The Geo-Politics of Food

[monk222]

Who says Malthusian logic is dead?

Brown says the world's rapidly expanding population has created elevated demand for grain, milk, cheese and eggs, but changes in climate and irrigation have made it increasingly difficult to increase production accordingly. Increased demand has also stripped the world of much of its excess crop surpluses. For example, Brown says, in 1965, when the Indian monsoon failed, the United States sent a fifth of its total wheat crop to India to avoid famine.

"We couldn't do that today because we don't have that sort of slack in the system," he says. "The problem is not that we're producing less grain — we're producing more grain — but we're not increasing production fast enough to keep up with the growth in demand."

Life is so cozy for so many in the advanced nations, I type on my computer and do so as a relatively poor person in an advanced nation, that I don't suppose there is much political will to take such a developing problem seriously. After all, we all appreciate the serious problems of climate change, save perhaps for Republicans and the corporate elite, but we are also overwhelmed by the sense that we cannot really do anything about it. We enjoy the good life today, even as we see the quasi-apocalyptic crisis looming over the horizon, and we just long to enjoy this good life as long as we can.

(Source: LJ/NPR)