*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.