open Democracy News Analysis - The food economy's missing link, Tony Curzon Price - Comments

Not logged in on "The food economy's missing link"

Not logged in — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:44:40 +0100

Thanks for mentioning meat, and not only the modern issue of biofuels together with the global food crisis.

According to various studies, 100 million tons of grain are being diverted to make biofuel this year, but over seven times as much (760 million tons) will be used to feed animals to produce meat. Depending on the type of animal, it takes up to, and sometimes more than, 10 plant calories to deliver 1 meat calorie. Meat consumption is therefore by far the biggest waste of grain globally.

Possible ways of future nutrition without livestock are presented by the FutureFood-project.

spamlet on "The food economy's missing link"

spamlet — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:22:28 +0100

(Apologies Tony, I had not noticed this thread was still going.)

The point I am making is not that population control can address the current situation, but that experience has shown that a long history of attempts to address such situations has not resolved them, and cannot do so when there is no attempt to ensure that populations are tailored to the environmental conditions that support them. Not only that, but also to ensure that those populations are tailored to fit what those conditions are likely to be in the foreseeable future. Only measures to control both sides of the growth equation – economics AND population – can possibly succeed. As each of these is the driver of the other and the outcome is the perpetual spiral of crises we now see, both must be tackled simultaneously.

As in all things ‘planning’ the tendency is to simply let ‘the market’ decide, and in the case of population, let the food supply/market decide. Let population rise so that, in much of the world it is always teetering on the borderline between the barely adequate, and starvation (And thereby as a ‘spin off’ ensuring that there is a handy supply of labour ready to work for next to nothing.), so that a minor fluctuation in supply or price causes an instant catastrophe. When the inevitable happens, add a temporary new supply, after a massive international campaign, then watch the same conditions develop again. We become locked into a continual cycle of crisis management where every ‘success’ simply ensures a bigger crisis in the future.

There was a time when this plain truth was widely recognised and there was a great movement towards fertility management, combined with education, in an attempt to control global population growth, and break this cycle. Over the last half century, however, as population has mushroomed, cornucopian economics has replaced the old concerns with an absurd false certainty that ‘the market has always provided: therefore the market will always provide’. With climate change accelerating, and key resources in terminal decline, still the ‘economists’ hold sway over the argument and urge ever faster attempts at growth and consumption in order to ‘correct’ the ‘market glitches’ that have resulted in any particular ‘food crisis’. An agricultural sector that has undoubtedly worked miracles in the past is now confidently expected to be able to supply half again as much food in the future, at the same time as the resource base that made the earlier miracles possible is rapidly disappearing! How many gamblers would bet on the miracle every time? How many of them would stake their lives and their children’s children’s lives on it? How many would make this bet despite knowing that those past ‘miracles’ have only served to maintain a consistent 1/3 of the global population in food poverty, rather than to move them out of it? Well, that is what our leaders and their favoured advisors are doing on all our behalves.

As if the situation was not bad enough, there has arisen a branch of the new ‘econo-cornucopian religion’ whose only function seems to be to try and prevent any measures being taken to avert this, and other, similar crises, through sensible measures to allow populations to fall to sustainable levels. Any person or organisation that dares to even suggest that infinite growth of population and economy is an impossibility in a finite world, is (or has been) made the subject of ridicule in the wider media and even denied access to the more ‘respectable’ platform of the various BBC outlets.

It is from the econo-cornucopians that the ‘message’ comes that we have a ‘problem’ of declining populations in parts of Europe (Not that this has any bearing on the overall global population curve: it is the ‘fertile’ nations that are contributing the bulk of the curve, and any declines in a few EU countries will make no difference: and, as is demonstrated by the massive attempts at immigration from these countries into Europe, they are quite capable of very rapidly filling up any ‘slack’, given the opportunity.).

As has been noted in the recent House of Lords report on the economics of migration, the oft mooted ‘problem’ of ‘our aging populations’ requires nothing more than a rise in retirement age to begin a solution. I would argue that an economy is nothing more than the balance of accounts of a population, and could, if so desired, be tailored to suit , whatever its size. There is, of course, little hope of this, while the cornucopians are allowed to call all the shots: which sadly, they are: so we have constant demands for more population, so we can go on expanding the deified ‘Economy’ into an ever bigger bonfire of the world’s resources. And so that there will always be an increasing number of have nots to suffer crises like the current ones.

I might add that the ‘econocornucopian argument’ does not restrict itself to the traditional economic sector, but also pervades the bulk of otherwise ‘environmental’ organisations. It is a brave soul who suggests to CPRE or FoE officials, for example, that they really ought to be considering population dynamics in their campaigns! No: to a man these will all contend, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that all we need to do is distribute resources more fairly and any number of extra mouths can be fed; land for housing can be found and so on. Why they think that millennia of failed efforts in this respect can suddenly be turned to success at a time of accelerating global crisis, is a source of great wonder and amazement to me. That they think they can do this and then the crisis will go away is just mind-boggling!

To have no care to the damage one is inflicting on one’s surroundings, is to forfeit the claim to ‘sapiens’ that distinguishes our species from the genera of ‘animals’. In nature, resources are conserved by predation: grazers are kept on the move, so that they do not often get the opportunity to completely destroy the resources on which they, and their descendents, depend (Islands, where man has introduced deer etc. being the usual ‘opportunities’ to witness the inevitable catastrophic crashes.). Man is like a grazing herd with the wolves/lions etc. removed, we are stuck in one place (Earth) and nothing is controlling our growth. Unless something is done to (and probably even if we do) reverse population growth, we will soon have exhausted everything that supports us, and then our numbers will rapidly crash. This is how nature and simple mathematics treats animals that get out of line. The tragedy, is that the one species for which this did not have to be the way, is determined that nevertheless, it shall be.

I trust you now know where I stand on this issue.

If you want to read more about what really can be done to address the problem of ‘the food economy’s missing link’, you could do worse than begin with www.optimumpopulation.org and follow the links from there.

Sincerely,

opendemocracy on "The food economy's missing link"

opendemocracy — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:07:43 +0100

spamlet,

you should reveal a bit more of your position. if you really think that "population is a variable in the immediate problem", you seem to be suggesting that population control to address the _current_ crisis is to be advocated. Can you really mean that? I assume and hope not.

and maybe you can reply to the point about declining populations in many parts of Europe. Does this conform to your view of man "living like an animal"?

Tony

spamlet on "The food economy's missing link"

spamlet — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:40:12 +0100

"the question of world population is not a variable in the context of the immediacy of the problem at hand"

Yes it is: as it always has been:

Any 'success' that you have on this occasion, simply means that more survive to multiply and create the next crisis. Without a proper population policy there is no way on Earth (or anywhere else) that crisis management can do anything other than make it much harder the next time, as we have seen over and over and over again.

Man it seems, despite his 'superior brain', has not the slightest inclination to 'cut his coat according to his cloth': he opts to live and die by the same rules as the rest of the animals. And billions will continue to suffer as a result. If man continues to live like an animal: he will continue to die like one.

opendemocracy on "The food economy's missing link"

opendemocracy — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:47:55 +0100

Thank you for the nutritional clarification, abuelita42pj. I am working a small numerical model into shape to give a slightly more precise answer to the question: "how much could we reduce food prices by reducing the frequency of our meat consumption". Can you give some advice on what a meat minimising but balanced diet would look like, maybe separating adults and children?

spamlet --- the question of world population is not a variable in the context of the immediacy of the problem at hand. the question of what the population should be is deeply difficult. I take great comfort from the thought that improving girls' and women's education is a good in itself and the best way to reduce birth rates.

Tony

spamlet on "The food economy's missing link"

spamlet — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:50:59 +0100

It being simply impossible, of course for even these original instigators of oeconomics (at a time when it must really have meant 'house keeping') to countenance the idea that all they needed was fewer people, and then they could eat whatever they liked.

Seems the Greeks, for all their wisdom could not see the truth when it was staring them in the face any more than modern 'economists' can.

(I don't believe the Greeks could have been that stupid, but I wouldn't want to spoil the story on that account!)

abuelita42pj on "The food economy's missing link"

abuelita42pj — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:34:08 +0100

Vegetarians may help in quantities but it also would help if he changed his filet mignon into ground beef. There still are some advantages esp for growing children and teens to gain health from protein in meat. Also, one needs the animals for their milk content giving the calcium for growning bones in the young and strengthening them in the "old folks." Vegetables are needed and they are healthy but they are not the cure-all you seem to imply. Milk is a more perfect food if one adds Vitamin D to it.

The food economy's missing link, Tony Curzon Price

admin — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:26:35 +0100

Economics - roots and food

Tony Curzon Price

May 3rd 2008

Xenophon wrote the first economics book as a treatise on how an Athenian nobleman should best manage his estate. It is often useful, when thingking about big questions of resource allocation in the World economy, to return to the Socratic simplicity of that context. If the world were your estate, what would you be doing?

Ischomachus has a small mediterranean estate. To make it more like the world, assume it is self-sufficient and does not trade. His good husbandry has made the estate rich, and he has promoted in rank many laborers who are now productive artisans and managers. With their rise in station has come a taste for the good things in life - lighting oil, meat three times a week amongst others. Demand for food and energy are up. What is more, Ischomachus has got it into his head that some of his grain should be turned into alcohol for burning. The tar-pit he has used before is running low and no one likes the acrid black smoke burning it produces.

All this adds up to trouble for Ischomachus in his idylic estate. While it used to be pretty easy for him to parcel out food according to everyone's expectations, he now finds that once he has distributed food to his family, his lieutenants, managers and other important people; once he has diverted some of it to his alcohol programme, those at the end of the queue are still hungry after their rations are eaten. Ischomachus does not even have any stocks left to wait and hope for a better harvest next year. His workers and their families are getting so jumpy that there are parts of his estate he is worried to walk through without weapons. He even has a nasty suspicion that some of the cannier managers are hoarding grain to profit later.

Martin Wolf, judging by his analysis of today's problems, would give this advice to Ischomachus:

Help out the poor by cutting back a small amount on the lifestyle you offer your senior staff
check the running of your estate carefully. Are there any places where you are reducing the amount that could be produced because of someone's pet project. Yours on alcohol, for example ...or your wife's attachment to wild flowers and thick hedgerows ...make sure that these schemes are cut back as much as you can without losing the support of your household.
Get thinking for ways to increase your production. Why is that land over there lying idle? Couldn't this piece produce more?

Paul Collier agrees with Martin Wolf's general line, and adds the observation that the problem is a sign of how much has gone right with the management of the estate. So many laborers have risen by their ability in rank to more productive members of the estate and have adopted the land-intensive meat tastes due to their station. Paul Collier strongly reinforces Martin Wolf's second recommendation: go after the non-food supply interests that are lurking in the estate's management. It is more important to feed your people than to keep outmoded privileges for the few.

Even if Ischomachus might have nodded along with Wolf and Collier, I hope an alert Socrates would have pulled them up. You can feed six times as many vegetarians as carnivores on the estate. If the fillet-mignon loving elite would eat meat with half the frequency they do now, the poor of the estate would not go hungry.

``Now'', Socrates might ask, ``can you make your elite and rising stars vergetarian--those who are eating meat less frequently--without issuing heavy-handed dictats? Without Ischomachus becoming estate Nanny?'' Can we all be both vegetarian and libertarian? The environmental movement teaches us how hard this is. Policy--like a meat tax or a carbon tax--and consciousness have to move hand in hand because policy without support is fragile, and consciousness without collective policy falls to free-riding.

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tony curzon price 2008-05-03

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