10-Sep-10 News -- Venezuela moves toward food rationing

[John]

10-Sep-10 News -- Venezuela moves toward food rationing

Suicide car bomber in crowded market in North Ossetia kills 17

** 10-Sep-10 News -- Venezuela moves toward food rationing
** http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi ... 10#e100910


Contents:
"Venezuela's 'Good Life Card' may be first step in food rationing"
"Food shortages in Russia"
"The growing food crisis"
"Additional links"
Suicide car bomber in crowded market in North Ossetia kills 17
Copper prices may fall as China's demand slackens
OECD says that world economy slowdown worse than expected
No sign yet of choice of Kim Jong-il's successor in North Korea
Japan-China confrontation worsens as captain faces trial
Unexploded bombs found in Bangkok Thailand
HIV spread "out of control" among French gay men

[boqueronman]

Ok. Let's start with this paragraph from "Best. Decade. Ever." by Charles Kenney in the latest Foreign Policy magazine.

"There are still 1 billion people who go to bed each night desperately hungry, but cereal prices are now a fraction of what they were in the 1960s and 1970s. That, alongside continued income growth, is why the proportion of the developing world's population classified as "undernourished" fell from 34 percent in 1970 to 17 percent in 2008, even at the height of a global spike in food prices. Agricultural productivity, too, continues to climb: From 2000 to 2008, cereal yields increased at nearly twice the rate of population growth in the developing world. And though famine continues to threaten places such as Zimbabwe, hundreds of millions of people are eating more -- and better -- each day." Read the whole article.

Are you saying the data in the above paragraph are untrue? If so, what are the contrary data you have which refutes these conclusions? And, really, "my rough estimate[s]" won't do. There are many debatable assertions in your article, but let's just take a couple of pertinent issues.

The studies are overwhelming conclusive: the regional and country-specific food emergencies since WWII which lead to severe shortages and/or famine are, to use Janet Napolitano's mellifluous phrase for terrorism, "man-made disasters." To put it bluntly agricultural/food markets are consciously or unconsciously manipulated by governments in a manner which both ignites the emergency and sustains it. Thus, a public policy change or regime change can set the stage for a recovery. If, unfortunately, macro trends reverse and major cereal and basic food yields fall below population growth rates over a multi-generational period, then I think it's safe to say that people will develop coping strategies, e.g. substitute cheaper and more plentiful calorie sources for the "expensive" nutrition sources, such as protein from beef, before they take to consequential disturbances and sustained rioting.

Much of your analysis on likely trends and future events based on generational dynamic analysis is insightful and prescient. Unfortunately, to draw your conclusions on world wide food production and consumption contained here you've decided to drop your day job and become an agricultural economist. And to base the likely future on an assumption that somehow ingenuity and technology will cease to advance, or at least compensate, for the first time since the Industrial Revolution (which btw Mr. Malthus did not experience and failed to anticipate), usually turns out to be inaccurate.

[John]

> Ok. Let's start with this paragraph from "Best. Decade. Ever." by
> Charles Kenney in the latest Foreign Policy magazine. ...

> From 2000 to 2008, cereal yields increased at nearly twice the
> rate of population growth in the developing world.

I've been writing about the rise in food prices since 2004, and of all
the subjects I've written about, there is nothing that produces more
lying and more general crap than the responses to the "overwhelming
evidence" that food prices have been increasing dramatically since
2000.

I spent a few minutes online looking for something about cereal prices,
and came up with the following:



http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ai466e/ai466e13.htm

As you can see, cereal prices were skyrocketing between 2000 and 2008,
which is exactly what I said.

So as far as I'm concerned, Kenny is full of crap. In fact, the whole
article is full of crap. It really makes me gag.

John

[gerald]

John a little support for your position.

Some anecdotal information and an observation. About 20 years ago in Chicago I was able to by shark , which is very tasty and at that time one of the cheapest sea foods available. It is now somewhat rare and expensive.

On a recent trip to Antarctica on an ice breaker, a number of lectures were given by Marine biologists. In some of these lectures they expressed concern about the worlds fish stocks being depleted, They specifically mentioned two areas of concern.

One, the beginning push to harvest the krill of the Antarctic waters, to provide fish meal for farm raised fish. ( one of the last major krill areas in the world, the others having been severely impacted by over fishing ) Raising a pound of farm raised fish, requires about two pounds of krill.

The second dealt with the crash in long line fish catches. A long line is a cable sometimes miles in length having hooks attached by stringers at short intervals. Years ago almost every other hook would have a fish, today it could be one in ten or less. China is a major harvester in the Pacific. The biologists indicated a suspicion, based on their sources, that the actual Chinese fish harvest was much less then were claimed, due to domestic political pressure, demand and the need to maintain an image and government quotas.

There are limits.

[Higgenbotham]

Ok. Let's start with this paragraph from "Best. Decade. Ever." by Charles Kenney in the latest Foreign Policy magazine.

"There are still 1 billion people who go to bed each night desperately hungry, but cereal prices are now a fraction of what they were in the 1960s and 1970s. That, alongside continued income growth, is why the proportion of the developing world's population classified as "undernourished" fell from 34 percent in 1970 to 17 percent in 2008, even at the height of a global spike in food prices. Agricultural productivity, too, continues to climb: From 2000 to 2008, cereal yields increased at nearly twice the rate of population growth in the developing world. And though famine continues to threaten places such as Zimbabwe, hundreds of millions of people are eating more -- and better -- each day." Read the whole article.

Are you saying the data in the above paragraph are untrue? If so, what are the contrary data you have which refutes these conclusions? And, really, "my rough estimate[s]" won't do. There are many debatable assertions in your article, but let's just take a couple of pertinent issues.

The studies are overwhelming conclusive: the regional and country-specific food emergencies since WWII which lead to severe shortages and/or famine are, to use Janet Napolitano's mellifluous phrase for terrorism, "man-made disasters." To put it bluntly agricultural/food markets are consciously or unconsciously manipulated by governments in a manner which both ignites the emergency and sustains it. Thus, a public policy change or regime change can set the stage for a recovery. If, unfortunately, macro trends reverse and major cereal and basic food yields fall below population growth rates over a multi-generational period, then I think it's safe to say that people will develop coping strategies, e.g. substitute cheaper and more plentiful calorie sources for the "expensive" nutrition sources, such as protein from beef, before they take to consequential disturbances and sustained rioting.

Much of your analysis on likely trends and future events based on generational dynamic analysis is insightful and prescient. Unfortunately, to draw your conclusions on world wide food production and consumption contained here you've decided to drop your day job and become an agricultural economist. And to base the likely future on an assumption that somehow ingenuity and technology will cease to advance, or at least compensate, for the first time since the Industrial Revolution (which btw Mr. Malthus did not experience and failed to anticipate), usually turns out to be inaccurate.

The message of John's articles on this subject is that percentage growth of population has been outstripping percentage growth of food production. Years ago, I determined the most practical method (although it's not perfect by any means as grain production supplies about 70% of worldwide human food needs) to get a handle on this relationship was (is?) to track world per capita grain production. World per capita grain production has been declining for nearly 25 years.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WFdY5YDbx-Q/S ... person.jpg

My guess is that recent trends toward increased production of biofuels and meats from grains make the situation worse than the above graph portrays.

The CIA forecast steady world per capita grain production through 2015:

http://www.dni.gov/nic/NIC_globaltrend2015.html

http://www.dni.gov/nic/PDF_GIF_global/g ... uction.gif

This CIA forecast was done about 10 years ago. CIA forecasts through 2020 and 2025 have been done since, but I don't know if the later studies address world per capita grain or food production.

John's graph of prices is accurate in my view, based on both personal experience in buying bulk grains and periodic review of price charts of grain prices from the Chicago, etc., Boards of Trade, which are readily available on the Internet. One free source:

http://futures.tradingcharts.com/grains_oilseeds.html

Finally, and I forgot about this until this morning, to get a near term view of when the shit will hit the fan as well as confirmation that world per capita grain production is indeed falling, the "days of consumption" of "world grain stocks" are frequently mentioned by experts who pay attention to such things:

http://www.ethicalmarkets.com/2010/08/1 ... nsumption/

Long term graphs of world grain stocks days of consumption are available:

http://www.rlg.nl/slotakkoord/deelstudi ... guur-1.gif

Again, my bet is that this graph has been heading into a deeper downslope than the world per capita grain production graph due to the influence of biofuels and factory farms. The above article on grain stocks notes similarly.