Food insecurity

Feeling especially generous today? You should, because the President’s just promised an additional 770 million dollars of your money for food aid, most of it going to sub-Saharan Africa. Now, this is a pathetically small amount of food aid, especially relative to the number of people who are hungry. And the rising cost of food. Which is causing food riots. Which has prompted the introduction of said “package,” unfortunately attached to the FY 09 Iraq-Afghanistan war appropriations bill, so it would not be dispersed until October at the earliest, even though people are rioting right now, and also hoarding rice in Orange County.

Unless you’re living in some Austrian cellar (sorry, couldn’t resist), you probably know that the price of food is massively on the rise. By 43%, globally, over the last year. The neo-Malthusians among us are saying that at last, demand is outstripping supply (remember, that’s how price gets set, as a function of the relationship between supply and demand). To be fair, most people agree that any absolute shortfall only exists as a function of distribution (or its lack thereof, or its exorbitantly high prices). Or so claims an upcoming book from a credible source. But the fact that there is, in theory, plenty of food to go around is unlikely to appease the hunger of the more than 97,000 Palestinians the UN said it had to stop feeding this week due to rising prices and supply shortfalls.

Rising energy prices are partly to blame. An appalling article in this week’s New York Times confirms what we already knew: that increasingly it’s taking more and more fuel to get you the spicy Cheetos and Arizona Iced Tea that you so desperately need. The average meal travels more than 1,500 miles to get to your plate. Higher fuel prices get factored into the cost of goods; unfortunately for the rational-choice economics people, they also create pay-later externalities like global warming and air and water pollution. These things, in turn, contribute to feedback loops that exacerbate the conditions that cause starvation.

The Assistant Director-General of the FAO is trying to get food security issues on the table for Kyoto II (odds of US signing such a thing? Slightly above Tampa’s odds for an 08 World Series win) by talking up the results of a new study that predict global warming will reduce sub-Saharan crop yields by 40% in the next 25 years. That’s right. 40% in the next 25 years. But even that horrifying stat, probably signifying the terrible deaths of millions, wasn’t enough to get in on the “roadmap to negotiations” at the Bali Summit.

Make no mistake – global hunger is getting worse, not better. The UN is currently responsible for the primary food access of 73 million people, with an estimated additional 4 million added to the world government teat this year. Which is just part of what makes American ethanol subsidies so objectionable. The LA Times is right to denounce the gross spectacle of America burning corn while parts of the world starve. There is a global food shortage, encouraged in part by the conversion of crops into fuel. Check out this article, from hardly-a-liberal-bastion Time Magazine, claiming (among other things) that the amount of corn used to fill the tank of an SUV once could feed someone for a whole year.

Meanwhile, ethanol production is itself accelerating global warming with a combination of deforestation and production costs; turns out it’s more carbon-intensive to produce than the fossil fuel use it offsets, especially when you consider that deforestation is responsible for 20% of all current carbon emissions (forests are carbon sinks – one reason why reforestation initiatives for so-called “carbon offsets” are problematic, other than the fact that many of these operations are scams, is that trees provide temporary sinks that then can release carbon all at once when they are cut down, burn, die, etc., no matter what Coldplay says.).

So, whither the free market in this situation? I’ve always been puzzled by the inconsistency of those who say the market will solve things like global warming but needs some help (subsidies, no-bid contracts) for things like food production and rebuilding New Orleans. The reality is that, at least in the United States, farm subsidies are devastating for agricultural sustainability in the world’s poorest countries. In recent years, as those subsidies have become more difficult to defend, a they’ve re-branded under newer, sexier slogans like “energy independence” and “renewable resources.” You don’t have to be Milton Friedman, or even understand marginal utility, to get that this is one area where government intervention might not be the best idea, especially given the collateral damage generated by externalities and in other countries.

Maybe it’s not such a bad idea for food prices to have to reflect the “true cost” of producing the goods. This would probably mean less processed food was consumed, more local food was eaten, and the end of cheap (and, frankly, nasty) corn-based additives. But, it’s hard to preach the gospel of “eating locally” to starving people in Sub-Saharan Africa whose agriculture’s been gutted by cheap imports and global warming-induced climate shifts largely initiated by countries that got to the development table first.

Then again, maybe it’s better to have someone else check out our sandwiches first.

(For more, including some amazing graphics, check out the Washington Post’s series on this issue.)