The next wars, and John McCain says there will be more wars (he can dream, can't he?) if they occur, could be over things more basic than oil and energy resources. They could be over food (and water...)
Haiti's government has been thrown into instability once again, this time by the rising price of food, which has spawned riots that upended Haiti's fragile government once again over the weekend. That country's prime minister was sacked, and a U.N. peacekeeper killed trying to deliver food aid in the last few days.
Meanwhile, world leaders are edging close to calling food prices an international crisis:
World leaders yesterday called for urgent action to tackle soaring global food prices, while promising to quickly implement measures to strengthen the international financial system and prevent a repeat of the credit crisis. The call for a global effort to deal with both the immediate food crisis in the developing world and the longer-term challenge of ensuring adequate food supplies came on the final day of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund spring meetings in Washington DC. Earlier, the Group of Seven industrialised nations and the IMF governing council made up of global finance ministers and central bank governors endorsed a 65-point plan to reform the global financial market. The G7 also expressed fresh concern about "sharp fluctuations in major currencies" which it said potentially threatened financial and economic stability.
Among the culprits in the skyrocketing cost of food around the world: America's continuing insistence on subsidizing ethanol -- a useless biofuel that's not nearly as promising as biodeisel, which can be made from things other than corn. The ethanol giveaway is pushing corn prices to the bursting point, while the actual use of ethanol fuel in the U.S. continues to stagnate. Of course, the subsidy is all about Iowa and heartland politics.
Of course there are many other factors pushing food prices to a 17-year high in the U.S. alone:
USDA economist Ephraim Leibtag explained the jumps in a recent presentation to the Food Marketing Institute, starting with the factors everyone knows about: sharply higher commodity costs for wheat, corn, soybeans and milk, plus higher energy and transportation costs. The other reasons are more complex. Rapid economic growth in China and India has increased demand for meat there, and exports of U.S. products, such as corn, have set records as the weak dollar has made them cheaper. That's lowered the supply of corn available for sale in the U.S., raising prices here. Ethanol production has also diverted corn from dinner tables and into fuel tanks. Soybean prices have gone up as farmers switched more of their acreage to corn. Drought in Australia has even affected the price of bread, as it led to tighter global wheat supplies. The jump has left people in the food business to do their own explaining. Twin Cafe Caterers in lower Manhattan posted a letter on its deli cooler: "Due to the huge increase of the gas, the electricity, the water and all the other utilities, we had to raise the prices a little bit." It went on to say that all its food prices have risen, too.
Meanwhile, world poverty combined with population explosions across the third world are pressing the world's food supply to the limit.
And even if world governments can get a handle on food prices, the next issue will be water rights. Just ask the Palestinians and Israelis.Labels: food, hunger, World Bank |
