Food price misery: and organics too
April 18, 2008
Thanks to Eric Colchimaro for sending links to two stories about the effects of rising food prices. One is about the food riots occurring worldwide , a story continued in the New York Times on April 18: “the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years,” or what the Chicago Tribune calls a “crime against humanity.” And now The Economist (April 19-25) says the era of cheap food is over, reviews the political risks this entails - food riots, to begin with - and calls the current food crisis “the silent tsunami.”
Eric’s second link brings it home; it’s a Washington Post story about the awful problems higher food costs are causing for U.S. school lunch programs. They are hitting home in other ways. Restaurant sales are down and the costs of making pizza are rising. Dollar menus at fast food chains are up - they account for 15% of sales at Burger King and give so little return that they are putting some outlets into bankruptcy, according to Advertising Age (March 31). A story in today’s New York Times talks about the sticker shock in the organic aisles. The fallout from rising oil prices, rising grain demands, and use of grains for biofuels gets worse every day. How do we get reverse this? Extricating from Iraq might help as would more enlightened energy and farm policies. Ideas, anyone? In any case, I’m going to keeping an eye on the effects of rising food prices. My guess is they won’t be good. I hope I’m wrong.
I have recently moved to a different part of the country, so I am not sure if there has been much of a change of prices of food or not. But I have found it easier to buy organic lately, as the price difference isn’t as big where I am. Even if it is not organic, things like omega3-rich eggs are only 25 cents a dozen more than the regular. Where I used to live, it used to be about double the price of regular eggs.
How do we reverse this? I am interested in seeing what grassroots movements will emerge from this, as well as how the local food movement will benefit from this.
Comment by Renata — April 18, 2008 @ 9:33 pm
I am not a plant biology expert, but I keep wondering why we cannot get the engineers to work on using the non-food part of the corn plant for fuel while we still eat the food part, instead of competing for the same part. Seems that would relieve the shortage of corn.
Also, in our home, we have shifted to using more of the foods that are used less in general in this country, thus the prices have not seen quite the upward price pressure. We are making more use of lentils, black beans, red beans, and are planting a spring vegetable garden to grow our own delicious foods. In past years we have obtained about $100 worth of produce for every $10 we spent on seed and products to grow the garden.
And we keep a small fruit orchard going in our yard, using the fruit trees and berry bushes as landscape instead of other trees.
I think schools could add fruit trees and berry bushes easily instead of other trees to landscape. I can see many good classroom lessons coming from the inclusion of edible landscaping to schoolyards.
As many schools have large open green areas and are not in session during the summer, perhaps they could use some of this space for summer community gardens.
Comment by Sheila — April 19, 2008 @ 12:42 pm
Re the gathering food crisis, it seems to me that the recent IAASTD report is incredibly important but has had negligible media coverage (most especially in the US). Most of its suggestions however are for the medium and long term. Although watered down at the last minute this “IPCC for agriculture” is a unique combination of the necessarily radical and the credible and just might set us on a new course. Probably the best place to learn about it is: http://www.agassessment-watch.org/
Our own contribution to the coverage is at
http://www.bioscienceresource.org/commentaries/brc9HowthesciencemediafailedtheIAASTD.php
best wishes
Jonathan Latham
Comment by Jonathan Latham — April 19, 2008 @ 4:22 pm
“I am not a plant biology expert, but I keep wondering why we cannot get the engineers to work on using the non-food part of the corn plant for fuel while we still eat the food part, instead of competing for the same part.”
That doesn’t solve the issue that corn ethanol is a waste of time. There simply isn’t enough energy in corn and the oil inputs required to get that energy are too great to make it worthwhile.
Comment by Jason Kratz — April 25, 2008 @ 2:16 pm