[Sosfbay-discuss] Recent Price Rises on things like rice.

[Tian Harter]

Last evening I went to a talk about "why is the price of food going up
so fast?" The speaker, Raj Patel, (author of the new book Stuffed &
Starved, The Hidden Battle for the World Food System) said there are
five reasons:

1) Oil. Not only does that mean that the price of transport goes up,
    but the price of fertilizer goes up, and many other costs of
    production go up.

2) Growing middle classes all over the planet are asking for more
    protean in their diets. This means more animal feed, which means
    more demands on crops. This raises prices.

3) Biofuels. Again, this puts more demands on available crops. Every ear
    of corn that becomes ethanol to burn in engines is another ear that
    wasn't eaten by an animal or a human. This raises prices.

4) Weather disasters. Australia had a bad wheat crop because of a
    drought. That's not the only event of the type. This cuts into
    production, which again raises prices.

I think the fifth thing was bone headed government policies that put
small farmers in places like Haiti out of business by flooding the place
with cheap imports that evaporate after the price goes up.

During Q&A the guy said we used to be frightened by biotech companies
coming up with "terminator seeds" (ones that produce sterile plants).
Their latest creation is even more needy, "Zombie seeds" (ones that need 
expensive chemicals to grow at all).

Raj thinks Cuba is the place that has the most lessons to teach about 
how to get by after the fossil fuels go away. He said they do a lot of 
urban gardening for vegetables, among other things. San Francisco is 
planning to plant a big vegetable garden on City Hall Plaza as a 
demonstration of this.
-- 
Tian
http://tian.greens.org
5/6: I spent a few hours papering downtown Mountain View
with Bike To Work Day posters. That's coming up on 5/15/08!