I have a link below to an excellent article in the Economist discussing a possibly new era, ‘The End of Cheap Food‘. Many Americans have a complicated relationship with the stuff that is our daily sustenance, and, why not? We have so much of it, so much variety and most of us can afford to buy more than we need. So, going to the store can be like going on a little adventure, wondering what new and tasty thing we might try for dinner tonight. The other side of our complex relationship with food is darker. Have we had too much? Do we need to lose weight? What the hell are we eating, anyway? Some of the ingredients require serious googling to understand why company X even put them in our snacks, let alone the implications for eating them on a regular basis. One ingredient, corn syrup, goes to the heart of our modern food world. It’s in EVERYTHING! Why, you ask? Well, it’s, as I said, complicated. Practical-minded folks remember that there is no civilization without food, not without adequate food anyway. So, it’s important to make sure that your country always has a reliable food supply, either by growing it in-country, or importing it from a very reliable source. So, many countries indulge in subsidies to their farmers. It keeps the land prepared and ready for agriculture, keeps you in the game so to speak. The United States does this, of course. This has not resulted in assuring Americans food diversity. Nope. We grow a lot of corn and wheat and soybeans. This has not saved the small farmer, which means jobs for a local economy. Nope. Instead, large industrial operations are steadily the only farms that can afford to do business these days. So, for us, we get lots of corn and corn by-products (corn syrup) in our food, reduced variety, and lots of questions about the quality of our diets. We also get industrial farming, which is very bad for the environment.

What does this mean for the world? It means that farmers in poor countries can’t export their food to us, because our farmer receive subsidies. That means they get poorer still, and eventually have to start importing food to their countries because their farming infrastructure has collapsed. Well, I for one don’t think this is good.

Enter the new ethanol craze, and things go from bad to worse. Now, we are subsidizing farmers to grow corn, but not to feed us, or our voracious meat appetite, but to fuel cars. This is very inefficient, for one tank of ethanol could go very far toward feeding a person for a year, whereas Brazil’s sugar-derived fuel is more efficient. Either way, you are taking corn out of the food market, and using it to make fuel, which is making food more expensive, and pressuring poor countries into clearing more forests in order to grow fuel crops.

So, you see, I was right about things being complicated. Our food and our world economy is very interconnected, and it doesn’t look like that will change any time soon. We have a lot of thinking to do, and it does look like we can improve things, if we want to, and if we have the willpower to act. Read the article for some ideas concerning this dilemma.

• End of Cheap Food

I would also like to add that I think some people lay the blame of the current food increases solely at “liberal environmentalists”. Well, as usual, the story is not that simple. I would be very happy if people stopped tossing around the words “liberal” and “conservative” as if they knew what they were talking about, as if these words had some crisp, well-defined meaning. Those who voted for continued farm subsidies, reinforcing the corn to ethanol problem, were both Democrats and Republicans. Pork is pork, no matter if it’s donkey pork or elephant pork. Here is a link concerning bipartisan support of farm subsidies:

• Congress Agricultural Subsidies

And here is an announcement regarding a big spike in meat prices from Tyson Foods. They blame a rise in the price of grain, which makes it more expensive to raise animals, especially cattle, which in turn creates a scarcity of meat. Add the growing word-wide demand in meat, and the the increasing cost of oil together, and voila!, your filet mignon is going to turn around, moo, and take a big bite out of your wallet.

• Big Tyson Food Increase