

I suspect that wealth distribution is the real issue of out time.

[BJ Feng]

No wealth creation and poverty reduction is. To redistribute wealth, you first must have it to begin with.

A much more controversial issue for Australia is kangaroo meat. Australia kills millions of kangaroos every year, but much of the meat goes to waste as there isn't enough demand in Australia alone. Could this meat be used in food aid programs without causing backlash or resentment?

Speaking of waste, I've noticed that Americans, and to an extent, Europeans, are much more adverse to eating all parts of an animal than are the rest of the world. In the past, necessity required that nothing was wasted. Every culture came up with recipes to make use of organ meats and innards, sausages for example, or just eating them outright like tripe and chicken feet, even blood soup in China. One reason I believe we're not even close to carrying capacity is that Western countries are rich enough not to use all the parts of an animal. Age old recipes like kidney pot pie are hardly now viewed with disgust. I could be exaggerating the situation, most likely all parts are still used in some industrial manner, like making beef or chicken stock, or to add "natural flavors" to processed food, but most of the stuff Westerners refuse to eat in original form doesn't taste bad. In fact, some things like tongue are delicious, which is why all authentic taco shops have it on the menu. Just ask for lengua.

[hari]

BJ - from a medicinal point of view - once we started force feeding the animals/birds with industrial feeds - diseases have originated from animal innards due to fattening ingredients used in industrial feed formula....

Recall free-range birds/animals not only established taste of our grandparents, same cannot be asserted about current industrial meat production.

I used to be a youthful consumer of fresh chicken/goat liver pepared by my granny from free range birds/animals; I don't touch the stuff today. Just like I don't eat eggs - with their intense smell (yellow).

The old cultures knew the differnce between natural habitat flavour and man-made (corruption) of it by using additives and flavours and whatnots. I know animal feedlot business (having supplied high protein cane mollases to Caghill/New Orleans, in 1970s. You can't compare taste of a traditional steak, for example, made in Tuscany with their western counterparts.

Same applies to animal intestines....which has unfortunately become repository of a lot of *unwanted* chemicals and wahtnots. At my age, I'd be a fool to eat them today!

[Alex Tolley]

donna: "I feed my excess food to my worms in my worm bin, and then toss them into the garden along with their waste to enrich the soil and improve my garden. Anything the worms can't eat goes into the larger compost bin to decompose along with grass clippings and green waste, and then gets worked back into the garden. If this were practiced on a large scale, we could reduce some of our use of fertilizers and grow a lot more food. My entire yard is now organic and I use no chemical fertilizers. My "arable land" was a foot of top soil on decomposed granite hillside, so I put in raised beds so I could grow some garden crops. But no, simple organic solutions can't possibly be part of the answer....

Unless you are also growing food in your yard and eating it, you are putting in more nitrogen and phosphate than you are removing, so it is not really similar to farming at all.

However, your point about recyling wastes is relevant and if you have not done so, read Micheal Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" - the chapters on how Salatin farms works. Very impressive.

[Alex Tolley]

Bruce Wilder: Overpopulation? Too much meat?

Arguably Sen is talking about the near term, supplying enough food for the growing global population. He assumes that food production increases can continue, and in this he is correct, because there is a huge gap between what can be produced and what actually is.

However, in the long term, we are going to run up against the carrying capacity of the planet. Then something will have to give, most likely people. Long before that point will have been reached, our wilderness will be lost and our oceans largely destroyed. It will be one hell of a terraforming experiment.

[James Killus]

Food is not just a matter of calories, or even distributing the calories. Outside of certain politically-driven mass starvations (when the gvt. of The-Country-formerly-known-as-Burma refuses to allow relief shipments into the country, you know that the problem is more than just one of producing enough food), the real issue is sources of cheap protein.

Here is one of the places where scapegoating becomes most obvious. Corn, the tortilla notwithstanding, is not usually a primary food stock; it is a protein booster for animal feed. Ethanol production does not remove protein from the food stream. In fact, it increases it (yeast are high protein critters), and the result is "distillers' grain," a high protein animal feed. The calories that have been removed from the corn stream are essentially replaced by silage, grass, hay, etc., which is to say, cellulose.

In other words, corn to ethanol is actually a method of preparing that fabled cellulosic ethanol that we hear so much about.

It's also interesting to note that the diversion of corn starch from corn per se is something that occurs in the creation of "high fructose corn syrup." So one could make the argument that food is being taken away from the poor in order to make sodas and candy bars. I, however, would not make that argument, since I've just argued that cornstarch is lousy people food.

Food prices of all sorts have increased worldwide. The ongoing jabber about corn and ethanol is a distraction from analyzing the real issues of food production and consumption. For example, the problem that Mexico now has with corn production is not ethanol, or NAFTA, but rather that NAFTA opened Mexico up to the full whipsaws effects of world corn prices, which destroyed many previously viable farms, leaving Mexico vulnerable to price support policies of the U.S. (of which ethanol production is one of the more benign forms).

You want commodity markets and commodity prices for food only if you are sure that you will always have the money to pay the market prices. Sometimes, that little step gets missed.

[anne]

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2008/05/said-nazir-says-these-days-he-can.html

May 28, 2008

"Said Nazir says these days he can afford only donkey meat sausages for dinner, which his cat won't even touch. Hani Salem, a plainclothes cop, wants to know how you can raise a child -- his wife is pregnant with their first -- on $67 a month. That doesn't sound bad to Ahmed Ali Mahmoud, who left the sugar cane fields to seek his fortune in Cairo only to find a job parking cars and sleeping on the floor of a garage owned by Sedgi Hafez, who, with a propane flame and a battered kettle, sells tea on the corner and tends to his wife and seven children."

* http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-faoul27-2008may27,0,3628750.story

-- As'ad AbuKhalil

[anne]

James Killus:

You want commodity markets and commodity prices for food only if you are sure that you will always have the money to pay the market prices. Sometimes, that little step gets missed.

[Lafayette]

François : Myanmar? A source of food? In the past maybe, when they were the biggest producer of rice per capita in the world. But now?? They IMPORT the stuff,

We obviously have different sources of information. My comment is corroborated by this reported in the CIA factbook, here, which states the Myanmar is a exporter of rice (amongst other commodities). Other sources state the same fact.

I would add to that list of important exports gas, sent to its neighbor Thailand. One reason why Thailand tolerates the regime. The ASEAN countries continue to treat the Myanmar generals with kid gloves.

It's all about money.

[Lafayette]

BW: However, in the long term, we are going to run up against the carrying capacity of the planet. Then something will have to give, most likely people.

Quite right. The population explosion is running up against "boundary limit constraints" of the planet. Should one wonder why the Chinese is Sichuan, site of the recent earthquake, were so stricken by grief -- they had the right to only one child. (Since relaxed by the Chinese government for this province.)

In the past, since time immemorial, what has to give is, yes, people. And this typically translates directly into war -- a marvelous instrument for reducing suddenly population levels.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima proved that point effectively.

[Lafayette]

Some comments in this thread have taken to account commodity market futures and their speculative character. There is quite likely a VERY heavy implication of the futures market speculation in the run up in both some cereals and certainly petroleum.

These markets are overcome by a feeding frenzy at every occasion of a supply restriction. They prove marvelously well, unlike many other more confused markets, the law of Supply and Demand.

There is much talk about "controlling them". How? That is a good question. Probably by a generalized suspension of trading as prices hit key reference points over short periods.

That, however, has the effect of driving trading "underground", not typically of correcting the problem, which is likely conjunctural. Meaning, in time, it works itself out for any given market.

Still, since we are all dead in the long-run, it is becoming ever more evident that natural boundary limits must exist in the ability to supply the nourishment this planet's population will need. (Either we control population growth, or it will control us.)

Stop the world, I wanna get off. Which is not a joke. 8^(

[JV]

Many of the comments are correct that it is both a population problem and a complex problem. It becomes an intractable problem if populations are allowed to continue to expand. That may self correct at mid century according to some reports on the current youth of much of the worlds population and the end of cheap energy.

The more interesting issue is agricultural subsidies for corn for ethanol. It is about the worst crop for making ethanol you could find -- but there are lots of corn farmers and it burns in unmodified cars. Two subsidies with one stone.

Soy beans are much more efficient, but they make diesel fuel so you loose the voting consumer and the car manufacturers in the mix.

The most interesting part of all is that oil is required to grow, make, and transport the ethanol. 15% of oil consumption is for fertilizer alone. And, when you combine that with land use competition for things like housing and wind farms and solar farms and add in water to irrigate vs. water for hydroelectric storage of wind and solar, and for energy in it's own right the problem becomes unsolvable long before population pressure stops it. Too many competing interests and economic groups in a political climate that is paralyzed by indecision because their are too many interest groups.

Fascinating problem that can't be solved by any political organization like the US Congress or by any silver bullet economic policy alone. How interesting it is.