Food & Society Guest Memo: Food Shortages and Civilizations; An Analysis and Opinion By Historian Felipe-Fernandes Armesto

The era of cheap food has been a disaster. We in the West could easily tighten our belts
By Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

The State exists to feed people. Politicians proclaim defence or law and order or social issues or wealth creation or health as their priority. But without food, nothing else matters. For most of history, leaders were those who knew how to get it - sometimes by hunting prowess, sometimes by means of a gift for commanding herds, sometimes by naked power, forcing subjects to work in the fields and dig ditches, and sometimes by mediating with the gods or spirits of nature.

Food gave rulers their legitimacy. Rulers lasted only as long as they kept people fed. Today's leaders - many of whom have gathered in Rome today for a world food security summit - have failed in this most elementary of obligations.

When food gives out, revolutions follow. Famine helped to precipitate the Ming dynasty to power in China. French revolutionaries asked Marie Antoinette for bread before they called for her head. One reason why the British gave up their Indian Raj was an awareness that they could not cope with famine. Food failure can bring down whole civilisations.

The Natufians of Syria - the first sedentary civilisation in the world, whose people once enjoyed such abundance that they could build permanent settlements while living on wild grains and products of the hunt - ran out of food 14,000 years ago. The graves of Minoan Crete, where oil and grain once filled the great palace labyrinths, are full of malnourished bones. Environmental overkill helped to exhaust the soil and empty the cities of the Maya lowlands towards the end of the first millennium, when jungle choked the hundreds of temples that once towered above the treetops.

A couple of centuries later, food failure wiped out the civilisations in the south west of North America. The Aztec empire collapsed when invaders cut off its supplies. Famines checked growth repeatedly in Europe until new crop varieties solved perennial food shortages in the 18th century.

Today's failure to deliver food for the people is worldwide. In the West, it means higher grocery bills. In much of the rest of the world, it means hunger. In at least 30 countries, it means famine. The price of staple grains has risen by an average of 80 per cent over the past two years. Some prices have trebled.

The psychological trauma is acute because the world has gone from comparative abundance to life-destroying dearth in less than a generation. Between the 1960s and 1980s, the “green revolution” - the development of high-yield hybrid staples - stacked up stockpiles and saved millions of lives. At the same time, aid agencies, governments and the United Nations revolutionised distribution and emergency response time. Now that achievement has crumbled. We seem unable to produce enough food, or to get what we can spare to those who need it.

The political convulsions have begun. The world's hunger victims are biting rubber bullets. In Haiti, the starvelings have rebelled. In West Africa, Egypt, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Madagascar they are rioting. In the West, governments' votes fall as grocery bills rise. The pundits' prescription - genetically modified food - will make the problems worse, by increasing wealth gaps, condemning poor farmers to dependency and multiplying environmental risks.

Meanwhile, most economists expect, at best, only a modest easing of prices, So is the world headed the way of the Natufians, Maya and Minoans?

A few comforting facts are worth bearing in mind. Supply will adjust to demand, especially in India and China, where most of the recent new demand has arisen. There are plenty of underexploited food resources in the world, especially in the sea, which constitutes 90 per cent of the biosphere, and is still seriously underexploited. Fish farming seems an unromantic substitute for old-fashioned fishing, but it increases the yield of selected species thousands of times over.

Although it would be disastrous if widely applied to foodstuffs, GM could solve the biofuel problem and save acreage by providing fuel from high-yielding plants. If all else fails, technology could turn plankton, insects and edible bacteria into something palatable. There is enormous scope for rationalising food distribution, and redeploying the food that the rich world wastes. Demand will slacken in any case as world population stabilises - which is bound to happen, although it may happen too late to save us.

It is normal for the world to be short of food. The brief era of cheap eating has been a disaster for the world. People in the rich world have eaten too much food, fattening themselves into obesity and sickness in consequence. Most of us would be better off with tighter belts. To make food cheap, we have poisoned farmland with chemicals, squandered precious water, abused marginal terrain and undermined biodiversity.

Low prices have impoverished farmers in the developing world. The poorest are locked into poverty - compelled, in effect, to produce surpluses of cheap grains and forgo the traditional and rare crops that might command a decent price in a fussier, pricier world market: the green revolution suppressed such exotic crops as quinoa, tef and

criollo potatoes - which the Western bourgeoisie is avidly rediscovering, now that they are rare and costly.

Mass demand for cheap standard varieties helped to strip traditional foods - including Britain's best apples and strawberries - from greengrocers' shelves. Huge tracts of productive land were smothered for housing, industry and the curse of “leisure” - really just a crass euphemism for mindless forms of expensive idleness. Ironically, cheap food has been a main cause of the present shortages, because it has made food production economically unattractive.

So it is time to put our money where our mouths are. If we valued food more, we would have more of it at higher standards. We would eat more sparingly and more discriminatingly. We would have more of those delicious rare varieties, because we would be willing to pay for them. The present shortages may provoke bloody revolutions as well as harrowing famines. But if they cause a revolution in our attitudes, their longer-term effects will transform the world for the better. We have to get used to paying more for food - and to learn to like it.

Felipe Fernández-Armesto is a historian. His books include Food: A History and Civilizations. You can learn more about Mr. Fernandez-Armesto and his work here.

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in the essay are those of the writer only. This essay also appears in the June 3, 2008 'The Times', United Kingdom.

Global Food Crisis Memo: Point-Counterpoint: Is the Soaring Cost of Food Good or Bad For American Consumers? And What About the Rest of the World?

In a recent New York Times article by writer Kim Severson, two intellectual leaders of the organic, healthy and local foods' movement, writer and Journalism professor Michael Pollan and Alice Waters, the food writer and restaurateur, told the writer that essentially what we've called the "end of the era of cheap food" is good for American and Western consumers and society.

Basically, the Pollan and Waters argument is that because the diet of most Americans and many others in the developed, western world is based on refined, processed foods and grain-fed meats, the costs of which are soaring, these consumers might turn to more healthy, less-refined whole grain-based, fresh and local foods like breads, cereals, fruits and vegetables and grass fed animals, since the costs of both the highly-refined processed foods and grain-based meats and the healthier alternatives will eventually become about equal.

In the Times' piece, Anna Lappe, founder of the Small Planet Institute, which studies food and public policy issues, disagrees with the Pollan and Waters' thesis, arguing that to equate cheap food with bad food is an oversimplification, because food pricing is a complex process.

Ms. Severson's article (nor do Pollan or Waters in the piece) doesn't address the myriad global issues and consequences involved in the soaring costs of basic food commodities such as rice, wheat, corn and soybeans and all the food products, meats and dairy items produced from them.

These consequences have been playing themselves out daily throughout the world in the form of food shortages and food riots in Haiti, Egypt and parts of Africa.

Additionally, as we reported here last week, dozens of countries that normally rely on food exports for income have either temporarily froze their food exports or cut back on the quantity of foodstuffs they export for fear of shortages and dramatic price hikes at home.

Further, even in the developed western world, the soaring costs of basic food items like eggs, milk, bread, rice and other staples are causing problems.

In Italy, consumers are cutting back on pasta--and even staged a one-day pasta boycott recently--because of the national foods' rising cost. The French staged a similar one-day boycott recently to protest the double-digit price increases of the baguette, that nation's bread staple.

In the U.S., lower-income and middle-income shoppers are being seriously pinched by the soaring costs of food, such as the 25% increase in the price of milk, the near 20% rise in the cost of eggs, and the double-digit price hikes in nearly every food product made from corn, wheat rice or soybeans, not to mention meat and poultry due to the soaring cost of grain which is the primary feed for chickens, hogs and cattle.

Counterpoint

Tom Philpott, a staff writer for the environmental publication Grist.org, as well as a professional farmer and cook, agrees with Anna Lappe's anti-Pollan and Waters thesis in a piece he wrote that's published today.

In his piece, "Why Michael Pollan and Alice Waters Should Quit Celebrating Food-Price Hikes," Philpott says Pollan and Waters are grossly simplifying matters when it comes to arguing that the current food-price hikes have a silver lining.

Philpott says in his piece he has a "hard time imagining people who are already struggling to put food on the table rambling off to the farmers' market to fill cloth bags with the sort of fresh, local, organic produce so beloved by Pollan and Waters (and me)." He adds: "Higher food prices are likely to send many time--and cash--strapped people in quite the opposite direction.

We invite you to first read Kim Severson's April 2, 2008 New York Times' piece with Michael Pollan and Alice Waters here. Then read Tom Philpott's counterpoint piece in today's Grist.org here.

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Analysis and View

It's our analysis and view that any discussion of rising food prices and health and diet can't be properly conducted unless it's in a global context.

Sure, it's possible that if the cost of grain-fed meat, fast food burgers and fries, processed packaged foods and high-fructose sweetened soft drinks, equal the cost of whole grain-based healthier foods and fresh produce, American and other wealthy nation consumers could find it an economic incentive to make a switch to a more healthier diet.

However, its also just as probable this won't be the case. Further, education should be the prime motivator for eating healthier in our opinion, not forced economic choice--which is just as likely to not work as to work anyway.

For example, rather than eat healthy foods, the growing middle class in fast-developing countries like China and India are eating more like westerners, which is one of the reasons for the soaring prices of foods like meat and dairy products. They are going backwards from a dietary standpoint with their new wealth--from a grain and fruit and vegetable-based diet to a higher-fat animal protein and processed foods diet. Is one reason they are doing so because they have increased economic choice, which they do?

Additionally, although we have much respect for the work of both Pollan and Waters, we think it's myopic to talk about American consumers, food price hikes and eating healthier in isolation from the rest of the world. This way be more because the U.S was the focus of Ms. Severson's article however, in fairness to Pollan and Waters.

After all, it is the price of some of the healthiest foodstuffs that are soaring the most. Rice (in its unrefined state) is one of the healthiest of all grains, yet its cost to consumers globally has increased by over 50% since just January of this year.

Wheat--the stuff that produces whole grain bread--has increased by 30% in just the first four months of this year.

Further, the cost to consumers of organic and locally-produced fresh fruits and vegetables is rising as fast as the less-healthy, processed foods. This is do to such factors as the soaring price of oil, gasoline and energy sources, increased labor costs, and a marketplace in which organic producers, middle men and retailers make a far higher gross margin on organic foods than they do on conventionally produced ones.

Even prices of fresh produce at farmers' markets is soaring. This is do to many of the same factors--especially the increased costs of fuel and energy.

Therefore, in our analysis, any discussion of food price hikes and healthier eating must be discussed in a global context. For example, when China and Japan decide to buy up as much rice as they can globally--which is happening presently--that effects the supply and price of rice throughout the world. It's kind of like oil in that way, isn't it.

Also, when farmers in the USA decide to grow organic produce instead of conventional crops because they can sell it for a higher premium (which we don't object too), that means there's less "cheaper" conventional produce to ship overseas, where many consumers have a budget of less than $1 a day for food.

As we've argued in Natural~Specialty Foods Memo before, we do believe the "era of cheap food" as we've known it in the U.S. and other western nation's is coming to an end. However, the issues of world hunger, diet and health are far from over--including in the U.S. where more people are receiving food stamps at present than at any time in the history of the program.

We have absolutely no argument with the fact that Americans and others in the world need to eat better, healthier foods. Obesity, diabetes, heart disease--these are all illness which can be avoided in many ways by eating a better diet. We also agree with the environmental benefits to global society by increasingly employing sustainable farming methods.

However, lets also not forget that even in this "era of cheap food" billions of people throughout the world have gone hungry and billions more lack food security. Of course, there are political and distribution problems which cause this condition as well as economic ones.

The "era of cheap food" is coming to an end in our analysis. But the issue of domestic hunger in the U.S. and throughout the globe is far from over. The discussion is just beginning on what to do.

Food & Society Global Food Crisis Special Feature: Wal-Mart's Sam's Club USA Limiting Rice Purchases; Costco Doing Same on More Limited Store Basis

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Editor's Note: The Sam's Club Warehouse division of Wal-mart, Inc., the worlds largest corporation and retailer, has announced it's limiting the amount of certain types of rice that's it's customers--which include small businesses as well as consumers--can buy per-shopping trip at all of its U.S. club stores.

Additionally, competitor Costco Wholesale also is limiting customer purchases of certain rice varieties on a limited, store-by-store basis in the U.S.

Below is a report (Thursday, April 24, 2008) by the Reuters' News Agency's New York Bureau:

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Wal-Mart Stores' (WMT) Sam's Club warehouse division said Wednesday that it is limiting sales of Jasmine, Basmati and long grain white rices "due to recent supply and demand trends."

The news came as rice prices surged, with U.S. rice futures hitting an all-time high Wednesday on worries about supply shortages. Rice for the most actively traded July contracted jumped 62 cents to $24.820 per 100 pounds on the Chicago Board of Trade, after earlier rising to a record $24.85.

Relentless demand from developing countries and poor crop yields have pushed rice prices up 70% so far this year, raising concerns of severe shortages of the staple food consumed by almost half the world's population.

On Tuesday, Costco Wholesale (COST), the largest U.S. warehouse club operator, said it has seen increased demand for items like rice and flour as customers, worried about global food shortages and rising prices, stock up.

Tim Johnson, president-CEO of California Rice Commission, which represents growers and millers of rice in the state, said Tuesday: "Bottom line, there is no rice shortage in the United States. We have supplies."

Sam's Club, the No. 2 U.S. warehouse club operator, said it is limiting sales of the rices to four bags per customer per visit, and it is working with its suppliers to ensure the products remain in stock.

The broader chain of Wal-Mart stores has no plans to limit food purchases, however.
Warehouse clubs cater to individual shoppers as well as small businesses and restaurant owners looking to buy less expensive, bulk goods.

With prices for basic food items surging, customers have been going to the clubs to try to save money on bulk sizes of things like pasta, cooking oil and rice.

Sam's Club said is not limiting sales of flour or cooking oil at this time. Costco said some of its stores have put limits on sales of items such as rice and flour, but it is trying to modify those restrictions to meet customer demand.

Costco Chief Executive James Sinegal told Reuters that he believes the recent surge in demand was being driven by media reports about rising global demand and shortages of basic food items in some countries.

Food costs have soared worldwide, spurred by increased demand in emerging markets like China and India; competition with biofuels; high oil prices and market speculation.

The steep increases have followed similar jumps in the price of wheat, corn and soybeans that have added to Americans' growing grocery bill and led to violent food riots in poor countries including Haiti, Senegal and Pakistan.

Most of the rice eaten in the world is consumed within 60 miles of where it was grown, said Nathan Childs, an economist and rice expert with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Traditionally very little of it was traded in the world market.

As populations crossed borders, the taste for specialty rices such as the Indian basmati, or Thai jasmine rice, which grow only in their areas of origin, spread.

U.S. production of long grain and medium grain rice is strong, and the global crop is larger than ever, Childs said. But with some of the principal exporters of the higher-priced rices, such as India and Vietnam, shunning foreign sales to control prices at home and the cost of food generally going up, the price of rice has been climbing to new heights.

What adds to the price spike — and the run on specialty products like basmati — is that rice consumers tend to be very loyal. The market is highly segmented by type of rice and quality, and buyers will generally not take a substitute, Childs said.

"California's had a pretty good crop, but basmati and jasmine consumers have a history of not switching," he said. "They could always have bought cheaper Calrose. But they don't."

Rice prices have risen 68% since the start of 2008.

Food & Society Memo Global Food Crisis Special Feature: Nations Throughout the World Are Curbing Food Imports to Secure Supplies and Limit Inflation

The commodity prices of the world's basic foods--rice, wheat, corn, soy and edible oils--are soaring. Rice is up about 68% since just January of this year. The cost of wheat has increased a whopping 30% over last year's prices, and the price of corn is not far behind. Soy prices are also seeing double-digit price spikes.

These price increases are just the beginning, most experts believe. As a result of these double-digit hikes, nearly every food product--from rice, bread and tortillas, to milk, eggs, cereals and pasta--is soaring at the supermarkets and food stalls of the world.

The world's stockpiles of rice, wheat and corn also are near 50-year lows.

These real price hikes, combined with the decreased stockpiles and lots of government and consumer uncertainty over the global food supply, has resulting in numerous food exporting countries curbing the quantities of basic foodstuffs they export overseas, despite the fact most of these nation's rely on food exports to bring in much needed revenue.

As we reported earlier, Asia's rice exporting countries are curbing rice exports to various degrees. However, it's not just rice exports that are being curbed, nor is it just Asian nation's that are doing the export curbing.

Rather, numerous countries throughout the world have started to limit the types and quantities of the foods the export. Below is a brief summary of some of those nations, and the types of basic foods they have started to limit in terms of exporting overseas:

Thai farmers dry rice grains at a rice farm in Suphan-Buri, Thailand. (Photo: courtesy Getty Images.) Thailand is the world's largest exporter of rice, with 31% of the global market. Last year it exported 9.4 million tons of rice, out of a total of 20 million tons produced. Thus far, unlike numerous Asian nations, Thailand hasn't imposed any import restrictions on rice.

Argentina: The nation is the world's four-largest exporter of wheat. Argentina has extended the closure of its wheat export registry by pushing back the date that new wheat shipments can start to leave the country. This has had the effect of extending the time when wheat exports scheduled to be shipped to other countries takes effect, thus creating a greater stockpile of wheat for domestic use and consumption.

Cambodia: The Southeast Asian nation has announced a two-month ban on rice exports.

Vietnam: the nation has banned all rice exports until June, 2008, at which time it says it will evaluate the policy.

Egypt: The country is banning all rice exports until October of this year.

India: India has banned exports of all varieties of rice except Basmati rice. India also has dumped the normal import duties it charges exporters on edible oils as a way to increase imports of the foodstuffs into the nation.

Indonesia: The Southeast Asian nation has stopped exporting all exports of medium-grade rice.

Pakistan: The country is more worried about the food imports it relies on than on its food exports. Currently, the nation says it needs to double its wheat imports in order to meet domestic demand. In order to generate additional income to purchase more wheat, Pakistan is considering putting a value-added fee or tax on all of the rice it exports.

Russia: The nation's government just approved extending its already high tariffs on wheat and barley exports. These tariffs were set to expire next month in May.

Ukraine: This eastern European country suspended all wheat exports for the first week of April and is considering doing so again. It also has reduced its barley exports significantly.

Kazakhstan: the nation has suspended all wheat exports until September 1, 2008.

Malawi: Malawi has halted all corn exports except those to the nearby nation of Zimbabwe.

Guinea: This less-developed county has banned the export of all agricultural, forestry, livestock, fishing and oil products.

Food & Society Memo Global Food Crisis Special Feature: How You Can Help the Hungry At No Cost to You; Just Spend A Few Minutes At FreeRice.Com

What if we told you there was a way you could help those people in the poorest nations in the world who are currently suffering the most with the growing global food price crisis without spending a penny of your own money?

Additionally, what if we told you you could do so without even leaving the computer where you are currently reading Natural~Specialty Foods Memo?

Further, what if we added that spending just ten minutes of your time playing a fun and educational online vocabulary-building game would result in a donation of rice to hungry people who desperately need it?

Yes, all it takes is a little bit of your time!

Like us, we hope you would say...tell me about it, so I can play the game and get free rice to hungry throughout the world.

Here is what you do:

First, go to the website http://www.freerice.com/.

Once there, you will be at the home page of the vocabulary game. There you will see a word for you to define. There are four possible answers. Just click on the word/answer that best defines the vocabulary word.

If you get the correct definition, you move on to the next word. There's actually no losing, because if you get the answer wrong, you still move on to another word choice. It's a win-win situation--both for you in building your vocabulary skills, and more importantly for the world's hungry.

For every word definition you get correct, FreeRice.com's sponsors (you can see the sponsors' ads across the very bottom of the web page) donate 20 grains of rice to the United Nation's World Food Program to feed hungry people in the world's most food-challenged regions and nations.

We just spent 15 minutes playing the FreeRice vocabulary game. Even though we aren't all that bright, we still managed to get lots of word definitions correct, resulting in a donation of lots of free grains of rice thanks to the sponsoring companies.

Since we know Natural~Specialty Foods Memo's (NSFM) readers are much brighter than its writers and publishers are--we expect you to do even better than we did in your 10 or 15 minutes playing the vocabulary game on the website.

We also ask our readers to please email this piece from NSFM to as many people as you can so that as much free rice as possible can get donated.

Just imagine if a just a couple thousand people get the link from Natural~Specialty Foods Memo and each play FreeRice.com for just ten minutes each. The result would be lots of free rice for those most in need at this time of soaring global food prices and growing hunger.

We invite you to take some time to play the vocabulary game--and to share this piece with all those on your email list so they can play it as well and generate free rice for those most in need of basic food.

Click here to go to the FreeRice website.

Food & Society Memo Global Food Crisis Special Feature: Asia Limits Rice Exports As Prices, Supply and Uncertainty Rise

Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Editor's Note: Asia accounts for about 76% of the 30 million tons of rice exported annually. The price of rice is soaring globally, in part because many exporting countries like those in Asia have dramatically reduced exports of the food staple do to fears of shortages at home.

Asia is divided into two nation camps so to speak in terms of rice production: The "rice haves," those Asian nations that are able to produce enough rice to meet domestic consumption, and the "rice have-nots," which are the countries in Asia that can't produce enough rice for their people and therefore must import varying amounts of the food staple.

Christian Science Monitor correspondent David Montero provides a look at domestic rice production in Asia and those Asian "rice have" nations and those countries in Asia that can't produce enough rice to meet domestic consumption needs and thus must rely on imports.

Read Mr. Montero's report and analysis here.

The Christian Science Monitor also has a number of related stories and Podcasts about the global food crisis linked on the article here which offer additional knowledge and insight about the pressing issue.