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Food Crisis: Some Suggestions Submitted by Callum McPetrie on Tue, 2008-04-15 09:37.
There has been much hoo-haa recently around the world, especially in poorer countries, over the large rises in food prices recently. But New Zealand, as a country, stands to gain A LOT. We have excellent farming land, advanced technology, and animals by the truckload. New Zealand could potentially make a huge deal of money out of this. To ensure New Zealand's eventually triumph in the upcoming years in food production, here are some suggestions: 1) Remove "green" regulations to the production of food. Remove GM hysteria over food production. Invest in new technologies and capital for the most efficient food production in the world. Allow for more intensive farming. Issues such as water pollution caused by animal excrement and chemicals on the farm can be sorted out by privatizing basic bodies of water, such as rivers and sections of lakes. (This has worked very well in Scotland.) 2) Deregulate the market on a world scale. New Zealand has done very well by promoting its food products around the world, facilitated by free trade. This doesn't concern NZ, at least as much as the EU, which prevents the crucial development of African farmers from getting them to produce their food in the long term, independently. The same applies to the United States (and Canada?). 3) Slash other regulations to production. Slash limits on how much food can be produced at what price, what amount, etc. Important issues such as quality can be sorted out primarily by the market and organizations such as consumer watchdogs, with government interference only after an act of force or fraud has been committed. There you go, some suggestions for the upcoming food crisis. Let's see whether basic principles of market economics are followed, and if not, how well the situation turns out otherwise.
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Maybe Britain
Maybe the British media has got something right this time. Not too often that happens.
"Socialism may be dead, but its corpse is still rotting up the place." -Ayn Rand
What's up with the liberal media?
First the BBC gets beaten into submission by a green activist for reporting that there had been no GW for the past ten years, then the Independent publish a story about how even the head of the Hadley institute doesn't believe the alarmist propaganda (OK it was written by Nigel Lawson's son) and now this from the Guardian.
What's gone right with this world, the liberal media institutions in this country are starting to drop like flies!!!
My thoughts
My thoughts exactly Lindsay.
"Socialism may be dead, but its corpse is still rotting up the place." -Ayn Rand
Jesus!
That's in The Guardian??!!
The cost of green tinkering is in famine and starvation
Simon Jenkins in the Guardian puts it well.
"While antagonism to science merely impedes progress, antagonism to economics is regressive. American subsidies to ethanol fuel are not just causing "tortilla riots" but costing American taxpayers a staggering $5.5bn a year. Biofuel tankers are circling the globe, burning gasoline and chasing subsidies. They have joined carbon emissions certificates among the world's greatest trading scams.
If I have changed my mind, I am not sure the same applies to many greens. I have rarely encountered so much fanaticism and blind faith. Did those demanding fuel subsidies not realise that palm oil would wipe out rainforests and that ethanol from corn would use as much carbon as it saved? Did those pleading for wind farms really think they could ever substitute for nuclear power; or those wanting eco-towns not realise they would just add to car emissions? Did they not understand that, once the tap of public money is turned on, lobbyists will ensure it is never turned off - however harmful?
If all these fancy subsidies and market manipulations were withdrawn tomorrow and government action confined to energy-saving regulation, I am convinced the world would be a cheaper and a safer place, and the poor would not be threatened with starvation.
Just now, for reasons not all of which are "green", commodity prices are soaring. Leave them. Send food parcels to the starving, but let demand evoke supply and stop curbing trade. The marketplace is never perfect, but in this matter it could not be worse than government action. Playing these games has so far made a few people very rich at the cost of the taxpayer. Now the cost is in famine and starvation. This is no longer a game."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/apr/16/biofuels.alternative...
US and Europe
The US and Europe are notorious for their farming regulations. New Zealand, in a bizarre twist of circumstances, is actually the shining example in this situation -so much so that even the current Labour government will keep its hands off the industry!
"Socialism may be dead, but its corpse is still rotting up the place." -Ayn Rand
Excellent work, Callum and Peter!
I get my cheese, water and certain fruits from New Zealand and I don't see how any rational person can believe cutting off my supply of these New Zealand products helps New Zealand in any way.
And yes, the UPS Gov't subsidizes ridiculous farming endeavors while banning the farming of truly beneficial products... like hemp.
UNesco!
"The (UNESCO) report said rising oil prices had made transport and farm production more expensive and had led to more crops being grown to make biofuels for vehicles." Environmentalists have caused the rising price of oil. Great tracts lie undrilled because of the habitat of a few rodents and the odd deer or moose. Simultaneously they wish to kill innovative industry by fraudulent warmist claims.
"It said biofuel production had mixed effects, adding: "The diversion of agricultural crops to fuel can raise food prices and reduce our ability to alleviate hunger throughout the world." Fuck me - they got something right!
The answers are obvious
And Callum and Cresswell provide them above. I want to add one more to their list (though I am not aware that this exists in New Zealand, it has distorted the global food market).
Ask the United States to stop subsidizing unprofitable energy crops. The United States is engaged in massive subsidies of corn crops meant to be converted to ethanol. These crops take more energy to produce then they yield and they are only profitable because of government mandates and gigantic subsidies.
These huge farming enterprises would normally be profitable producing crops either as corn, or as some other crop like wheat and would add greatly to the general food supply. Instead the government has created a massive distortion in the supply of food in favor of a product that there would normally be very little demand for.
- Jason
Spot on Callum & Peter
That UNESCO report should have been written by the natural methods they instruct everyone else to revert to. Maybe we should post them a feather and a pot of ink, lest we progress to a (shhh) scientific solution.
Science Daily (Nov. 28, 2007) — "Wheat breeders and Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists are counting on a "southern strategy" to protect the entire United States from Ug99, a strain of wheat stem rust disease that has spread from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula.
The fungal strain was named for its discovery in Uganda in 1999. The disease spreads by wind-blown fungal spores. Planting highly resistant wheat varieties in the southern United States where stem rust fungus can survive winter could prevent the disease from taking hold in the South and then spreading to the rest of the country.
+++
ScienceDaily (Mar. 17, 2008) —
A new and virulent wheat fungus, previously found in East Africa and Yemen, has moved to major wheat growing areas in Iran, reports the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization. The fungus is capable of wreaking havoc to wheat production by destroying entire fields.
Countries east of Iran, like Afghanistan, India, Pakistan,
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, all major wheat producers, are most threatened by the fungus and should be on high alert.
It is estimated that as much as 80 percent of all wheat varieties planted in Asia and Africa are susceptible to the wheat stem rust." (Puccinia graminis)
I bring to your attention...
... this excellent Libz PR from PC:
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Food Prices
Looming Crises and Drastic Measures
"There will be much discussion coming up to the election of the rising cost of food," Notes Libertarianz commodity spokesman Peter Cresswell. "So let's get some things out of the way now,"
"1) The word 'crisis' will be used, probably in conjunction with the adjective 'looming', undoubtedly some 'drastic' 'measures' will be proposed, this is a scare tactic, ignore it. There may be potentially a 'problem', so let's look for 'solutions'. Less dramatic, but much more sensible."
"2) Demand is the problem, supply is the solution. To approach this any other way is to deny reality."
"3) The environmentalists will be the biggest hindrance to any solutions with their Luddite-like aversion to potentially life saving technology such as genetic modification, just as they were opposed to genetic cross breeding."
"4) Limiting food exports (to keep food in a country) is not a supply solution. Limiting exports limits production. Limiting production limits the supply of food. This is very simple."
"5) In keeping with point 4, the freer the trade between countries, the easier food can be moved around the world. This is part of the supply solution."
"6) Subsidies might fractionally increase supply. However this is not guaranteed, they can in fact decrease production as efficiency is no longer an incentive. Subsidies are also not in keeping with free trade principles."
"7) You may not like it, but food is produced by ordinary people who need to make money. Not by philanthropists who want to feed the world. It is produced by them, it does not come from a finite communal world food depot. So when you hear that x percent of the world's population consume a disproportionately large percentage of the "world's" food supply, bear in mind that the food supply is not a static, limited, resource being pillaged. It is not being taken from the mouths of others. It is dynamic, and is produced on demand for those who can pay. If a certain percent of the world's population did not demand the food produced, it wouldn't suddenly be freed up for distribution, it simply would not be produced."
"The major parties will employ guilt and fear as popular tactics employed in conjunction with this problem. Ignore it. They don't understand the problem, and their solutions will be designed to net votes, not to actually solve anything. Libertarianz understands the problem, and we know the solution. New Zealand (and the world) needs more freedom and less government."
"It's enough to make you vote Libertarianz!"
ENDS
Apparently though, you're both wrong according to UNESCO:
A UN-sponsored report has called for urgent changes to the way food is produced, as soaring food prices risk driving millions of people to poverty.
The Unesco study recommends better safeguards to protect resources and more sustainable farming practices, such as producing food locally.
More natural and ecological farming techniques should be used, it says.
Haiti, Egypt, the Philippines and parts of West Africa have seen riots recently over the costs of rice, wheat and soya.
Unesco, a UN educational body, says increased demand for food in India and China, the growing market for biofuel crops, and rising oil prices are some of the factors behind the rising prices.
A group of 400 experts spent three years researching the report, which was unveiled on Tuesday at Unesco in Paris.
The authors found:
* Progress in agriculture has reaped very unequal benefits and has come at a high social and environmental cost
* Food producers should try using "natural processes" like crop rotation and use of organic fertilisers
* The distance between the produce and consumer should also be reduced
The BBC's Nick Miles says that with food prices at the top of the international political agenda, this is effectively a blueprint for the future of global agriculture.
Unesco says wheat prices have risen 130% percent since March 2007 while soy prices have jumped 87%.
"The status quo is no longer an option," Guilhem Calvo, a Unesco expert, told a news conference in Paris.
"We must develop agriculture less dependent on fossil fuels, that favours the use of locally available resources."
'Alleviate hunger'
The report said rising oil prices had made transport and farm production more expensive and had led to more crops being grown to make biofuels for vehicles.
It said biofuel production had mixed effects, adding: "The diversion of agricultural crops to fuel can raise food prices and reduce our ability to alleviate hunger throughout the world."
It also warned large swaths of central and western Asia and Africa were running out of water.
Farming was responsible for more than a third of the world's most degraded land, it said.
Unesco noted the ''considerable influence'' of big transnational corporations in North America and Europe.
By contrast, Latin America and the Caribbean are largely dependent on imported food, it said.
Over the weekend the World Bank outlined a plan of aid and loans to developing nations to help deal with the problem.