Food prices

The Post has a great article up on the causes behind the spike in global food prices and the implications thereof. The piece is as interesting as it is sobering. The Reader’s Digest: demand is high, supply is tight, those circumstances are not likely to improve quickly, and a lot of poor people are going to take it in the gut, literally.

Prolonged food shortages can have many awful side effects, some obvious and other not so much. On the obvious side, shortages can morph into famines. A person starving to death is, of course, bad. Millions meeting that fate is that much more so. Without some careful resource planning and policy coordination, a big hunk of the world’s poor are staring down that very gun. I am not suggesting that I think a famine is likely but that result must be considered.

The more likely and therefore more troubling outcome though, is an extensive period of political instability. Something like 3 billion people live on a dollar or less a day. When food prices double as they have, this population does not have the means to absorb that kind of increase. Instead, they go hungry and if history has taught us anything, it is that hungry people are desperate people and desperate people are dangerous. Not to overdramatize the current situation but chronic food shortages were among the driving factors behind the French and Russian Revolutions. More recently, the Haitian Prime Minister was forced from office a couple of weeks ago because of soaring food prices and the subsequent riots. Now I grant you that that may not the best example, given that Haiti’s governments are about as stable as Gary Busey on PCP, but a direct result of hunger is political instability. Now, I doubt we are, as yet, facing widespread uprising but that is not a trivial concern in places like Haiti, Egypt, Indonesia, etc.