If we want food to remain cheap we need to stop putting it in our cars
-Timothy A. Wise Coverage of the US drought and the run-up in corn, soybean, and wheat prices has been extensive and welcome. It has also been prone to the repetition of falsehoods and the perpetuation of myths about the causes of the food crisis – and the solutions. A recent Guardian article, “The era of cheap food may be over,” is a case in point. Specifically, it perpetuates the myth that the main driver of food price increases is demand for meat in fast-growing developing countries. This effectively downplays the full impact of biofuels and ignores two problems underlying price volatility: financial speculation and the lack of publicly held food reserves. Give Larry Elliott credit for posing the issue in terms of the difficult policy choices the world faces. He’s certainly right to pose the challenge. “The current assumption seems to be that the world can have a rising population, ever-higher per capita meat consumption, devote less land to food production to help hit climate change targets and eschew the advances in science that might increase yields” he writes. “This is the stuff of fantasy.” It sure is, but so his framing of the problem. First of all, the trend toward meat-based western diets is certainly worth resisting, for health and environmental reasons. But it’s been pretty clearly shown that rising demand for meat-based protein, particularly in India and China, is not the main cause of recent price increases. An FAO study documented conclusively that cereals demand rose more slowly since 2000 than it had in previous decades. So demand in India and China may have grown, but it did not create a “demand shock” that precipitated more recent price surges. What is the demand shock that has occurred since 2000? The dramatic expansion of biofuels production, under a range […]
