A safe and steady food supply

You've probably noticed that the prices of food have been increasing rapidly. In researching this column, I came across a New York Times article about complaints from English consumers that American beef was too expensive. The prices were said to be caused by shortages brought on by drought in Australia and disease among cattle in Argentina. But the most popular reason given was the high cost of American corn.

Actually this article was printed in 1902, so complaints about food costs are nothing new.

It's no surprise that there is more demand for food due to the rising worldwide population. Millions of people are now enjoying a higher standard of living and eating more food, often grain-gobbling meat. It takes seven pounds of grain to produce a pound of beef.

The higher demand for grain means higher prices. But don't blame the farmers. As one North Dakota wheat grower reminded me last week, there used to be a nickel's worth of wheat in a loaf of bread. Now it's maybe 12 cents. Hardly a reason for a loaf to cost a dollar or two more.

As always, processing, packaging, and advertising add more to the cost of most foods we buy than the raw material.

But food is still cheap in the U.S. by most measures. We spend half as much on food as a percentage of income as we did in the 1950s. Some of the world's poorest people spend as much as 70 percent of their income on food.

Probably the biggest driver of new price increases in our local stores has been rising gas prices. The farm tractor that plows the fields, the truck that brings the produce from California and the jet that flies grapes in from South America, all are using increasingly expensive fuel. All add to our grocery bill. That doesn't even include the many other oil-based components such as fertilizer and farm chemicals. The price of oil is an increasing component of our grocery bill.

A new element to the high cost-of-food debate has been the rapid rise of biofuel production, much of which uses traditional food crops as a raw material. Many believe the diversion of these crops to non-food uses increases the cost and reduces the supply of food.

There are two biofuels. Ethanol, a gasoline replacement is made primarily from corn. Biodiesel is made from oil-based plants, such as soybeans. About 10 times more ethanol is made in the U.S. than biodiesel. But both produce meal as a co-product that is fed to farm animals, so it is debatable that enough food is being diverted to energy use in the U.S. to have an effect on food prices.

But undoubtedly, the value added to crops used to make biofuels has increased the price of those commodities. With grain prices at an all-time high, our government has warned that it will have to severely cut back on food donations to some of the most impoverished regions of the world. Many areas, key to U.S. vital security interests, may see increasing political instability due to inadequate or too expensive food supplies.

Of course the high price of oil makes delivering grain to these countries increasingly expensive. It would be better to encourage them to develop their own local food sources.
We need to keep three things in mind in working for a more secure lower-cost food supply.

1. Encourage policies to increase local production and distribution at home and abroad and increase investment in developing more efficient food production methods. 2. Find a way to rely less on the volatile and dwindling oil component for our food supply. 3. We'll still need alternative fuels. Biofuels are part of that. But not all countries should be rushing to convert to biofuels until the technologies exist to allow them to do that without reducing the local food supply.

A safe, steady supply of food for everyone is probably the most important thing we can do to ensure a stable world.

Robert Legge is an independent columnist and resident of Madison County. His column appears on Thursday. E-mail