Posted by Benjamin on: 04.09.2008 /
Paul Krugman at the New York Times has some interesting things to say about what he calls “The Food Crisis”, and whose fault it is. He talks about how 2 and 300 percent increases in the price of very basic foodstuffs like wheat corn and rice are hurting the very poor, and about how it takes 700 calories of grains to produce 100 calories of beef, and about how global warming may be affecting world food growth.
He says:
You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering: all the remaining presidential contenders are terrible on this issue.One more thing: one reason the food crisis has gotten so severe, so fast, is that major players in the grain market grew complacent.
and
What should be done? The most immediate need is more aid to people in distress: the U.N.’s World Food Program put out a desperate appeal for more funds.
We also need a pushback against biofuels, which turn out to have been a terrible mistake.
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Comment by: Sharon McLennan
1 04/9/08 4:13 PM | Comment Link |Hi Benjamin. Funny you should post this- I just read a post on the NZ Green Party blog on the same topic. Despite our agricultural heritage and low population (proportionate to our land area), we import about half our food.
I’m actually not sure that Krugman’s suggestions as to what should be done are hugely helpful either. Food aid has been linked with all kinds of ongoing problems- including undermining local markets, creating desire for imported grains over local staples and generally creating dependency.
He is right about about biofuels. however. They are a mistake. But just pushing back won’t help- we don’t need to continue our love affair with oil. I think we in the west needs to seriously reduce our dependence on fuel.
The problem is most Westerners don’t know or don’t care. I guess they think science or politicians or somebody else is going to come up with an answer, and we can just keep consuming the way we have been. For the moment the food crisis is mostly impacting on the poor in developing countries, and as unjust as it is, I don’t think the West will make significant changes until it starts to impact on our lifestyles significantly. I just hope that isn’t too late.
Change starts at home though. I have been thinking about going vegetarian for a long time… this may just be the motivation I need.
Comment by: David H
2 04/9/08 4:50 PM | Comment Link |Obama has talked about taking oil company subsidies and using them to fund alternative energy research. It’s a good thought, but may be as empty as most politician promises. I believe the US should take a man-on-the-moon approach to alternative fuel. Set a target for reduction of oil imports and a date for getting that done (like 50 percent in 10 years). Then attack it the way we did landing a man on the moon.
However, biofuels of almost every ilk need to be eliminated from the discussion. While they are ostensibly “renawable,” they cause as many problems as they solve.
A question that nags at me is where US oil consumption would be if we had taken the money spent on the war in Iraq and poured it into renewable energy research. Instead, under the Bush administration, almost the opposite has happened. While he has talked about reducing oil dependence and finding alternative energy sources he has eliminated much of the funding for anything other than biofuel, specifically that made from corn.
Comment by: benjamin ady
3 04/9/08 8:29 PM | Comment Link |Sharon,
Wow. I don’t know whether to feel guilty or stoked that I might have made a small contribution toward your becoming a vegetarian.
I think you nailed something here. But do you sense a slow but growing big shift in this?
Comment by: benjamin ady
4 04/9/08 8:35 PM | Comment Link |David
Love your “man on the moon” approach. I think Obama is just the sort of leader who could pull that off. Now *who* was it who challenged the U.S. to land a person on the moon “before the decade is out”?
Comment by: Martin Gugino
5 04/9/08 9:05 PM | Comment Link |We need to become energy independent by 1985, or there are going to be some serious problems.
Comment by: David H
6 04/9/08 10:59 PM | Comment Link |Good one, Martin — and probably all too true.
As for Obama and JFK, I never met the latter and don’t really know the former. I don’t have high hopes for political solutions anyway. If politicians could solve problems like this then we might not be discussing global warming or the price of oil in quite the same terms. We might not be discussing the World Trade Center destruction or the War in Iraq at all. And American school children might be taught to remember 1985 as a very important year.
Comment by: Food Riots « A Cup of Coffee
7 04/10/08 4:56 PM | Comment Link |[...] posted on this issue on Justice and Compassion a few days ago, linking to an article by Paul Krugman in the NY Times. He suggested that- The [...]
Comment by: Sharon McLennan
8 04/10/08 5:02 PM | Comment Link |Don’t worry- it was just one straw amongst many that spurred me into actually finally making the leap. I really had already decided it was just the logistics of making the changes to my habits that was holding me back.
I’ve written a bit more about it in my blog. Hopefully actually posting about it will mean I actually stick with the decision!
Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a world leader that actually could do something like this? Americans-it’s on your voting shoulders, we in the rest of the world are watching. Unfortunately somewhat cynically. Even if Obama (or any other presidential candidate) did want to tackle the problem contructively, so you think the energy and agricultural industry lobbyists and other powerful players would allow it to happen?
Comment by: David H
9 04/10/08 6:23 PM | Comment Link |Maybe a justice and compassion blog isn’t the place for the following thought. Maybe a confirmed pacifist should not even have such a thought. But every time I think of lobbyists I recall how Mao solved the opium problem that had nearly paralyzed China for a century. He took every grower, seller and user in the country and had them shot. Anyone who attempted to step into the void that was created met the same fate. Within a few months something that had plagued the country for decades was simply gone. Perhaps a bit extreme, but it would be interesting to see how it affected lobbying in the US were such a policy to be applied.
Comment by: Herb
10 04/10/08 8:34 PM | Comment Link |Every crises that gets its week’s worth of media attention is followed by “whose fault is it?” These things are evolutionary and have been taking shape for decades and decades. Does it just feel better to accuse Big Oil, Big Steel, Big whatever, politicians? These problems preceded and were germinating before George Bush, Bill Clinton and whoever. They just hadn’t made their way to the headlines. I read in National Geographic a while back that a lot of Amazon rain forest is being cleared away by giant soybean farms.Imagine that. Our environment is being adversely affected by Big Soybean which in turn feeds Big Tofu.
Then the conversation turns to “what if we had a president that……” Politicians don’t solve problems. Problems get solved I believe by people undergoing a change of heart. Don’t they? Does finger pointing solve it?
I don’t think we can arbitrarily submit subject matter, can we? But speaking of putting our heads into the solution has anyone out there heard of Dorothy Day or read anything by or about her? She formed the Catholic Worker’s Movement in the 1930’s and was a huge cornerstone of social justice in the last century. She is said to have been a huge inspiration for Caesar Chavez. There has been a movement to make her a saint,whatever that’s called, but it won’t ever happen because she had a baby out of wedlock. She had a lot of communist and socialist friends before she became a Catholic but she ultimately rejected those philosophies because they lacked heart and faith (which is why she believed that they failed). Anyway she had her heart into solutions, not blame. I’m just looking for a way to get her name out there.
Has anyone ever heard of her? I highly recommend checking her out. Very inspiring. There are websites.
Comment by: David H
11 04/10/08 10:07 PM | Comment Link |I’ve heard of Dorothy Day. Commendable person in many respects. I admire her pacifism and find myself closer to her “politically” than many of my evangelical cousins because she didn’t find much use in mass movements and even less in political solutions. However, she was not averse to pointing fingers. She spoke out against most of the political leaders of her day, including FDR during WWII (an affront some considered tantamount to treason).
As for Big Tofu and its effect on the Amazon rainforest, the US is largely responsible (this is on multi-levels, for instance SUV owners, those who through action and inaction have opposed renewable energy research, lobbyists who have used our financially obsessed electoral system to drive bad policies like subsidies for big oil companies and elected governmental leaders who have taken the cash then done wrong things). US responsibility begins with decades of gluttonous fuel use before turning recently to a hare-brained alternative fuel policy that has people around the world trying to clear land to grow food stuffs for fuel. Besides the ecological disaster of clear-cutting rain-forest or trying to grow corn in places it shouldn’t grow (e.g. drained wetlands), the bio-fuels rush is already increasing starvation in third-world nations such as Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras by driving up the cost of basic foodstuffs.
While there isn’t much benefit to finger-pointing, there is a need for someone(s) to take responsibility for causing them. These things don’t just happen, there is usually thought and “policies” behind them that need to be curtailed or corrected. Identification of the driving forces for those bad policies (ethanol rather than greater energy efficiency as an example) is necessary, if for no other reason, so there is a complete thought process behind the suggested alternative.
At a certain level the culprits must be identified, whether they are big oil, big steel or big name politicians. But for me, the real responsibility for making change comes down to individuals. I may know who drives my consumption and who benefits, but it is up to me to change me. If enough me’s change, maybe those big things will also change. But my facing my responsibility doesn’t absolve the politicians or the corporate magnates. Based on some reading of Day, I think that is something with which she might agree.
Comment by: Justice and Compassion
12 04/10/08 10:17 PM | Comment Link |[...] says in this thread: speaking of putting our heads into the solution has anyone out there heard of Dorothy Day or read [...]
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
13 04/10/08 10:18 PM | Comment Link |=)
See here
Comment by: joe
14 04/11/08 2:33 AM | Comment Link |I read yesterday that in Britain we throw away a third of all the food we buy, and half of food is destroyed between the farm and my stomach.
That is apparently enough to supply half of Africa’s import needs from the UK alone. Stuff we’re throwing away. It blows my mind.
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
15 04/11/08 10:32 AM | Comment Link |Joe,
Isn’t the problem a complicated one that more about distribution than production? I mean yes all that food gets thrown away in UK, (and in the U.S.), but is it reasonable to imagine that some percentage of that food could be practically *shipped* to Africa anyway?
Isn’t that part of the difference between rich and poor–that rich means there’s plenty being thrown away, which means that there’s plenty even for the poorest in that society?
Comment by: joe
16 04/11/08 10:47 AM | Comment Link |No I’m sure it isn’t practical to ship the waste food to Africa. But we lead terribly wasteful lives. It is sick really.