Another Food Crisis Warning

This from Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, the largest food business in the world.  He does note that the use of biofuels eats in to food availability and also notes that speculators are playing a role in driving up prices.  Two good points – and when added to my points about Federal Reserve printing of money (thus making it less valuable, and food more valuable in dollar terms) and lack of US production (got to save that darn guppy!), it points to a real problem.

This does not mean we’ll have bread lines in the United States.  While we’ll pay more for our food and thus have less disposable income for other items (and this could play a role in re-starting the recession), Americans won’t go hungry.  The people likely to go hungry are those around the world who already spent 50% or more of their income on food and just can’t afford to pay more – for them it will become a matter of being forced to eat less.  People who eat less than they should, even if they don’t suffer from actual malnutrition, are more likely to get ill and are overall less productive than people who eat properly.  Additionally, kids need a strong, balanced diet to ensure proper physical and mental development – if the kids eat less then the loss to humanity will continue throughout their life times.

We’ve already seen the rise in food prices leading to riots in Algeria and what appears to be a revolution in Tunisia.  More and more of that will spread around the world if this is not brought under control.  The best means to do it is to produce more food – we here in the United States can massively step up our food production, but it will take some clearing away of taxes, subsidies and regulations to do it.  Not only do I doubt that Obama’s Administration will make any such moves, I doubt that they even see the problem (in this, they are just like we Americans normally are – mostly indifferent to news from foreign lands until something really horrible happens…but the difference is that we pay Obama and Co to pay attention, even if we don’t…and Obama doesn’t give any indication he is paying attention).

Pray for the world – pray for our leaders to show wisdom, and for the people under threat to show patience.  This could get very ugly.

Read more at Noonan for Nevada