/life/Food Crisis
Update: Some guy named George Monbiot did the analysis better than me: The Pleasures of the Flesh
From Soaring food prices now top threat, IMF says:
WASHINGTON - The global food crisis has pushed aside fears of a recession and mounting banking woes as top priority for the world's economic leaders
Ministers representing 185 countries agreed on the weekend that soaring food prices threaten global calamity and pledged to co-operate on a solution to save the world's poorest people from starvation.
But that solution remains elusive.
Maybe it's just the veggie hippie in me talking, but:
- Put a tax on meat
- Reduce subsidies to CAFO operations
- Let's all give up on ethanol
Boy, those sure are elusive.
There is no food shortage. There is a collosal, immoral, tragic economic misallocation of subsidies and taxes, and thus nutrients and arable land towards 5% to 25% efficient protein and probably negatively-efficient transportation fuel replacements. This crisis is policy-created, and it must be policy-destroyed. Preferably before millions of people starve, riot, and turn back development in some of the most fragile states by many years.
