Now i'm thinking of that article from the NYTimes about how the impoverished in Haiti have resorted to eating dirt, essentially (clay technically). Now i'm depressed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7344892.stm

I thought I was just being silly in thinking that the world was going down hill. Will the impoverished rise up and slay their rich oppressors? I'd send money if I thought it would actually get to the people who needed it.

It is certainly a contributing factor, but it doesn't explain all of the delta. What's happening is a sort of perfect storm of inflationary pressures on food prices.

As you mentioned, fuel prices have a direct impact on food prices because they affect the cost of manufacturing, storage, transportation, and distribution. Those are direct, short term costs.

As others have mentioned, the subsidizing of ethanol and biodeisel for use in engines creates artificial demand for certain crops. Among them is corn. There are tortilla riots in Mexico to prove that, but more importantly, there is a certain amount of fungibility in people's staple foods. When corn is unavailable or prohibitively expensive, they switch to eating other staple grains. Also, farmers tend not to plant as much alternative staple grains when they know they can get far better return on their investment by sponging off the government subsidy. This "ethanol effect" is a more serious and longer term problem as it creates a systemic shortage by creating artificial demand. It was a policy three years already in the implementation and is only really at the midpoint in the hockey stick.

One can not ignore the influence of Chinese and Indian prosperity as well. As they both get richer, they both eat better. In particular, one needs look at the increased consumption of meat in both countries. Meat is incredibly grain intensive. Unless we see either tremendous societal changes or economic disturbance resulting in a reversal of Chinese and Indian dietary trends, we will continue to see increased consumption being a strong inflationary factor.

Another factor folks haven't mentioned yet is the effect the financial crises are having. In this season of financial turmoil, the current temporary safe haven for capital appears to be commodities. Traders have run through metals, energy, materials, and now they are hitting grain. Grain gets hit twice because it is both food and energy. This probably has the most acute effect, but is by in large a short term problem as this, as all bubbles, will eventually pop. Even still, the new floor price of grain will continue to be affected by systemic factors increasing demand.

Does that answer your question?

Don't fear the technology. It is precisely that sort of "frankenmeat" that will make it possible to provide meat to the world without starving the planet. I spoke with a food scientist who stated that his research indicated that just the land needed to raise the chickens necessary for McDonald's nuggets would be roughly the size of the state of Kansas. As much as you may fear it, it's here today and has been (without the catestrophic effects folks have predicted) for years.

The next step is going to be vegetarian vat meat. Perfectly disc shaped steaks grown in tubes without the exploitation of animals.

It's an exciting time to be alive.

"Frankenmeat" is a meaningless term created for emotional response, with absolutely no bearing in the science involved. It's right up there with condemning cloning on the grounds that it's "playing God." Also, it's a hilarious euphamism in my Democratic Party slash fanfiction!

We've been breeding plants and animals selectively since the beginning of agriculture. We might be doing it a bit more hands-on and with a lot more understanding of how it works now, but it's really not that much different from what we've been doing for thousands and thousands of years. If production is not meeting demand and we can't spare the land for more production, the only real alternative is to make our production more efficient. I'd rather choke down the visceral repulsion to eating a piece of genetically engineered food than have people starve.

• At global economic conference, food crisis trumps credit crisis [NYTimes]
• France says: the EU really needs to do something about the food crisis [BBC]
• One reason food prices are up: vastly increased farm input costs [WSJ]
• South St. Paul stockyard, once largest in the world, shutters [Post-Bulletin]
• Singles are eating black noodles for love on Black Day in S. Korea [Reuters]
• American policymakers still in denial about ethanol's role in food crisis [NYTimes]
• The IMF estimates that 100m people are severely affected by food crisis [FWI]
• Bush releases $200m from food fund for immediate stability aid [CNN]
• The World Bank wants to raise $500m for food aid, especially in Africa [MG]
• Haitian food riots, having taken six lives, finally quiet down [VOA]

You know, I read that the war in Iraq costs like 400 million a day. I hope the US is really getting their money's worth out of that.

That's how a lot of world cuisine is, because meat is generally expensive. Steak dinners are a status symbol, cows and chickens are a family's trust (nest egg? hyar).

I imagine Soylent Green will be covered when I get to my International Cuisine class. I'll keep you posted...

There's a fine line between "delicacy" and "prank."

The NYT had an interesting piece on how drought in Australia (and maybe global warming) has contributed to rice prices doubling to $1000/metric ton over the last three months. What makes it interesting is that rice is purely people food...it's not used to make biofuels or to feed livestock.

And it's not just drought that caused the decline of rice production in Australia. Many farmers (and ranchers) sold their water rights to grape producers who were busy expanding their very profitable operations.

Won't that require a lot of capital and energy? Seems like it would be cheaper to grow water-intensive crops like rice in someplace that already has a lot of water.

95% of rice is already grown in Asia, which is why the monsoon season is so critical there. The problem is that drought has hit the region and there's more competition for farmland. It either gets converted to raising livestock or developed into factories, home, and shops.

China's already hard up because only 10% of its landmass can actually be farmed and every year they lose land to urbanization or the desert. That's not a good thing in a country who's population is growing and eating higher on the food chain. That shrinking amount of farmland will have to produce a lot more every year, which is why the Chinese government is investing heavily into genetically modified crop research.

We're all on a lot shakier ground than we realize. Just three crops--rice, wheat, corn--generate about 60% of all the calories eaten worldwide. A lot of the acreage planted are monocultures (basically clones) that have been engineered for maximum yields. That genetic sameness also makes those crops very vunerable to disease as Vietnam found out.