'Glib' is the word that comes to mind whenever I hear news stories on food prices. Merriam-Webster defines 'glib' as "marked by ease and fluency in speaking or writing often to the point of being insincere or deceitful". Why do I feel that way? It's because of where I come from, psychologically speaking, that is. I happen to think that if a human being is born and alive, then he/she deserves to have enough to eat - provided that he or she is willing to work for it, when they are capable of working. It shouldn't matter where this person happens to live or how much money he or she has. You see, food supply is closely tied to availability of land, especially land that is cultivable. In many countries, land is held by farmers - rich and poor - and how they choose to use this land, or what they plan to grow on this land and for what purpose has a great and direct impact on how much food is available. Now, how much they can grow is often dictated by factors such as availability of water, fertilizers, soil conditions and, of course, climatic conditions. In reality, there is only so much a piece of land can grow - within a range, of course.
Now let me try to explain why I feel that these news guys are not just insincere, but worse, even ignorant and mischievous in their reporting:
Whenever a news story deals with food prices, it travels all over - from increased diversion of land for growing biofuels to increased consumption in China and India. And to overpopulation in general. When they talk about population as one of the main culprits, they are trying to shift the blame on to poor people, generally. Population has been growing steadily, but nothing dramatic has happened in the last five years - whereas, the reason we are talking about food prices is because there have been dramatic increases in the last five years, and especially in the last one year. This is what I heard on the BBC ( quote from their website):
Global food prices have risen by 40% in nine months and food reserves are at their lowest for 30 years. The WFP is facing a $500m (£248m) shortfall in its attempts to feed 73 million people this year.
'Political challenge'
Mr Ban (the UN Secretary General) said that "many countries in particular in Africa they now have to pay double or triple the price for their bread," and warned that this would lead to increased malnutrition.
But what got my attention was what I found in their related content. Consider this:
The first reason why prices are rising is growth in the world's population, which is expected to top nine billion by the middle of the century. That is an incredible number of mouths to feed and will put pressure on a range of resources, including land, water and oil, as well as food supply.
But lurking behind the headline figures for population is an even more significant factor pushing up prices, and that's the economic miracle driving emerging economies such China and India. To put it bluntly, rich people eat more than poor people, and all this economic growth is generating a whole new tier of middle-class consumers.
What other factors are involved?
There is also the added environmental pressure all these extra people are loading onto the planet, as well as the impact of climate change.
Desertification is accelerating in China and sub-Saharan Africa, while more frequent flooding and changing patterns of rainfall are already beginning to have a significant impact on agricultural production.
And global warming has played a significant role in another driver of rising prices: the shift in agricultural production from food to biofuels.
Ethanol production is on course to account for some 30% of the US corn crop by 2010, dramatically curtailing the amount of land available for food crops and pushing up the price of corn flour on international commodity markets.
If you were to read this with a blank mind, or with the normal trust that many people have on BBC's reporting in general, it would appear that climate change, global warming, desertification, etc., were all caused by the increasing population. And of course, you can always blame the Chinese and the Indians starting to eat more than they have been, until now.
Why does this picture bother me? After all, this is just one reporter doing his take on things. But look at the language: "nine billion people by the middle of the century", "incredible number of mouths to feed", "lurking behind the headline figures....is the economic miracle driving...China and India. To put it bluntly, rich people eat more than poor people, and all this economic growth is generating a whole new tier of middle-class consumers", "the added environmental pressure all these extra people are loading onto the planet" and on and on...so, suddenly the Chinese and Indians have started eating more now! How dare they! My favourite was "lurking behind the headline..." - that some of the Indians and Chinese are eating more than they were before is something real sinister indeed! But I'm sure he wasn't thinking of the farmers in India who were committing suicide, because they were caught in a debt trap! It's true that rich people eat more than poor people - that's exactly what the British aristocrats did when beef-eating became a symbol of wealth and status. And they needed an ever-increasing supply of land. It's not just the British, but all the European colonial powers did that. I happened to just finish reading the book "Beyond Beef" by Jeremy Rifkin. Though it came out some years ago, I found it a fascinating read. It goes into such detail about so many aspects of our beef-eating culture and the enormous resources and land it takes to produce the amounts of beef that is consumed today - not just in America, but everywhere. He particularly points out the newly-developed taste for grain-fed beef (with "marbled fat") that the British first developed, for which they found a ready supply of land in the American west, once the Injuns were packed off from the plains. Mind you, this was in the 1800's, long after Independence. But the British had ready access to American land for their beef supply. As countries move up their economic ladder, their food habits change - at first comes more dairy and poultry. Then comes beef. All of this means, that they are going to need more and more land to produce this food - because it's a simple fact that to produce a pound of beef requires far greater resources in terms of land and water, compared to a pound of grains or vegetables. The Indians and Chinese are buying or growing food legally - they haven't been colonizing other countries to get their pound of flesh, so to speak. Wait till they start eating beef - because beef production is about the most inefficient when it comes to food produced per unit of resource consumed!
The picture will become complete only when you consider the rise in production of "grain-fed" beef. We have taken the availability of grain-fed beef for granted - as if nature intended it this way. And we have also taken the availability of beef as part of our staple diet for granted - as if there is enough land, water and resources to go around for everyone. I, for one, do not take many things for granted - at least, not anymore. And, as I happen to believe that everyone has a right to eat as long as he or she is willing to work for it, I look at the whole thing differently. You see, in many poor countries, the people do work, and they do get paid for their work - sort of. But the percentage of their earnings that they have to spend on food is
anywhere up to 50% - even to get their basic caloric and nutritional requirements. We are not talking about 'eating out' or take-outs here.
If we keep talking about population being the reason for the rise in food prices, it's somehow not the whole story. Especially when many ofthe countries are taking serious and sincere steps in controlling their population - at least the rate at which it is rising. China and India have largely controlled the rate at which their populations increase, and they are still working on stabilizing it. But these and the people in Africa and South America are already here - so, short of killing off the 'excess population' (for, that's what these chaps are referring to - I mean, not the killing off of them, but somehow this is an 'excess population' that is causing the 'excess demand'), those with a bit of conscience have to ask the question - how does everyone get enough food to eat? Enough food to live, that is. This question doesn't have to be asked only by those in the so-called 'rich countries'. It also needs to be asked by the elite in these poorer countries - because the elite in many of these poor countries often hold disproportionately large tracts of land, and they also consume disportionately - I'm not talking of food alone, but consumption on the whole. And their governments are actively doing their bit in diverting farmland to industrial activity, as more western companies set up production in developing countries to exploit the cheap labour and weak or non-existent environmental and labour standards. Even when farmers refuse to sell their lands, they are forced to - by decree.
I don't know if the general public has been told the fullstory about biofuels. Polticians talk about biofuels as if that would be some miracle solution to our problem of the impending peak in oil production and high oil prices, and rather disingenuously, even to the problem of climate change. There's the simple fact that biofuels - most of them anyway - need lots of land, water and fertilizers - most of which come from fossil fuels. And they need energy to process and transport. There is still a net gain in some cases, because sunlight is free anyway. But clearing away forest land as is being done in Brazil and now in Asian countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia is not the way to go. It is so obvious to anyone who is willing to look at the full picture, rather than listening to soundbites and watching TV clips - but the mainstream media is not talking about it. Biofuels in large scale is not a good idea - though it would surely benefit some folks who grow the stuff and those who process it.
And while this BBC story talks about 30% of the American corn to be diverted for ethanol production, it doesn't mention how the EU's decision (mandated, that too) to have a 10% minimum of biofuel content in their transport fuels by 2020 already has many people worried. There are serious questions as to whether biofuels will actually bring any significant reduction to the EU's emission of greenhouse gases. A study published in Science magazine suggests that nearly 40 percent of European cropland would need to be converted to biofuels if the 10 percent goal agreed by the Union's governments is to be reached. As the target could not be met from existing arable land, grasslands and forests would have to be cleared. The same IPS story goes on to say "The amount of carbon dioxide released from the requisite destruction would exceed any eventual saving of greenhouse gases brought by the use of biofuels in road transport, the study concludes. "In the scramble to supply the EU and the rest of the world with biofuels, poor people are getting trampled on," said Oxfam spokesman Robert Bailey. "The EU proposals as they stand will exacerbate the problem. It is unacceptable that poor people in developing countries should bear the cost of questionable attempts to cut emissions in Europe." I did find another BBC story that questions the whole rationale behind the push for biofuels:
"When you look at the totality of the problem it's not going to bring emissions down at all, and it may even make things worse if we are talking about tropical forests being converted to palm oil production."
Cutting traffic growth by getting people out of cars is one of the only ways to reduce transport emissions and so tackle global warming...
If you go back in history (we need to do that, to get a proper perspective), it wasn't always that everyone got to eat so much meat or so much beef, and so frequently. If today we have access to so much beef, it's not simply because we have somehow become super-productive over the years and therefore become super-deserving. A variety of factors have created this picture where we have made sure of this access through a variety of means. Now, to maitain this access, we have to continue doing certain things - in distant parts of the world, all of which are not exactly ethical or moral. The least we can do is to get informed. Nothing happens by itself - and nothing comes for free. Least of all, food - everything has to come from somewhere, and it takes certain amount of resources to produce every pound of food - whether it's food grains or beef. I wish these reporters would take some time to educate themselves - especially with a historical perspective. Because, if you take the present moment for granted, then you would invariably come to the wrong conclusions and come up with wrong answers!