Evidence continues to mount that the era of cheap food is coming to an end - it may already be over in some developing countries as prices continue to escalate. Pork farmers in the UK have been protesting about the cost of feed, meanwhile, which is running their bottom lines. Why is this happening?
For several decades, approximately since the oil shocks of the early 1970s, the world, particularly the western world, has enjoyed more or less stable growth combined with gradually declining commodity prices. Increases in productivity and low oil costs meant more efficiency and the ability to import food from distant overseas markets led to what may in future be considered a paradise for consumers. However, the days of cheap oil are over - now trading at more than US$100 per barrel, oil production is dominated by limited refining capacity, warfare in oil owning countries and fears that the days of peak production are already in the past. At the same time, increased demand for power in developing Asia, particularly India and China, mean that competition for newly discovered sources is much more intense than ever before.
Indeed, the economic success in China, India and elsewhere (e.g. Vietnam and Brazil) mean that a huge new middle class has emerged in those countries - it may be comparatively small compared to the overall populations of those countries but still amounts to hundreds of millions of people in total. One of the ways in which those new middle classes demonstrate their hard-earned status is in upgrading their diet, so that they now eat more meat, often much more meat. The production of meat is much less efficient than the production of fruit and vegetables in terms of land, water and grain use. The higher the demand for meat, therefore, the higher the cost of all food will be.
This situation is exacerbated by the intensifying problems of global climate change and degradation of safe water sources. The unpredictability of weather phenomena and the intensification of them make agriculture more difficult and more expensive. As for water, the first water wars are already being fought - the massacres in Darfur have been caused because nomads have had to move out of their traditional areas because water sources have dried up. Competition (i.e. warfare) is always more likely than co-operation in these circumstances.
One final factor has contributed to the increased cost of food: more and more land is being set aside to produce bio-diesel fuels. Land that would once have been used to grow crops for local use is now being used, not terribly efficiently on the whole, to grow crops which provide an alternative to petrol (gasoline) or other fuels. Inevitably, with less land available for food, the food that is produced has become more expensive. All grains are now selling on world markets at high prices. Rice is at a record high.
