The problem with this article is that it never answers the question of what drove food prices up in 2007/8. The answer apparently is drought and rising oil prices:

http://www.ethanolproducer.com/article.jsp?article_id=6491

The last food crisis was caused by prices, which had been too low.
People took surplus stocks and low prices for granted. One day they
were not there anymore. Prices then went up, production went up.
All very simple really.

This is the second article on OLO today which has popped the demand side consumption bubble of the anti-populationists. They are in disarray.

Cheryl

Still trying as a PAP (Populate And Perish) mob.

And out of date as usual it did say 2007-2008.

And what will happen when Oil reaches $300 a barrel?

Did you not read the OP on peak oil if the population was less it would last longer.

Have a look at this map of world poverty... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_fertility_rate

Basically the more red, the more poverty... But the surprise is that it is a map of FERTILITY - how many children are being born.

You know how our government seems unable to fund hospitals, schools and roads, and this is with our population failing to produce enough children to replace ourselves... imagine the problems of fundiong these essential

services if the population was not declining, but trippling every twenty years... no wonder they are poor. Worse than schools and hospitals, they somehow they also need to find more farmland too!

50 years ago, perhaps we could have ended poverty. But now there are so many more poor that the problem is so much bigger. For example, there are 60 million shanty-town dwellers in India alone, and only 20 million Australians... Let alone Indonesia, the Pacific Islands, New Guinea... What about Africa? Sth America? etc etc...

Why is China becomming so rich and powerfull? The one-child policy. It means they can finally afford to catch up with the infastructire and education that nations need to get ahead and build wealth.

I don't like the 'one child policy', but Thailand and surging Iran (Think nuclear power) also have zero-population growth due to marketing, free contraception and free choice. It's not really the feminist idea that educating women reduces population growth (think Iran, they're not keen on educating women)...

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What succeds is explaining to people that too many kids leads to poverty, and long-lasting free contraceptive implants. Eventually compulsary education and urbanisation also drive down birthrates, because they make kids expensive. This tends to come along at the same time as education for all, which creates the feminist myth that only educating women decreases birthrates... it does, but that's only a small part of the picture.

On the other hand, why is the 'aging population' such a bad thing here in Australia? Surely it means we are living longer, and isn't that a good thing?

The problem is not an 'aging' population, it is that we are suiciding... failing to produce enough kids to replace ourselves.

Here we need to give tax reductions for kids so middle class parents can afford the kids we want. Those on welfare are pumping out kids like there is no tomorrow because of the welfare bribes to have lots of kids.

Meaning that single mums are pressured into having more kids than they can look after. And the payment incentives which ensure that few get married, as this reduces their welfare paynments.

Also making divorce fairer, because Australian men don't want to become dads... because they are afraid of having their kids stolen by divorce lawyers.

Well, PeterA, off you toddle and do the right thing to make oil last longer ... ohhhhh, I see ... you just want there to be less of *other* people.

Blaming biofuels for the crisis is a little like loading a racing camel
with 2 x 200 kilo beef carcases ... 1 on each side and then blaming
the 50 kilo female jockey as she mounts and the camel collapses.
The growing conversion of food to feed both directly by feeding
food to livestock and indirectly by making it more profitable to
grow feed than food leaves the global food supply stretched taught
like a drum and biofuels or regional crop failures provides the
trigger. This article makes IFPRI look like just another meat
industry front group.

..The effect of oil prices on food prices during 2007 and 2008 is not
news. The diversion of maize to ethanol had a very significant effect.
That it occurred when drought was on a number of continents just made
matters worse.
If anyone has doubts about the relationship of population to oil production
just plot them both from 1850 to date. Cheap oil has fed the world but
cheap oil is over and the population must fall with it.

It was more expensive petrol and food prices that stopped people paying
their mortgages in the US that triggered the financial crash.

China is well aware of the two horseman, food and oil which is why
China is buying up all the oil and farmland it can get in Africa and
Australia.
With our governments "Big Australia" we will need control of our own
farmland and not just be hungary workers loading Chinese ships with
the food we may well need ourselves.