Fewer Farms, Larger Farms

Right now, the world is in the midst of a food crisis. Some might contend that we never fully recovered from the food crisis of 2008, but what is certain is that food prices are rising. The reason for the spike is open for debate, but some combination of a growing demand due to population growth, an increase in the frequency of extreme weather events (floods in Pakistan, the Moscow heatwave, etc.), an expanding middle class with a growing taste for meat and dairy, global trade policy, commodity speculation, agribusiness lobbying, ethanol, and many other factors is likely. The success of the Green Revolution beginning in the 1960’s caused food prices to fall year after year for decades. With the world assuming that the food problem had been solved, the limited number of development dollars went to researching other global problems, namely solving public health issues like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria.

 
Global warming was another issue. Over the last two decades, economists and climatologists have been contemplating the effects of global warming on food production. The consensus was that, while climate change and the corresponding shift in weather patterns would have an adverse impact on agriculture in certain regions of the world, a rising temperature could actually open up new pockets of arable land. The one bright spot of climate change was that the increased amount of carbon in the atmosphere would actually improve crop yields. Unfortunately, that hypothesis proved to be overstated, at best, and quite possibly downright wrong. It turns out that a warmer world, despite what the computer models may say, is not good for food production.
 

The Economist recently had a special report on the feeding the world. The articles were thought-provoking and alarming, and should galvanize a stronger response from the developed world. As food prices increase, the people who are hit the hardest are those spending the highest percentage of their annual income on food. So, for a person of the developed world, a dramatic increase in the price of maize is less apparent on his grocery bill than it is for the rural farmer who is spending 60% of his income on maize. For this reason, the 2008 food price crisis led to riots in some countries and was hardly acknowledged in others. For the 100 million people driven into extreme poverty as a result of the spike in staple crop prices, the prospect of another food crisis in 2011 is likely terrifying, particularly if they understand the challenges in feeding nine billion people over the next half-century.

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A Victory for Heterodoxy in Kentucky

Image courtesy of dailypaul.comRand Paul, son of Texas Congressman, Ron Paul, is the very probable winner of the Kentucky Republican Primary Senate election, and liberals should be thrilled.  Of course, the Media has latched onto this thing and milked it for all the ratings its worth.  The imposed narrative structure is that Paul has been elevated by the "Tea Partiers" (or "Tea Baggers", depending on which party the reader hacks for.), and of course Paul has run with it:

I have a message, a message from the Tea Party, a message that is loud and clear and does not mince words: we've come to take our government back.  We've come to take the government back from the special interests who think that our government is their own personal ATM..

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