Mike Moore on food
April 28th, 2008 at 9:43 am by David FarrarMike Moore writes in the Herald on the food crisis:
What has been the most successful 50 years of alleviating poverty in human history is threatened. What’s happening, what’s new?
Nothing is more important than food. In 12 months, corn and rice prices have doubled, wheat price tripled, soy beans up by 87 per cent, and global food reserves are at their lowest levels ever.
They are staggering increases for just one year.
The rush to biofuels is also impacting cruelly in agriculture, where massive subsidies and high oil prices are encouraging agricultural production away from basic foods. Tragically, rich countries are subsidising bio-fuel production, raising prices. Filling a Range Rover with subsidised ethanol takes as much “grain” as would feed an African family for a year. Rich countries’ fuel substitution programmes often consume more energy to produce than they save. It’s a populist Green response to global warming that does the opposite of what was intended.
People should reflect that Federated Farmers have warned that if the price of carbon reaches $50 then the Emissions Trading Scheme would stop basically all food production in NZ – profits are projected to drop 123%. Now before everyone accuses them of scaremongering – what would have been your reaction if say ten years ago someone predicted biofuels would help push 100 million people into poverty and contribute to a doubling of world food prices?
But how can you encourage poor countries to grow food when subsidies from rich countries can drop similar products into their local market, sometimes at a third of local prices?
The medium- and long-term solution is the Doha Development Trade round, which is now at a critical stage. Unless the players at the WTO can get closer in the next few weeks, the deal will not be cut this year.
I could not agree more. Countries at the WTO who do not stop subsidising their food, are a big part of the problem.
If the rich countries cannot find the political courage to front their subsidised farmers when food prices are so high and will remain high, when can they summon up the willpower to save themselves? Subsidies in rich countries are a direct cash transfer from the poorest consumers to the richest of producers.
Indeed. Yet strangely it is so called left wing politicians like Obama and (H) Clinton who rail against free trade,
Related posts:
- UN Sec Gen calls for end to food tariffs and biofuel subsidies
- Biofuels forced food prices up 75%
- The madness of the Greens
- Paul Walker on food prices
April 28th, 2008 at 9:52 am
“It’s a populist Green response to global warming that does the opposite of what was intended.” by the noted Greens G W Bush and the US corn lobby? Would agree with the rest of the post though (possible exception of the farmers http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2008/04/climate-change-farmers-can-afford-it.html), also could have mentioned countries like Vietnam and India banning exports of rice!
Moore mentions protein i.e. meat – also something of an issue, as I’m sure others have and will point out.
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Just the same old same old academic intelligentsia driven central government fuck up that the commies have historically pulled. Nirvana is their objective, destitution is always their outcome. When will people learn to stop listening to these fuckwits? Maybe when they suffer the first surprising pangs of hunger.
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 10:07 am
the food situation isnt flash!
the world needs some caring right wing government to save it! crack down on these loopy green types.
its all good for spoiled little global warming freaks that think everything is our fault.. wait till they go to bed without dinner a few times.. that should change their outlook.
biofuels are one of the stupidest ideas in history. a family starves so some assholes can have a tank of fuel..
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 10:12 am
The mistake that is the current use of arable land for biofuel production is a clear example of what happens when you get desparate and failed politicians acting before getting any informed advice from scientists, combined with the use of inappropriate and destructive economic tools to benefit interest groups. It is truely unfortunate that the extreme social irresponsibibilty of the Bush administration has such wide reaching global consequences.
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 10:15 am
I’d agree with rubbernecker – energy independence from the Arabs NOW with a sudden about face on climate change…ugh!
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 10:34 am
So the food problem in Africa is not because of an overwhelming presence of shitty little dictatorships hacking the farmers to death, looting the public purse and crippling the infrastructure to suit their own ends… its the wicked people in the West.
Vote:I am glad I got that cleared up.
April 28th, 2008 at 10:51 am
Lance: from the herald on sunday:
“Rising amounts of corn are being used to make the green fuel, which makes it more expensive for farmers who feed it to stock. Europe is so concerned that it may cut biofuel targets and slash production subsidies.”
Not necessarily the wicked west – just the idiotic, not particularly well thought-out idealistic west.
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Lance – Depends if people in the West view Africa somewhat ignorantly as a monolithic whole with uniform problems over the entire continent or not. Believe it or not, many African countries do engage in trade with the world, and developed world subsidies hurt these exports.
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 11:00 am
It is truely unfortunate that the extreme social irresponsibibilty of the Bush administration has such wide reaching global consequences
If only they had listened to one of the leading media voices of responsibibile(TM) progressive politics in the West in 2008:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/biofuel-the-burning-question-808959.html
It’s outrageous that people were pushing this solution to climate change back in 2005:
Oh wait:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-a-welcome-proposal–but-no-magic-bullet-514181.html
Well, as Pilger once said, there’s only really one truly decent writer in the Independent, Robert (cough) Fisk. Apart from him there’s nothing remotely socialist about that rag. It has nothing to do with socialism – or at least the socialism that works – somewhere – over the rainbib.
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 11:05 am
So why should the USA be get the big baddy label if it wants to use its own land to grow fuel for itself. It isn’t like most of the world likes them anyway?
Help out the poor; we will hate you a bit less.
I put this forward as the devils advocate to a certain extent, but the stinking hypocrisy really irritates me. This could be a golden opportunity for the world to say, hey, we don’t need the US (+Europe) anyway, let’s stop wide scale fucking up of the food chain and sort this out ourselves.
Vote:BUT oh no, Zimbabwe (for example) used to supply food in abundance, now it is in famine and the other African leaders will do nothing because R-Mugaby kicked the whites out, and that is all that matters. This is bullshit on stilts.
April 28th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Al Gore Where are you????? these useless pricks who couldnt organise a booze up at the brewerey always lecturering and hectoring the good hard working citizen.
Time to tell them all to FOXTROT OSCAR and if they wont then maybe its time to string a few of them up as a lesson to the others.
PISS OFF and let us live our lives our way. Stop being so arrogant and contemptous of us.
Start being part of the solution instead of the problem.
Yourve all been proved wrong so rather than keep on digging yourselves in to a deeper hole go away and hide under your rock
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 11:17 am
USA SHOULD get the big baddy label because of their massive farm subsidies!
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
And what party can we vote for that would allow us to “string a few of them up”?
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Sure Lance, let’s all just stop trading with America, that’ll bring food prices down. Not.
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
er turns out Moore did mention bans on rice exports – i actually read the article over lunch, ho hum
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
While appreciating the audicty of this latest right-wing meme (the evil greens are killing the poor!!!) has anyone got a figure on how much the miniscule rise in ethanol production has affected global food prices?
I doubt very much that it is even small factor but if anyone has a figure that proves it?
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
sonic
So killing millions of poor people is OK as long as we reduce GW so the temperatures only rise 0.0001 instead of 0.0002 degrees by 2108.
Gee wizz Einstein How compassionate of you NOT
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
“has anyone got a figure on how much the miniscule rise in ethanol production has affected global food prices?”
Why do you continue to ask such a dumbfuck question? So wide ranging it has no definitive answer. Its not smart, only a reflection of your crippled world view and your poor grasp of economics. Buit just to shut you up, here’s something to chew on-
———————————————————
The recent rise in corn prices–almost 70 percent in the past six months–caused by the increased demand for ethanol biofuel has come much sooner than many agriculture economists had expected.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, this year the country is going to use 18 to 20 percent of its total corn crop for the production of ethanol, and by next year that will jump to 25 percent. And that increase, says Marshall Martin, an agriculture economist at Purdue University, “is the main driver behind the price increase for corn.”
The jump in corn prices is already affecting the cost of food. The most notable example: in Mexico, which gets much of its corn from the United States, the price of corn tortillas has doubled in the past year, according to press reports, setting off large protest marches in Mexico City. It’s almost certain that most of the rise in corn prices is due to the U.S. ethanol policy, says David Victor, director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University.
The rising food costs fueled by ethanol demand are also affecting U.S. consumers. “All things that use corn is going to have higher prices and higher cost, to some extent, that will be passed on to consumers,” says Wally Tyner, professor of agriculture economics at Purdue University. The impact of this is being felt first in animal feed, particularly poultry and pork. Poultry feed is about two-thirds corn; as a result, the cost to produce poultry–both meat and eggs–has already risen about 15 percent due to corn prices, says Tyner. Also expect corn syrup–used in soft drinks–to get more expensive, he says.
The situation will only get worse, says David Pimentel, a professor in the department of entomology at Cornell University. “We have over a hundred different ethanol plants under construction now, so the situation is going to get desperate,” he says. Adding to the worries about corn-related food prices is President Bush’s ambitious goal, announced in his last State of the Union address, that the United States will produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017.
http://dverveer.blogspot.com/2007/09/this-is-why-you-are-converted-to-be.html
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Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Sonic – pull your head out, mate. Even a basic google search will provide you with enough information to at least take off your party blinders for a moment and look into it.
Here’s a recent article quoting the head of Nestle and the United Nations’ independent expert on the right to food, Jean Ziegler…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/03/24/2197273.htm
But then you probably know more about food commodities than these guys right?
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Nice try TMC but both of those people are talking about the future viz
“If as predicted we look to use biofuels to satisfy 20 per cent of the growing demand for oil products, there will be nothing left to eat,”
Also in the article it states
“land for cultivation is becoming rare and water sources are also under threat, Mr Brabeck said.”
So no cigar there TMC, a figure on how much of the rise in global food prices is caused by ethanol production is still required.
Sorry guys but it looks like your lovely little meme has zero facts to back it up.
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 4:09 pm
“has anyone got a figure on how much the miniscule rise in ethanol production has affected global food prices?”
Why do you continue to ask such a dumbfuck question? So wide ranging it has no definitive answer. Its not smart, only a reflection of your crippled world view and your poor grasp of economics. But just to shut you up, here’s something to chew on-
———————————————————
The recent rise in corn prices–almost 70 percent in the past six months–caused by the increased demand for ethanol biofuel has come much sooner than many agriculture economists had expected.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, this year the country is going to use 18 to 20 percent of its total corn crop for the production of ethanol, and by next year that will jump to 25 percent. And that increase, says Marshall Martin, an agriculture economist at Purdue University, “is the main driver behind the price increase for corn.”
The jump in corn prices is already affecting the cost of food. The most notable example: in Mexico, which gets much of its corn from the United States, the price of corn tortillas has doubled in the past year, according to press reports, setting off large protest marches in Mexico City. It’s almost certain that most of the rise in corn prices is due to the U.S. ethanol policy, says David Victor, director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University.
The rising food costs fueled by ethanol demand are also affecting U.S. consumers. “All things that use corn is going to have higher prices and higher cost, to some extent, that will be passed on to consumers,” says Wally Tyner, professor of agriculture economics at Purdue University. The impact of this is being felt first in animal feed, particularly poultry and pork. Poultry feed is about two-thirds corn; as a result, the cost to produce poultry–both meat and eggs–has already risen about 15 percent due to corn prices, says Tyner. Also expect corn syrup–used in soft drinks–to get more expensive, he says.
The situation will only get worse, says David Pimentel, a professor in the department of entomology at Cornell University. “We have over a hundred different ethanol plants under construction now, so the situation is going to get desperate,” he says. Adding to the worries about corn-related food prices is President Bush’s ambitious goal, announced in his last State of the Union address, that the United States will produce 35 billion gallons of ethanol by 2017.
aichteeteepee://dverveer.blogspot.com/2007/09/this-is-why-you-are-converted-to-be.html
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Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 5:58 pm
Lance: So why should the USA be get the big baddy label if it wants to use its own land to grow fuel for itself. It isn’t like most of the world likes them anyway?
One example why the USA gets to be the “big baddy” is Haiti which used to be self-sufficient in rice. However as a part of reforms required by the IMF and world bank they had to remove tariffs on the import of things like rice. Once this was done, the highly subsidised US rice producers undercut the price of locally produced rice to such an extent that rice farming in Haiti was basically killed off. Without the subsidies, the locally produced rice would have been in a far better position and fewer farmers would have left it.
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Lance: So why should the USA be get the big baddy label if it wants to use its own land to grow fuel for itself. It isn’t like most of the world likes them anyway?
One example why the USA gets to be the “big baddy” is Haiti which used to be self-sufficient in rice. However as a part of reforms required by the IMF and World Bank they had to remove tariffs on the import of things like rice. Once this was done, the highly subsidized US rice producers undercut the price of locally produced rice to such an extent that rice farming in Haiti was basically killed off. Without the subsidies, the locally produced rice would have been in a far better position and fewer farmers would have left it.
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
Interesting info, Red – thanks. As you say the question is phrased so as to be almost impossible to answer – at least until longer term trends can be analysed (by which time we’ll be drinking biofuel shakes or eating dirt) but there’s plenty of considered opinion that supports the view that growing biofuels – and particularly government-subsidised biofuels, further distorting the demand curve – is going to adversely affect the availability of food.
Talking of opinion, it’s worth remembering the opinions of some of the leading proponents of state intervention to avoid the supposed imminent doomsday scenario – and their real motives for peddling it:
While most of that just goes to prove that scientists can be dopey, biased buffoons like the rest of us, Chirac’s quote, when I found it, really worries me – as did Bush the Elder’s constant references to “new world order” etc. Not that I think the Trilateral Commission is trying to take over the world – I just think there are far too many pompous asses who have fluked election to some office or other and who think that makes them omniscient and omnipotent. And if they start getting together and conspiring against us, we’re really screwed.
And let’s not forget the opinion of Stephen Schneider, the lead 2007 UN IPCC (United Nations International Panel on Climate Control) report author, who made the following statement in 1989 (he also wrote one of the reports that led to the global-cooling scare of the 1970s) as to the tactics that need to be employed:
Meanwhile even the Brotherhood of St Laurence, which wrings its hands on climate change and supports carbon trading, estimates that poor households will be hit the worst by any such scheme, with the average additional cost for poor Victorian households estimated at $938 a year – $18 a week. Their solution, of course, is “government assistance”, which isn’t government assistance at all, since the government doesn’t earn the money it gives away… it’s “slightly better off” assistance – shifting the burden from the poor to the barely able to get by.
The Brotherhood states the bleeding obvious (though it clearly needs to be said, as those friends of the working man and woman, the Labor/Labour parties clearly haven’t figured it out):
P.S. Red, I liked your quote “Nirvana is their objective, destitution is always their outcome”. I might just steal it
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Sigh……Greens spout bullshit…..Blacks die like flies…..whos really suprised?
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
“The recent rise in corn prices–almost 70 percent in the past six months–caused by the increased demand for ethanol biofuel has come much sooner than many agriculture economists had expected.”
so the economists got it wrong. again.
what a surprise
The unfortunate thing is that this disastrous policy of promoting the use of food-growing regions to produce biofuel (which was not advocated by the greens) will probably have a negative impact on the development of realistic, promising, justifiable and potentially necessary biofuel technology.
Vote:April 28th, 2008 at 8:38 pm
Yeah, exactly how are Bush and the corn lobby ‘greens’? And exactly which ‘greens’ is anyone talking about?
Vote:April 29th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Anyone click ratbiters link?
Cos it doesnt work
Vote:April 29th, 2008 at 11:10 am
Countries at the WTO who do not stop subsidising their food, are a big part of the problem.
No they’re not. Subsidising the cost of production of food does the complete opposite of reducing production volumes.
Subsidies in rich countries are a direct cash transfer from the poorest consumers to the richest of producers.
No. Subsidies in rich countries are a direct cash transfers internal to those rich countries. The poorest consumers in the world do not (by definition) inhabit those rich countries.
Vote:April 29th, 2008 at 11:31 am
unaha, subsidies in rich countries have two effects in the developing world.
1. They make it impossible for poor countries to export to the rich world.
2. The allow agribusiness in the rich world to dump product on the local market therefore driving them out of business.
Vote:April 29th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Some columnist in the US has described this as the NEXT great “Green body count”. The first one being the millions of victims of resurgent malaria consequent on the DDT ban………
Vote: