Re: Food costs at record high as U.N. warns of volatile era

[Guest guest]

I'll repost two links here. The food supply seems to have reached a tipping point. By that I mean advances in agriculture have allowed an expanding population. Much of the increase has come about because of oil. Oil allowed high mechanization in the West, especially in the US, and it also allowed modern fertilizers. With the recent oil shocks, oil prices have made fertilizer much more expensive than it was just a few years ago and the prices are not falling. Fuel is also more expensive for the machines. Labor is also something of an issue.

We've basically gotten ourselves into the same fix most ancient societies found themselves in at one time or another. Even in ancient times there were advances in agriculture and trade that allowed big population increases. Things worked well until something upset the works. This could be war or more likely drought or an insect plague. Even a period of heavy rains, maybe with floods, could also wipe out crops. When that happened, so did starvation and often the collapse of the government, very often accompanied with extreme bloodshed and dissolution of the society itself. The Maya Indians are just one example. They had an elaborate system of storing water for the dry seasons but eventually a heavy drought came that lasted for years. That was enough to push them over the edge and the cities were emptied and the population crashed.

Maybe we are seeing this cycle all over again. It wouldn't be so bad in the West if we kept food supplies to meet our own needs first and traded grain and other staples for outside foods that we wanted, like citrus from Brazil in the off season, etc. That would mean putting food aid to other countries third or cutting it altogether. Not a popular thing to think about, but given how high food prices could get, especially after the massive new regulation on farms from the Food Safety Law, most people would probably come around.

Here are the reposted links.

This one is about the carrying capacity of land. It talks about how all the food and other aid given out over the decades has prevented recipient nations from addressing issues domestically.

http://www.carryingcapacity.org/va2.html

This one is about the Demographic Transition. This article explains the classical version and how it doesn't apply to all nations for various reasons. It also lists nations in each stage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

In a message dated 2/3/2011 5:25:34 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, no_reply writes:

Food costs at record high as U.N. warns of volatile era