By John James
04 August, 2007
Countercurrents.org
It looks like the era of cheap food is over. The price of maize has doubled in a year, and wheat futures are at their highest in a decade. The food price index in India has risen 11%, and in Mexico in January there were riots after the price of corn flour went up fourfold. The floods in England and India have devastated crops. In nearly every country food prices are going up, and they are probably not going to come down again.
Before World War II, most families spent a third or more of their income on food, as the poor majority in developing countries still do. But after the war a series of radical changes, from mechanisation to the green revolution, raised agricultural productivity hugely and caused a long, steep fall in the price of food, to a tenth of many people’s income.
It will probably return to a quarter of a family’s income within a decade, or higher, from four factors:
1) Demand as global population continues to grow and more people want to eat more meat. Early this month, in its annual assessment of farming trends, the UN predicted that in less than 10 years people in the developing countries will be eating 30% more beef, 50% more pig meat and 25% more poultry. With lot-feeding huge amounts of grain-growing land will move from human to animal consumption.
2) Global warming lowers crop yields: see the chart on the right. Christopher Field and David Lobell in Environmental Research Letters in March stated that for every 0.5°C temperature rise, crop yields fall between 3 and 5%. So 2°C hotter means a 12 to 20% fall in global food production just as the population is about to surge over the 7 billion mark.
3) Rising demand for biofuels replaces food production (see “Looming disaster”, right), causing food price hikes that lead to social unrest, such as the recent riots in Mexico. This should be taken in context: a massive report by the major oil companies warns that oil supplies will peak within 8 years, if not sooner. It estimates that production from existing reserves would soon start declining by 3% pa even as world demand for oil is growing by 2% pa. In order to keep the driving public from facing reality politicians will take the easy road and legislate to use more land for biofuels.