Food riots have been reported across the globe. In Haiti, protests were virulent enough to overthrow the government. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered the military to start baking bread to forestall similar unrest in his country. The Philippines made rice-hoarding punishable by life imprisonment. Similar scenes have played out in dozens of other countries.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, worldwide food prices have risen more than 57 percent this year. Much of that increase comes in the most basic staples, especially wheat and rice. Add drought in the farmlands of prolific grain producers like Australia, governments that have been drawing down grain stockpiles over the past decade and farmers replanting fields with more lucrative crops, and you can see where this is headed. They don't call it a World Food Crisis for nothing.
Some of the underlying causes of the crisis are plain old bad luck. Some are bad decision-making by governments and individuals. And some are the result of worthy goals with unforeseen consequences.
You may have noticed a smidge of this in your weekly trip to the supermarket, but we have it easy. Americans spend, on average, around 10 percent of their disposable income on food. In developing countries, that figure hovers around 60-80 percent. According to the Center for American Progress, a "20 percent increase in food prices results in 100 million more people joining the ranks of the poorest of the poor."
When all you have is a dollar a day to fill the rice bowl, a jump in rice prices is devastating. "In other parts of the world, they don't have much else besides the basic grains," explains University of Florida professor of food and resource development Dr. Richard Kilmer. "Here in the U.S., there's a lot more else." The USDA has estimated that national food prices will only rise about 3.5-4.5 percent this year, not much more than the 4 percent of last year.
Even here, though, we've seen some impact from the crisis. Last year, dairy prices reached an all-time high in the U.S. Higher rice and flour prices have encouraged some consumers and restaurateurs to start stockpiling against future increases. That's caused big-box food retailers to begin limiting purchases on staple items. Locally, you're only allowed to buy five of the big bags of rice at Costco or four at Sam's Club. There are also fewer varieties available compared to a year ago.
And like any big problem, there has been some finger-pointing. One of the villains of this story is biofuel like ethanol, which has caused more farmers to switch from food to fuel production. Bush and Congress are driving the ethanol binge, determined to work more biofuel incentives into the new Farm Bill that's currently languishing on Capitol Hill. The USDA estimates that 31 percent of the entire U.S. corn crop will go to ethanol production this year. England just mandated that at least 2.5 percent of all transport fuels must now come from biofuel.
This is complicated stuff, so stick with me. More demand for biofuel crops causes farmers to plant more acres of corn. This drives up soybean prices — since fewer farms are growing it — which countries like Brazil take advantage of by clear-cutting rainforest to plant the newly lucrative crop. Tropical nations like Indonesia don't want to be left out, so they've converted massive tracts of farmland to oil palm groves as their entrée to the global biofuel market.
And considering that the amount of grain it takes to fill the tank of your average SUV is enough to feed a single person for a year, all this biofuel madness is essentially taking food from the mouths of starving people.
But we're saving the environment, you say! Not so much. Science Magazine recently reported that "converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce food crop—based biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia and the United States creates a 'biofuel carbon debt' by releasing 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels." Until eco-friendly algae fuel comes online, biofuels cause more harm than good.
Meat consumption is an even bigger villain in the World Food Crisis. Currently, about 10 percent of the world's grain goes to biofuels. Forty percent goes to meat production. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition estimated that meat production uses six to 17 times as much land, five to 26 times as much water, six to 20 times as much fossil fuel and six times as much biocides as grain. And it takes at least 8 pounds of grain to make every pound of beef. Chicken is a little better, but you get the picture.
It's not all our fault — giant developing countries like India, China and Indonesia are consuming more meat than ever before, twice as much as 20 years ago. They're us, circa 1970. And like us, it's going to take them time to figure out the problems with their newfound prosperity.
So what can we do to alleviate some of the suffering? Learn to spurn ethanol like a second-gen environmentalist and tell Congress to stop using tax dollars to prop up the biofuel industry, at least until truly sustainable technologies are developed. Stop buying mass-produced meat and seek out local, grass-fed beef from one of the many area farms getting into the act (check out eatmyflorida.com for resources). Contact Congress and express your support for emergency food aid to other countries, as well as our participation in the U.N. World Food Program. Loan money via microcredit through programs like Freedom From Hunger or Finca to support local entrepreneurial agriculture; those programs carry more lasting impact than dropping off a bag of food aid.
And most important, be aware. You don't have to start a war to cause death and suffering. Sometimes, all it takes is for a few people to think they're doing right for the world. The road to hell is paved with that kind of stuff.
This article appears in May 7-13, 2008.