According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, food prices worldwide have risen on an average of 80 percent since 2006. The billion poor people in underdeveloped and developing countries who are "food-insecure" and spend up to about 75 percent of their income on food, went hungry when food prices doubled. The leading economist, Maarten Chrispeels, said, "The era of abundant cheap food seems to be coming to an end and malnutrition, which had been declining slowly for the past 50 years thanks to the Green Revolution, is on the rise again."
The prices of all basic commodities, such as rice, corn, wheat, sorghum, and soybeans, have almost doubled in the last two years, paralleling the increase in oil. "Not only have bread and breakfast cereals increased in price, but also beer (made from barley or rice), soft drinks (sweetened with corn syrup) as well as beef, chicken, pork and all animal products, including dairy, fed on grains," explains Chrispeel.
The causes of these price increases vary depending on the country and on each different crop and its location. Thus, there the system is so complex that no solution could solve everone's. Chrispeel believes the real solution is to accelerate agricultural production worldwide, a goal that will take years to achieve.
I just found this interesting.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20080509/news_lz1e9chrispe.html
I am not an economist, but even I think this should be a 'hot button' in political issues. I don't hear as much about it as I would like. An 80 percent increase since 2005, just within the last 4 years, is a huge jump. I've recognized the jump primarily from my mom. She is a smart shopper, and whenever I would go along with her she would point out which foods increased since the last visit (in general, not just minor differences). At first it was the price of milk, then it spread to bread, and now it seems everything as a whole is increasing too fast.
ReplyDeleteI took a microeconomics class at Penn State last fall and we talked about this several times. The professor said that he believes there are two different reasons that prices are going up. First, more and more crops are being used to make ethonol, and this takes away from the supply of food, sending prices up. Second, there are two ways to grow more food: increase the amount of land used for farming and increase the amount harvested from the land. Since we are starting to run out of land to use for farming, we are forced to rely on fertilizers, pesticides, etc. to increase the yield of existing farms, which is a lot slower than just planting more.
ReplyDeletewow..this was a wonderful siting I guess I too came up with a similar situation. Its like as I am form India and the currencies are different, so its like whenever I go to a place to shop I am reminded of the price at which I used to shop back in India. Its like I went to this Indian restaurant and had all types of indian delicacies what you call as "CHAAT". They are all spicy indian fast food one gets to munch at. They are really delicious to eat. So when I was about to pay the bill it amounted to around 51$ for just having eaten barely 7 items. I guess I would have paid around 200 Rs maximum if I was in India. The prices are so different. I know this doesn't really go with what the blog post was all about, but i really wanted to narrate this to everyone in here.
ReplyDeleteThis is very interesting topic especially since the world population is steadily increasing. This information really made me think about the challenges of the future as these problems continue grow. Some serious measures are needed to combat the issue of rapidly rising food prices.
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ReplyDeleteEthanol is one reason I've heard quite a lot for why food costs have risen--and making ethanol from corn isn't even cost effective! In fact, according to research I did in 2006, it takes 29% more energy to make a gallon of ethanol from corn than the gallon of ethanol actually contains. Of course, in three years the scenario could change, but it started out as a negative investment, and as far as I know that hasn't changed. Just because it's "alternative fuel" doesn't mean it's good, or that we should immediately embrace it and subsidize it--it's affecting food costs especially in Mexico and costing more to the world than it's actually giving us back.
wow you would think you would hear more about this from day to day. i have hear about this before, but i didn't know it was 80 percent since 2006. i know in the recent years i have been hearing about how companies are not raising the prices on their items, but if you look at older packaging you would see they have decreased amount they give you at that price. peanut butter, cereal, and ice cream were the big ones i heard about back then.
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