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| Home Front Economy | |
| Forget oil, the new global crisis is food | |
| 2008-01-05 | |
| A new crisis is emerging, a Global Food Catastrophe® that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group said at the Empire Club's 14th annual investment outlook in Toronto on Thursday. "It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to hit this year hard." Mr. Coxe said the sharp rise in raw food prices in the past year will intensify in the next few years amid increased demand for meat and dairy products from the growing middle classes of countries such as China and India as well as heavy demand from the biofuels industry. "The greatest challenge to the world is not US$100 oil; it's getting enough food so that the new middle class can eat the way our middle class does, and that means we've got to expand food output dramatically," he said.
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| Posted by:Seafarious |
| #8 The United States grows enough food to feed its people and export food around the world on just 2% of the land area. At the turn of the 20th Century in 1900, more than 40% of land was used to grow food. There are more trees in the United States today than there were in 1900. There are more houses, roads, etc., than ever. I don't think there's a food shortage in the United States, and probably won't be. The problem is that third-world farming methods use incredible amounts of land to produce very little in the way of food. Transportation and distribution methods are wasteful, and storage is a major problem. Government interference (a la Zimbabwe) contributes heavily to the food "shortage". We have plenty of food. We could have considerably more. European bureaucracy keeps American food off the shelves, and pushes up food prices in Europe, hitting the poor the hardest. Politics and corruption keep food from the poor in the rest of the world. It's not a food problem, but a government problem. Change the government to something that works for everyone's betterment, and there will not be a "food" crisis. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2008-01-05 15:40 |
| #7 You forgot Tractors, Harvesters and Combines, all use fuel of some sort, mostly Diesel, some Gasoline, and a few compressed LNG. No Fuel, no food, simple as that, there aren't enough horses, oxen etc, (Much less the old animal-drawn equipment left around, museum stocks are vanishingly small at best, the Amish will do OK, no-one else will) |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2008-01-05 14:57 |
| #6 There is an oil to food dependency. If there is an oil supply interruption for a few weeks people won't be able to drive to the store to buy food. If the interruption is for a few months there won't be any food in the store to buy. Not so much in the food producing countries, but in the vast swathes of food importing countries in Asia and Africa. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2008-01-05 14:06 |
| #5 Another way to look at it. My cousin took her 30K acres (Montana) out of wheat and put it into hay BECAUSE the insurance companies would never make good on a crop failure for any legitimate reason. She just said the hell with it and feeds her cattle the hay. Now if insurance companies were honest - at a minimum - that would be another 30K acres of hard spring wheat to make pasta. Now multiply it by other disaffected farmers and what is in set-asides. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2008-01-05 12:16 |
| #4 There are always upsides. The developed world can shrug and say to the underdeveloped world "You can have all the food you need, just use GM crops." Tee hee. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2008-01-05 10:44 |
| #3 Another crisis............yawn. We are living in an era which could be termed a crises crisis. |
| Posted by: no mo uro 2008-01-05 07:22 |
| #2 Rantburgers will be shocked to learn Donald Coxe is a self-satisfied little c*nt: http://www.donaldcoxe.com/aboutdonald.html I admit I was hoping he was fat. But I will settle for his "apothegms" or "Coxe-isms" as his "fans" call them. As of last count, eleven Congressional committees are probing Enron. Such pooled probing passion is probably unprecedented. Witty! |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2008-01-05 06:50 |
| #1 Nonsense. We can all eat carbon credits. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-01-05 03:59 |