Tag Archives: food prices

One Third of World’s Food Destroyed: Culprit Found

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The critters that are "stealing" our food, busted at last. (Photo by Chris Huggins/Flickr)

A study done for the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, released a week ago, finds that nearly one-third of the world’s food supply — in the United States the figure is 40 per cent — is never consumed because it is wasted. Billions are being spent to develop new chemicals, new genetically altered seeds and new, energy-intensive, unsustainable farming methods that are alleged to increase food production, but the authors of the study expressed surprise that the loss of food, much of which is deliberately thrown away, is drawing no attention. Continue reading →

Killing Waters in the Heartland

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Farmer Fact of Life: You can't get seed into a field like this one in Iowa, and if you did it wouldn't come up. And most of the fields in 20 states look like this. (Photo by David Morris/Flickr)

While the nation largely ignores the developing, historic flood of the Mississippi River and its tributaries, it is totally oblivious to the rising threat of ordinary — well. perhaps not ordinary, but certainly less dramatic — rain to current and future harvests in the nation’s breadbasket. The fact that the Corn Belt is soaking wet, where it is not completely inundated, does not bode well for food prices, or for the food supply, in the US or the world. Continue reading →

Hedge Fund Guy Says Brace for Impact: Believe it Now?

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There is more than one way to figure out the future. As this chart clearly shows.....

Jeremy Grantham is the chief investment strategist for the Boston firm GMO, one of the world’s largest asset management companies ($107 billion in the portfolio at the end of last year). The title of his current newsletter to investors is “Time to Wake Up: Days of Abundant Resources and Falling Prices are Over Forever.” In other words: Brace for Impact. (Okay, he is not saying that the crash of the industrial world has begun, but he is saying, and backing his opinion with the kind of data analysis that made him a gazillionaire, that the main benefits of industrialization — plenty of cheap stuff — are gone.) Continue reading →

Quinoa and the Ugly American Consumer

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A quinoa salad, the latest sneeze among boutique eaters who are mostly oblivious to the consequences of their enthusiasm. (Photo by Karen and Brad Emerson/Flickr)

The epigraph for the book The Ugly American, an account of the destruction wrought by American good intentions in Southeast Asia, is a quote from Graham Greene (in which the word “dumb” means incapable of speech, not stupid): “Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.” A new incarnation of the syndrome, the Ugly American Consumer, wanders the world bestowing money on its natives, presuming that he is bestowing blessings. Case in point: quinoa. Continue reading →

World, US Food Supplies Faltering, Prices Rising

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The biggest and most persistent myth about the Dust Bowl of the 1930s? That it is over.

If we were to forget all about climate change and peak oil, the two most real and present dangers to our future (of course it’s a silly thing to do in the face of the evidence, but do the exercise: pretend you’re an American politician), we would still be confronted by the third, and conceivably the gravest danger — peak food. The strains on the natural systems on whose health we depend for life itself are titanic (pun intended) and growing. A breaking point has already come for millions of the world’s poor, and cannot be far off for the world’s most privileged. Continue reading →

Forecast: Hard Rain Gonna Fall

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Food rioters face police in Algeria. This is a weather-related event.

“What are you so worried about?” goes the old comedy routine. “My future.” “What makes you so worried about your future?” “My past.” On this basis alone — what has happened in our world in the past few months — we should be very worried about our future. It does not matter if you are one of the 37 people remaining on the planet who do not “believe” in climate change, evolution or gravity (if you are in that select group, by the way, congratulations on your new Congressional committee chairmanship). If artillery shells are exploding in rapid succession, ever closer, you might want to take cover; we can discuss later whether you believe in high explosives. Continue reading →