A few weeks ago, Lord Christopher Monckton told me a distressing story about a visit to Haiti. He said that poverty in that troubled nation is so pervasive that many of its inhabitants have been reduced to eating mud pies. The term “mud pies” is not slang for a local staple made from locally-grown cereal crops. We’re talking about people reduced to eating actual dirt. Monckton watched Haitians form mud into the shape of pies, mixing in a sprinkling of whatever nutritional foodstuffs might be available (like oil and salt) and then “cooking” the mud pies in the sun.
Sounds like further evidence of the devastating effects that the January 12 earthquake had on Haiti, right? Not really. Oh, did I forget to mention? This was the situation in Haiti before the earthquake hit, as this 2008 story that appeared in National Geographic documents.
Between 2000 and 2010 the World Food Price Index, the inflation-adjusted measure of how expensive food is across the globe, almost doubled. In 2000 the index sat at a value of 90. As of January 2010, the index had risen to a value of 172. That a 91% increase in the cost of food over the course of a decade.
While Americans and citizens of other industrialized nations may be able to absorb that kind of price increase, the poor living in the Third World cannot. Tragic cases of starvation like the ones Monckton witnessed in pre-earthquake Haiti are hardly unique. Dwindling, more expensive food supplies have led to an increasing number of food riots around the world. More and more people are dying, simply because they can not afford basic sustenance. How could this happen?
Increases in world population and energy prices might explain some of the crisis, but neither provides a satisfactory, complete answer. While there were about 800 million more people occupying planet earth in 2009 than there were in 1999, agricultural productivity and efficiency continued to rise as well. The recession has reduced energy demand considerably and, as a result, energy prices have dropped significantly over the last two years. So, while we should not ignore the effects of a growing population and energy prices, focusing on these factors too much diverts our attention away from the 800-pound gorilla that threatens the world’s poor: energy crops.
Let’s start with the United States. Each year, the Department of Agriculture publishes its Acreage report. This is a comprehensive survey detailing the amount of farmland used to raise different types of crops. Comparing the latest Acreage report issued in June, 2009 and the Acreage report issued a decade earlier in June 1999, reveals some disturbing, even chilling, trends.
Consider a few basic food staples. Between 1999 and 2009, the amount of cropland used to grow wheat dropped by over 3 million acres, or almost five per cent. That’s the good news, for it gets worse as we drill down. The amount of land used to grow rice dropped over 15 per cent; for oats over 30 per cent; for rye over 20 per cent; for peanuts and edible beets over 25 per cent; and for sugarbeets a shade under 25 per cent. These are some of the commodities that are used, directly and indirectly, to produce the food that once fed the world. And, those statistics are just a few highlights, or lowlights if you will, of the overall trend. Farmers are growing less and less crops used to produce food, in deference to government-subsidized energy crop production, chiefly corn and soybeans. Overall, the amount of United States cropland used to grow basic food commodities, that is crops other than corn and soybeans, has decreased by over 22 million acres since 1999.
Do some of the corn and soybeans produced enter the food chain? Sure they do. But the reason that more and more American farmers are switching to growing these crops has nothing to do with feeding the world, it’s all about making more money, courtesy of the American taxpayer who ultimately pays the bill for the bio-fuel incentive programs that make growing energy crops more profitable than providing nutrition to the globe.
But don’t take my word for it, consider instead the viewpoint of the organization that has been pushing global warming hysteria harder than anyone this side of Al Gore: the United Nations. According to the U.N., almost ten per cent of world grain production – that’s about 100 million metric tons per year – goes for bi-fuel production. They expect that number to double by 2018. The U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization says that “competition between the three Fs (food, feed and fuel) is expected to intensify,” which is probably about as close in tone to criticism that one branch of the U.N. is going to use about another branch: the International Panel on Climate Change. Lord Monckton told me that, quite privately, one U.N. official associated with the former agency called the bio-fuel craze an abomination, because of the effects that it has had on the poor.
Al Gore prattles on and on about the theoretical deaths that will, someday, supposedly be caused by a climate crisis that exists only in a future predicted by flawed computer models, which are in turn “proven” only by the dubious temperature records created by self-aggrandizing scientists who have demonstrated their willingness to lie, fudge and bully in order to make their case. The reality – today – is that the actions that the world has taken in order to respond to this non-existent crisis has reduced the impoverished citizens of Haiti to eating mud-pies.
But, in an odd way, the Haitians are the lucky ones. An earthquake brought worldwide attention to the plight of Haiti and badly-needed foodstuffs are flowing in. For the rest of the poor in the Third World, which has been so badly hurt by Gore’s self-serving agenda, the future looks increasingly bleak.
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