There are a number of factors that help explain the food crisis. Certainly subsiding grain production for ethanol rather than for food is one of them, and is immoral. But that is the logic of capitalism where production is for profit, not for satisfying human needs.

A second factor is the move from subsistence farming to cash crops, something the neo-liberal West imposed on poor countries.

Another factor may be changing consumption patterns in Asia.

What about population growth? In fact food production has grown faster than population.

We produce enough wheat, rice and other grains to feed every person in the world with 3,500 calories a day. This is before we even consider foods like meat, vegetables, fruit or nuts. Humans can survive adequately in most cases on 2500 calories.

One aspect not often mentioned is global capital. The world is awash with capital looking for somewhere profitable to invest. The massive drop in returns on the financial and equity markets has sees high risk investors (like hedge funds) look to new avenues for profitable investment. Commodity trading in food is where they have put a lot of their money, driving prices up.

The consequence? Hundreds of millions of people who were just above the poverty line are now starving and the gains made over the last twenty years in lifting people out of poverty have been wiped out overnight by speculators investing for large profits for wealthy clients.

People are starving not because there is not enough food but because they can't afford it.There can be no greater indictment of capitalism.

The market is the problem, not the solution.

One short term solution would be to withdraw from Iraq and use the billions wasted there every day to begin feeding people. Use that money to buy the food that already exists and give it to the 2.5 bn people who live on less than US$ 2 per day.

In the longer term turn the swords into ploughshares.

Let's build a society where production occurs democratically to satisfy human need, not to make a profit.

No argument here Passy but it will take a major shift in values and in the world's blind adherence to all things "capitalism" for this to occur.

I don't see it anytime soon. On the positive side there has been a shift away from the 'market can do no wrong' mentality in our global collective psyche. The difficulty is in the brass tacks of making it happen and where real power remains invested with those that benefit from the excesses of capitalism.

Human needs before profit is a worthy goal but it might take a major catastrophe for change to occur and I suspect it will start small at the local level and spread outward. I cannot see in the near future, any shift away from capitalism due to enlightenment or an increase in some sort of atruistic global awareness.

Awww, peace and love in the world, wouldn't it be nice? Noble goals indeed.

But on the topic of the 'food crisis', I see a lot of commentators pointing fingers in every direction, all of which tells me that nobody really knows what is causing it. Likely a bunch of factors, but some certainly more influential than others.

One of the most plausible I have read is that it's due to preceding economic climates. Food staples have been too undervalued in the world commodity markets, which means many farms in the worlds bread basket regions struggled to survive and a great deal of farm land was actually not planted when the climate took a short downturn. This happened in many places other than Australia, but it is easy to see it happen here.

The global reserves of grain used to be about 8 months, now it's five weeks. This is not explained by mere speculation and capitalist hedge funds. It's because food production actually decreased a bit (some due to climate, some to economics) as world consumption increased a bit. Prices rise accordingly.

I actually take some hope in all of this, in that farmers in developing nations may actually be able to make some money if the developed nations reduce tariffs for food imports to alleviate the costs.

Trends like food production etc tend to swing, and farming right now has become extremely profitable, so I would expect a downturn in prices in probably a couple of years as much more farmland is planted and harvested (especially in Australia, as the weather has picked up).

Buying food for the starving is a nice suggestion, and certainly seem the moral thing to do, but when has that actually helped in the long term? It won't help the oppressed, like in Zimbabwe. History is littered with oppressive regimes propped up by such measures.

Well John... you HAVE to believe in Miracles now.. because I actually agree in part with you here:

"But that is the logic of capitalism where production is for profit, not for satisfying human needs."

EXACTLY.... but then, I don't advocate 'Capitalism' in its purest ideological sense. I prefer a middle ground mix of social welfare and free enterprise.

FLAWS IN CAPITALISM... well of course, it is the same flaw as in Socialism. "huuuuuman natureeee"

When you try to squeeze highly driven people into a "from me according to my ability to him according to his need" without a 'heart transplant' (the moral heart) you have people leaving that scene by the truckload. GREED.. is the problem.

Your problem John is with 'uncontrolled' capitalism. Just like I have awful problems with 'enforced socialism'

By all means keep barking up the "I'll fix the world with socialism" tree, but mate..it was ringbarked ages ago when Adam fell. Now we share that fallen state. You, me, and the other bloke. (Oh..I forgot, Marxists/Socialists are all perfect :) forgive that little slippup of mine)

Socialists who point judgementally at "Capitalism" are like those who don't see the PLANK in their own eyes, and the same goes for extreme capitalists. "People" are the downfall of them all.

BARKING UP THE RIGHT TREE... which of course is... repentance from sin, and faith in Christ. Renewal, revitalization, rejuvenation, restoration, and REGistration in the book of life.

Some of the higher costs will be caused by increased oil prices but
I would guess perhaps only 10% of the food price increase.
All crops use a lot of oil products.
Fertiliser has near doubled in price I believe.
Ploughing cultivating, harvesting, tansport, processing, transport all
adds up and except for processing is all diesel driven.

I am afraid I cannot see an end to it.
It may well be that we have just tripped over the maximum population
level. Perhaps it only needed to co-incidence of drought, change of
diet in China, higher oil prices with ethanol and that was it.

“People are starving not because there is not enough food but because they can't afford it. There can be no greater indictment of capitalism.”

What you suggest is people starving is supposedly and secondary consequence of capitalism

A “secondary consequence” is, morally, more tolerable than using mass starvation as the primary goal, which Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Robert Mugabe and others used to keep their populations in place.

“Capitalism” is not a perfect solution but it is far better than the socialist/communist drivel which some would seek to impose upon us.

As http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/JD30Dg01.html suggests

“but the survival of the common folks has never been high in Kim Jong-il's list of strategic priorities.”

- Nor any other commie bastard politican.

Not perfect but capitalism, still infinitely superior to all the other theories from the socialist pig swill

*Let's build a society where production occurs democratically to satisfy human need, not to make a profit.*

How romantic Passy! Col has beaten me to it, but of course North
Korea comes to mind, where your romantic notions are not really
working too well.

Alot of the present problem is due to market distortions and
yup, the market is the answer, not the problem. The EU and US
dumped huge amounts of subsidised food onto global markets,
sending many third world farmers out of business. So the cost
of growing food was higher then global prices, why should
growers then produce more? This has now changed, so prices
are heading upwards, linked to oil prices.

But of course, the solution to high prices is high prices.
This year, everyone is planting wheat, fencepost to fencpost,
so watch the price drop 30-40% later this year.

If poor countries really want to do something, perhaps they
should get serious about family planning, as the West has.

Dear Passy,

I agree with you. It's time something was done. 2008 has been predicted as an awful year, especially for the poor - who as you pointed out are hungry because they can't afford to buy food. And it's going to get worse.
No-one seems to care because, "No one is starving in rich countries!"

The forecast is grim. Bringing down food prices could take at least a decade, food analysts say.

One reason: billions are buying ever greater quantities of food - especially in booming China and India, where many have stopped growing their own food and now have the cash to buy a lot more of it.
Increasing meat consumption, for example, has helped drive up demand for grain, and with it the price.

The spike in oil prices, has pushed up fertilizer prices, as well as the cost of trucking food from farms to local markets and shipping it abroad.

Then there is climate change. Harvests have been seriously disrupted by freak weather, including prolonged droughts in Australia, Southern Africa, floods in West Africa, and this past winter's deep frost in China, and record-breaking warmth in Northern Europe.

The push to produce biofuels as an alternative to hydrocarbons is further straining food supplies, especially in the US, where generous subsidies for ethanol have lured thousands of farmers away from growing crops for food.

To make matters worse, global stockpiles of some basics have dwindled to their lowest point in decades. Rice, a staple for billions of Asians has soared to its highest price in 20 years, while supplies are at their lowest level since the 1980s, according to the US Dept. of Agriculture. Meanwhile, the global supply of wheat is lower than it's been in about 50 years, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation. Prices continue to soar.

Something must be done, and soon.

Very good thread Passy ... the food crisis is a major issue facing humanity.

I think we all agree the issue is multi dimensional; peak oil, water quality and availability, unsustainable farm practice, increasing use of artificial stimulants, genetic modification and a horde of other factors all influence the tipping point we're witnessing now.

The factors have been eroding the natural capital (soil fertility) for decades yet it is not until food riots and rationing do we start to take note.

There are still those who believe global warming is just a scare tactic, that water wars are some futurists picture of doom, that oil is in abundance and that pumping our ground full of increasing amounts of chemicals won't in any way effect the long term productivity.

Nor should we fall into the trap that this is just a capalistic problem - although a factor, it's not the keystone event.

Forgive an unpopular statement, but our world is over populated - and this factor will be addressed either through war, famine, disease or some other catastrophe ... it is a point of balance - and right now we are out of whack.

It is true we waste signficant amounts of food - but the costs of distribution are proving prohibitive. Nor can we grow locally in many cases due to the lack of water (quantity and / or quality). We also are experiencing major soil fertility issues both here in Aust and o/s.

So, though the thread is an intriguing question there are no easy solutions. It will require major change to the way we currently manage our natural resources and growing practices - equally, as pointed out in other comments, it will require cross border collaboration and an ability to relate beyond our borders ... big ideas indeed.

So, apart from a restatement of the problem there Foxy, was there another point other than "something must be done"?

What must be done, is to NOT deal with it in a socialistic way.

This 'crisis' has created an economic environment globally where farmers can actually make money. This provides a real incentive to reverse the trend of recent years of agriculture being undervalued and population shifts from rural areas to urban manufacturing areas. What they do not need is governments siphoning off the rewards of their hard work and providing subsidies for underproductive farmers, putting in place penalising tariffs against poorer countries farmers or controlling prices or monopolising the agriculture in their respective countries.

Government/socialised control of these commodities does not make it better for anyone, especially farmers. All government control does is pervert the markets and artificially alter the value of the commodity.

An economic environment where farmers can make money, possibly lots of money, will ensure that farming will remain a viable career choice. Artificially lowering the prices of food by using tax dollars does nothing to provide incentives to increase efficiency or productivity.

Thus, I suggest that we do nothing except encourage all developed nations to lower tariffs and reduce subsidies and truly take the food markets global. The farmers will take care of the rest.

Passy, it might help if you didn’t allow political theory to get in the way of facts. The current food “crisis” has many causes including: increased demand, particularly in China and India, droughts in key grain exporting countries, and infrastructure problems. The US ethanol bills have diverted corn from animal feed to ethanol and had the flow on effect of using up most of the world excess coarse grain for animal feed. The spike had to come sooner or later because world population growth has been outstripping yield growth for a while now. Ethanol, just brought it forward.

Of course, markets will now respond. With higher prices, more grain crops will go in the ground at the expense of other land uses. In the US, ground is coming out of conservation programs and back into production because the profits to be made from production are higher than those made from the conservation subsidies. Farmers have been reacting to markets and using their land for the most profitable purpose – which may be cash crops instead of food crops. With higher grain prices, more land will go into grain production. Prices will then tend to ease.

Food aid, while important where food scarcity exists, can create problems of its own. Food aid tends to undercut local producers leaving them unprofitable and hence they move out of food crops.

So subsidizing grain for biofuels is immoral. Interesting thought. The corollary is that the only moral subsidy is one where as much food as possible is produced for the subsidy. What about European countries that subsidize farmers to grow less food, say through subsidies for organic production, is that immoral too?

Dear Bugsy,

You and other posters may be interested in this website:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,300141,00.html

It deals with the unprecedented rise in global food prices and what is being done about it.

Cheers.

Are you German Foxy? 'Cause I'm not. It may as well be in Chinese to me.

Why is it that so many are happy to live and make their money from capitalism and then try and preach the sure way to poverty (socialism). It is as bad as the likes of Gore pretending he is concerned about the environment while flying around in his private jet. If you feel so guilty about being so well off then give some away but stop being envious of those who worked hard for what they have. Mr Rudd is a sure believer in capitalism (just look at his wife).

Es scheint as ob unser Fuechschen, in Deutchland's Konjunktur
interessiet ist!

Da die EU Billionen ausgegeben hatt um Weltmaerkte fuer landwirtshaftliche Produkte zu untermeinen, koennen
moeglicherweise auch diese Steuerzahler die Hungrigen
der Welt fuettern.

Much of the press coverage of 'The food crisis' has been
sensationalist - a parading of “experts “ with the most newsworthy/ extreme views( but then, that's the norm now !)

As for, "Human needs before profit" & "Swords into ploughshares"
they're straight out of the Brothers Grimm book of Fairy tales.

There is an unpalatable fact-of-life that some people need to digest :
no country, owes any other country a living.

Commodity/Food price hikes –have been with us time immemorial – it has less to do with Western interference, and more to do with local mismanagement .

Underdeveloped countries are coming more and more to resemble their buses , equipped to carry 30 they pack on 300 and are still intent on picking up more passengers’ …, everything appears to function adequately, until they hit a pot hole or come to a hair pin bend…

One of the countries most oft cited as an example of food shortage is Egypt –it is noteworthy that Egypt can still maintain a large, well equipped modern army & send aid to insurgents !

The bleeding hearts who feel the - need to feed - are also prone
to do Mickey Mouse assessments where they seek to apportion world
resources on per capita basis -and declare any entity with more than its
share 'exploitative’ Both the Chinese & Soviets learnt that equal sharing of resources only produced a smaller output.

Yes we can, produce food for all, on a vegan 2500 calorie daily quota .
I can see it now ...us, all queuing in our standard issue, gray, chairman
Mao suits -awaiting our daily ration of water and rice -and trudging back
to our mud-brick collective farm dormitories -and oh, how EQUITABLE it
would be!

Gordon Gekko was right .
'Greed is good' -it stretches humanity .
It is only by striving to outdo each other- that we excel.
( And as our present regime is big on symbolisms - let's start by pulling down the icons of Marx & Mao & installing icons of Rockefeller, Carnegie… Gordon Gekko !)

I haven't read all the posts, but I have a story!
Many years a ago while sailing on Sydney harbor I asked the skipper how he earned a crust, I'm a "provender" he said. Ugh said I, I had seen brass plates saying provrender but didn't bother to find any more about it. He supplied food to ships and hotels and things.
When things are quiet he would buy, when shortages of potatoes existed in Sydney, a truckload, after it was loaded and on the road he had bought and sold 4 times between WA and Sydney! Making margins all the while of course. I've not forgotten after many years for I had never thought such a trade existed, particularly in food.
Those old enough will remember queuing every year for potatoes?
He never even saw them? Let alone unloaded and sold on.
fluff4

Hi ya Fluff4, I think you mean "providore". They are the middle men in the food industry that speculate and sell onto the food services sector.

Sustainability and food security is achievable if we get our priorities right. What good is a system if it does not provide a reasonable living standard for all of its members let alone basic needs like food, shelter and water. Given our ever increasing population, the truth is that we all have to live less so that some can live more and if we are honest we in the West generally live well beyond our needs. If we wish to live at current standards, the reality is we can't unless we drastically reduce our global population.

Overpopulation cannot be ignored forever. A social welfare system in countries where overpopulation is a problem will go some way toward solving the issue of Aged Care in those nations dependent purely on family to provide a safety net. Naturally this is not achievable in isolation of other programs.

Attending to community and social needs is not "pig swill" and can be easily achieved within a capitalist type framework with some regulation. I am not talking restrictive controls but merely some basic foundation values to put the brakes on the unfettered growth of capitalism and the free market. We are too hung up on political labels like capitalism and communism and instead should be more pragmatic about the sort of communities we would wish to live in and how this can be achieved without the constraints of traditional 'thinking'.

Dear Bugsy,

I'm so sorry. I goofed with the website and left out a number in error.
It should have read:

www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,3300141,00.html

The article is in English and deals with the UN, World Bank, to Coordinate Task Force efforts in Food Crisis.

No, I'm not German. Unfortunately, I don't speak or read it.

So, Yabby, I have no idea what you wrote. If you could repeat it in English?

Thanks Corrie, looked it up and it is exacily what I ment.
fluff4

FOOD CRISIS ? 'What food crisis'?

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23599517-27702,00.html

Over the past six weeks the UN has reported food riots in Egypt, Yemen, Ethiopia, Cameroon, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cote d'Ivoire, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal. In the worst case in Haiti, five people died and prime minister Jacques-Edouard Alexis was forced from office.

Rice shortages have led to Cambodia and Egypt banning rice exports, China imposing heavy export taxes and many other countries including Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and the Philippines begin stockpiling.

I figured this would happen about 10 yrs ago.. so I bought a large block of land...and could be self sustaining food wise. Maybe I AM a "prophet" afterall? :) yes..that's a joke.

But the food situation isnt.

What I'll be interested in, is how Passy and Ginx and the socialists among us react to it.. "Lets share what we have the teeming masses flooding out shores"? hmm I wonder.

What's that? there ARE no teeming masses on our shores? aaah.. ur right.. for now.

There are now more overweight people across the world than hungry ones, according to experts.
78 percent of all malnourished children under five lived in countries that had enough food to feed their whole populations.
The American Obesity Association now claims that over 64.5% of Americans over the age of 20 are overweight
In the US 35.1 million people – including 12.4 million children – live in households that experience hunger or the risk of hunger.
In the US 40-50% of all food ready for harvest never gets eaten.
In UK approximately $38 billion US dollars worth of food is thrown away, every year.
Over 9 million people die worldwide each year because of hunger and malnutrition. 5 million are children.
Approximately 1.2 billion people suffer from hunger
About 1.2 billion suffer from obesity
"People are not hungry these days," the Financial Times newspaper admitted, "because food supplies are not available; they are hungry because they are poor."