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May 11, 2012 Friday
MY MOTHER TOLD ME TO EAT ALL MY DINNER AND THE GLOBAL FOOD MARKET
WASHINGTON
The following information was released by the Union of Concerned
Scientists (UCS):
When I was young, my mother used to tell me to eat all my dinner and
would remind me that there were hungry children who would be happy to
have what I was leaving on my plate. I'm sure lots of you heard the
same thing. And if you were like me, it may have been the first time
you actually doubted your parents' wisdom, since it was obvious that
whether I cleaned my plate or not, there was no way that the food
would go to those hungry children. It would end up in the garbage, or
at best in a plastic container for me to eat the next day. But it
certainly wouldn't feed the hungry.
You probably had a similar experience, although exactly where those
hungry children were supposed to live likely has changed over the
decades. For me in the fifties I think they were in India; my
grandfather used to talk about "the starving Armenians"; my own
children remember hearing about famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s, and
for my parents' generation, brought up in Europe in the Depression,
they could have been just about anywhere. And I suspect that children
have reacted with the same skepticism for a long, long time, knowing
that their eating all their dinner would do nothing to prevent
starvation.
But actually, the idea underlying that perennial parental message has
gotten stronger in recent years. It's not that there have been amazing
technological advances in food teleportation, but the global food
system has changed in a way that does link the plates of children
around the world a bit more closely. The kids are still all right, but
maybe the parents are right too.
Here's why. The share of food production that is traded
internationally has become a larger and larger share of total food
production, particularly for meat, feed grains and oilseeds. Many of
our basic foodstuffs - corn from the U.S., soy from the Amazon and
palm oil from southeast Asia - are shipped around the world in
increasingly large quantities. This has created a global world food
market, in which consumption in one country affects prices in all the
others.
Thus, when 30% of the U.S. corn crop goes into ethanol, it pushes
prices upward and makes tortillas more expensive in Mexico. And when
Americans eat 225 pounds of meat annually, it creates demand for corn,
soy and other feeds, pulling up their prices as well as those of meat
all around the world.
This isn't anything complicated; it's what economists have been
explaining about supply and demand for centuries. It's just that now,
what matters is global supply and demand.
In this way, children's dinner plates all around the planet are
connected by the global food market. What we eat is part of the total
demand for food that makes it cheaper or more expensive for other
parents in other countries to give their kids three square meals a
day.
Now, I don't see this as reason to feel guilty, and as I've said in a
previous post, I don't think guilt is a very useful motivation for
deciding what to eat. Anyhow, my mother's message wasn't that I should
feel guilty about starving children elsewhere. It was that I was
fortunate to be well-fed and shouldn't be wasteful, about food or
anything else. A valuable lesson to remember as we consider our
country's food policies. Happy Mother's Day, Mom!
Posted in: Biofuel, Food and Agriculture Tags: agriculture
About the author: Doug Boucher is an expert in preserving tropical
forests to curtail global warming emissions. He has been participating
in United Nations international climate negotiations since 2007 and
his expertise has helped shape some of the U.N. policies. He holds a
Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of
Michigan.
Support from UCS members make work like this possible. Will you join
us? Help UCS advance independent science for a healthy environment and
a safer world.
May 11, 2012 Friday
MY MOTHER TOLD ME TO EAT ALL MY DINNER AND THE GLOBAL FOOD MARKET
WASHINGTON
The following information was released by the Union of Concerned
Scientists (UCS):
When I was young, my mother used to tell me to eat all my dinner and
would remind me that there were hungry children who would be happy to
have what I was leaving on my plate. I'm sure lots of you heard the
same thing. And if you were like me, it may have been the first time
you actually doubted your parents' wisdom, since it was obvious that
whether I cleaned my plate or not, there was no way that the food
would go to those hungry children. It would end up in the garbage, or
at best in a plastic container for me to eat the next day. But it
certainly wouldn't feed the hungry.
You probably had a similar experience, although exactly where those
hungry children were supposed to live likely has changed over the
decades. For me in the fifties I think they were in India; my
grandfather used to talk about "the starving Armenians"; my own
children remember hearing about famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s, and
for my parents' generation, brought up in Europe in the Depression,
they could have been just about anywhere. And I suspect that children
have reacted with the same skepticism for a long, long time, knowing
that their eating all their dinner would do nothing to prevent
starvation.
But actually, the idea underlying that perennial parental message has
gotten stronger in recent years. It's not that there have been amazing
technological advances in food teleportation, but the global food
system has changed in a way that does link the plates of children
around the world a bit more closely. The kids are still all right, but
maybe the parents are right too.
Here's why. The share of food production that is traded
internationally has become a larger and larger share of total food
production, particularly for meat, feed grains and oilseeds. Many of
our basic foodstuffs - corn from the U.S., soy from the Amazon and
palm oil from southeast Asia - are shipped around the world in
increasingly large quantities. This has created a global world food
market, in which consumption in one country affects prices in all the
others.
Thus, when 30% of the U.S. corn crop goes into ethanol, it pushes
prices upward and makes tortillas more expensive in Mexico. And when
Americans eat 225 pounds of meat annually, it creates demand for corn,
soy and other feeds, pulling up their prices as well as those of meat
all around the world.
This isn't anything complicated; it's what economists have been
explaining about supply and demand for centuries. It's just that now,
what matters is global supply and demand.
In this way, children's dinner plates all around the planet are
connected by the global food market. What we eat is part of the total
demand for food that makes it cheaper or more expensive for other
parents in other countries to give their kids three square meals a
day.
Now, I don't see this as reason to feel guilty, and as I've said in a
previous post, I don't think guilt is a very useful motivation for
deciding what to eat. Anyhow, my mother's message wasn't that I should
feel guilty about starving children elsewhere. It was that I was
fortunate to be well-fed and shouldn't be wasteful, about food or
anything else. A valuable lesson to remember as we consider our
country's food policies. Happy Mother's Day, Mom!
Posted in: Biofuel, Food and Agriculture Tags: agriculture
About the author: Doug Boucher is an expert in preserving tropical
forests to curtail global warming emissions. He has been participating
in United Nations international climate negotiations since 2007 and
his expertise has helped shape some of the U.N. policies. He holds a
Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of
Michigan.
Support from UCS members make work like this possible. Will you join
us? Help UCS advance independent science for a healthy environment and
a safer world.