The World Food Crisis: A closer look at the food situation

I am a relatively new blogger who lives an interesting life working in Los Angeles. It took me a long time to get used to this way of living as I was raised in a small village in Britain. I have traveled and read a lot and have talked to many people with diverse backgrounds. I listen to opinions and do not easily draw conclusions. I believe we all re-assess our knowledge as we grow older. If I don't know the answer to something, research helps, but I also find intuition combined with the sub-consciousness thought process can help understand situations. It does not always take rocket science to figure out the answer to something when the answer is obvious.

I started writing this blog in July 2007 to try and figure out how we can keep living the way we do in an unsustainable fashion.

It seems there is a similarity between dept in money and dept in ecology. I had a strange dream a few months ago where people were consuming so much and so fast, there was not enough to go round. If we look closely at what is happening, this dream is not very far from reality.



Looking at an article The World Food Crisis I found this week in the New York Times, I have decided to investigate how a potential world food crisis could affect someone like myself living in the entertainment capital of the world.


The World Food Crisis
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/opinion/10thu1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Americans take food for granted. Even the poorest fifth of households in the United States spend only 16 percent of their budget on food. In many other countries, it is less of a given. Nigerian families spend 73 percent of their budgets to eat, Vietnamese 65 percent, Indonesians half. They are in trouble.


I am going to start by looking at my own budget over the past six months to see if the New York Times statement was correct.




I used a service called MyPortfolio with Bank of America to pull up this information. It is a great service as it is automatic. You will see I have spent 11.22% of my income on groceries and 4.37% on restaurants. So this is almost the 16% as stated in the New York Times.

So if food were to double in price, I would probably have to cut down something like as follows:

Entertainment(cut 50%+) =3% reclaimed
Clothes------(cut 50%+) =4% reclaimed
Travel-------(cut 50% ) =4% reclaimed
Other costs--(cut 20% ) =5% reclaimed


If I can adjust my food spending budget to double, making it 32% of my salary, this is still going to be 41% less than the percentage of salary people are spending today in Nigeria.

I am certainly very lucky as I am sure there is excess in my other budget, but from now on I should be careful, or at least be aware of what is going on. Also, if I look at my automotive expenses, I cannot assume these will stay the same over time. If anything, automotive costs will increase over time and I am including the price of fuel. Remember this?




To recap from my rather bold blog quote September based partly on a book Not On The Label by Felicity Lawrence:

Intuitiveblogger: "The price of food could reach critical levels including shortages in Britain and parts of the US by early as 2009"

... I know this statement sounds rather bold and I certainly hope a critical situation does not occur, but if the British Chamber Of Commerce starts to feel nervous with soring rice prices today, than the definition of critical may not be far off. I must add I was still surprised to see this news come in from the BBC:

UK rice price doubles BBC - Fri Apr 11, 2:55 AM ET The price of rice has soared as demand outstrips supply, putting pressure on UK Indian restaurants.

In this clip, I found it strange when the owner of the restaurant expressed to the BBC that he would rather take a £140 hit a week (a loss due to the more than double cost of rice) rather than pay to re-print menus, so customers can pick up the tab. Maybe it would be cheaper to reprint the menus except the risk of losing customers would be greater. I guess they are subconsciously deciding to not take action and foot the £7,280 ($14,000) yearly bill themselves for now, to avoid losing customers.

It is not just food and fuel prices going up. I was visiting a specialized whiskey shop this week and the owner told us the price of Whiskey had recently gone up dramatically. He said it was partly due to the recent exports demand growing from China.

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Here are more articles out this week on the topic of food becoming expensive. I leave you with some articles as food for thought... (On this note, I will try not to waste food)

Cost of food going up

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24065922
ROME - Even with bigger crops, soaring food prices that have sparked unrest across the globe are likely to persist, threatening millions of people worldwide, a U.N. agency said Friday.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/10/worldbank.fooddrinks
World Bank: rocketing food prices have put fight against poverty back 7 years


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/business/09conserve.html?em&ex=1207972800&en=15639fefc3e3d631&ei=5087%0A
Out on the farm, the ducks and pheasants are losing ground.


http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7B2373E973-C3E5-43AD-A8F4-8C76EE20573E%7D)&language=EN
Food Crisis in Central America. San Salvador, Apr 9 (Prensa Latina) The rising costs of food is creating a crisis situation in Central America, which has 7.5 million undernourished people, informed the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.


http://www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page15233.asp
Gordon Brown has called upon the G8 to press international institutions such as the United Nations to take action on a growing crisis in global food prices.


http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2008/2008-04-09-02.asp
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, April 9, 2008 (ENS) - Warning that spiralling food prices are leading to increased poverty and unrest, several senior United Nations officials are calling for urgent measures to tackle the global crisis, which is causing the most suffering among the world's poor.

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010589442
"Food price hikes are also linked to higher energy and fertilizer prices, a weak dollar and export bans," the note said.

"Poor people are suffering daily from the impact of high food prices, especially in urban areas and in low income countries," World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick said in a statement.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Food_crisis_in_2-3_months/articleshow/2939102.cms
NEW DELHI: The world had just about enough cereal stocks to feed the global population for two to three months. With a crisis looming worldwide, food prices too are far from coming down, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation revealed on Wednesday.


http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-04/10/content_7951412.htm
Haitian president calls for calm, says violence will not halt food price rise


http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRS00005820080409
Fed: Severe downturn possible


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/09/food.unitednations
Food price rises threaten global security - UN
Hunger riots will destabilise weak governments, says senior official


http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/apr/10/useconomy.subprimecrisis?ref=patrick.net
We are in the worst financial crisis since Depression, says IMF:


http://www.lexpress.mu/display_article.php?news_id=106093
Anger over high food and fuel costs has spawned a rash of violent unrest across the globe in the past six months. Unable to “tighten their belts” any further, people are taking to the streets…


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7344892.stm
IMF head gives food price warning. The head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that hundreds of thousands of people will face starvation if food prices keep rising.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/25261de2-0760-11dd-b41e-0000779fd2ac,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F25261de2-0760-11dd-b41e-0000779fd2ac.html%3Fnclick_check%3D1&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net%2FBreakingNews.html&nclick_check=1
Nations in secret deals over grain supplies.
Governments are racing to strike secretive barter and bilateral agreements with food-exporting countries to secure scarce supplies as the price of agricultural commodities jump to record highs, diplomats and cereal traders say.
Intuitiveblogger: The last Financial Times article is hard to comprehend but it sounds like a potential conflict to me.