From the Mail and Guardian:
…Global wheat and maize prices recently jumped nearly 30% in a few weeks while meat prices are at 20-year highs, according to the key Reuters-Jefferies commodity price indicator. Last week, the US predicted that global wheat harvests would be 30m tonnes lower than last year, a 5,5% fall. Meanwhile, the price of tomatoes in Egypt, garlic in China and bread in Pakistan are at near-record levels.
“The situation has deteriorated since September,” said Abdolreza Abbassian of the UN food and agriculture organisation. “In the last few weeks there have been signs we are heading the same way as in 2008…
Part of this is just related to climate – not the bogus “global climate change” of the left, but the simple fact that they had really bad weather in Russia this past year, and weather predictions for the new year look pretty grim, as well (and, sorry environmentalists, the predictions are for a lot of very cold weather). We can’t really do too much about the weather, but we can do something about this: the United States has 21.5% less agricultural land now than we had in 1950.
With a population double what we had back then, we’ve got vastly less agricultural land to farm on. We have steadily decreased our agricultural base for decades now – and here we are, about to have a global food crisis which could probably have been easily filled if America farmed the way it used to.
Outside of the actual pain this food crisis could cause – especially among the poorest and most vulnerable – there is also the practical effect on American wealth. By not producing as much food as we used to, we have that much less to sell on the global market – part of our trade deficit is caused by the fact that we are not the gigantic food exporter we used to be (in fact, we may end up being a net food importer soon, if not already). While people like to concentrate on high tech jobs, it must not be forgotten that America’s first impact on the world was our gigantic agricultural industry – we used to feed the world, now we can barely feed ourselves.
This is why I yammer on endlessly on the subject of production – the “make/mine/grow” thing. We have to get back to doing the hard work we used to do – it is the only way to wealth; it is the only way to restored American prosperity. We either get back to work, or we eventually die as a nation. It is really just that simple.
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