The World Is a Hungry Place

There is a world hunger crisis. The price of basic food stuffs have escalated in the past two years to where there have been food riots, shortages, and has lead to more people going hungry (and then starving) every night. Now, there is enough food in the world and the earth's capability to produce food that this is mostly an economic crisis.

Countries are now limiting exports of their own foodstuffs and have special police teams to crack down on hording. World Food Programs are having difficulty meeting demand and are seeing their reserves drained. Countries that distribute food (mostly authoritarian nations, but Egypt, nominally democratic, also does this, Iraq also does this) have lessened the caloric intake of their subjects (ie. reduced rations).

Most people in the world don't eat like we in the US do. Here in the US our food purchases are mostly of processed and "enriched" foods, and there is a sizable percentage of people who buy mostly finished foods (eat out or take-home). Because of that, even though what we are paying for our food here is only a fraction of the increase that other people are seeing (most of the cost here is middle men, processors, value-added, which has been absorbing some of the cost increases). When wheat prices have tripled in the past two years, we here in the US don't see our bread prices triple, it's more like a 30-40% increase. However, in other parts of the world, people buy the raw foodstuffs. For them, this is a major crisis.

That doesn't mean this problem is only relegated to second and third world countries. Here in the US our government regularly provides our foodbanks and charity pantries with surplus food (you may remember the "cheese blocks" that were the focus of the news years ago). Those products, while still distributed, are now running at less than 50% of previous years. Donations from food whole-sellers have also dropped. Private money donations are up, but those provided less than 50% of the food donated in the past, and mostly went to administrative and distribution costs. Because of the increase in diesel, those costs have increased to match the increase in donations. All this at a time where more and more people are in need of the services these charities provide.

Biofuels is taking most of the blame, even though that at the top end, only 20-30% of the price increase can be tied directly to biofuels. This is intentional misdirection and subsection to keep up from paying attention to the man behind the curtain, which is fossil fuels. The price increase of fossil fuels, which is also driving the biofuels revolution, accounts for the majority of the increase (including the cost increase from biofuels) becomes the far and away leader of the price increases.

This isn't all bad. Farmers, who normally don't see any increases from the normal rate of inflation we pay at the grocery store, are now seeing record prices for their products. Many are paying off debt (if you've never seen debt papers for a farm operation, count yourself lucky) and are now incurring new debt by buying new equipment.

Things are going to be bad this summer, as winter supplies run thin before the summer crops come in.