UN: Food crisis now an emergency
April 14th, 2008Suddenly food is top of the global humanitarian agenda. Policymakers now realise something major has to be done after 7 years of feast lest 7 years of famine take hold.
Whether its due to bio-fuels or falling farm output, the situation is the same. People cannot afford to buy food.
It’s interesting that in the drive to grow manufacturing and service industries, agriculture has been relegated to a has been and rather dull business. But as we know we all need our daily bread and this rather sharp reminder will see farming regain its importance as a primary and important piece of industry.
This may even be the straw that breaks the back of farming subsidies. But we may be facing a period of high food prices with the embedded cost of oil at every place in the supply chain.
If there’s an answer its to eliminate subsidies (this from 5 years ago)and start to grow food locally as much as possible.
Time to bring back the veggie patch.
Tags: bio-fuels, farming, food, fossil fuels, organic, united nations
April 15th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
I don’t think the record high prices for food is unrelated to the unprecedented expansion of the global money supply after the Nixon took the US off the gold standard and money shifted from financial instruments into the commodity markets.
Its a misconception that money as well as value gets destroyed in a economic “correction”, because when someone buys a financial instrument (bond, shares etc) buyers no longer have money, because they’ve given it to the seller. So a certain amount of money that was hithero invested in debt instruments has now shifted into the commodities markets (oil, gold, agriculture).
“He said he had a short position on all investment banks and is buying agricultural commodities such as cotton, wheat, coffee and sugar and was also buying the Chinese yuan and the Japanese yen.
“Buy agriculture. Agriculture is one of the few places where you’re going to make a fortune in the next years,” Rogers said.”
http://www.cnbc.com/id/23588079/
According to the FAO, this harvest has broken record production levels.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ai465e/ai465e01.htm
I believe those estimates wouldn’t recognise the informal food economy in the Third World composed of small farmers.