6 ms·

Why food inflation has skyrocketed out of control

22 points by jger15 5y ago

skywal_l 5y ago
What happen when a patented GMO is engineered not to reproduce naturally and then spread and replace the naturally occurring one?
- virgilp 5y ago
  How would both of these be simultaneously possible? Surely, if it spreads to replace the naturally occurring one, it must reproduce naturally (or otherwise it can't "accidentally" spread/ without active involvement of the patent-holder).
  - skywal_l 5y ago
    Through the natural way of how plants reproduce. The terminator gene gets spread through cross-pollination. But I would gladly be educated on this matter of course.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  If it's not reproducing naturally then how is it spreading and replacing other crops?
  - skywal_l 5y ago
    Because the other plants still reproduce and accept the genes that have been engineered. The next generation of the "natural" plants being then unable to grow viable seeds.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      That’s reproducing naturally though.
- specialist 5y ago
  I quite liked Pollan's treatment in Botany of Desire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Botany_of_Desire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Botany_of_Desire Any more, I regard GMO as just another form of rent seeking (corporatism). In this context, I haven't thought of a way the GMO trait would change the trend towards monocultures. Maybe accelerate it?
- p_l 5y ago
  The engineering against natural reproduction is something required by, among others, Greenpeace in order to prevent spread and replacing of naturally occurring ones.
nl 5y ago
> Last week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said that its global food price index hit its highest point in nearly a decade. Can anyone find this? Their latest bulletin[1] doesn't seem to say this as far as I can see. There is "East Africa: Prices of coarse grains followed mixed trends in April; exceptionally high levels persist in the Sudan and South Sudan" but that seems to be offset by "Domestic prices of rice generally stable in April with exception of some main exporters where they decreased; those of wheat followed mixed trends" Their price trend release[2] is also mixed news. [1] http://www.fao.org/3/cb4720en/cb4720en.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/cb4720en/cb4720en.pdf [2] http://www.fao.org/giews/food-prices/international-prices/detail/en/c/1398586/ http://www.fao.org/giews/food-prices/international-prices/de...
- rbinv 5y ago
  FAO Food Price Index: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ "It also marked the twelfth consecutive monthly rise in the value of the FFPI to its highest value since September 2011" Chart: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home_graph_1_jun653.jpg http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home... Historical chart: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home_graph_3_jun653.jpg http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home...
- icegreentea2 5y ago
  You found the May report, the June one is out. Summary page is here: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ The specific graph that captures that point would be here: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home_graph_3_jun653.jpg http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home... Note that the 'real' line (yellow) hit its last peak in 2011.
occamrazor 5y ago
In the article I can't find support for the thesis that food inflation has happened, or is happening.
- icegreentea2 5y ago
  It's not the best written article because while it opens with talking about slow moving systemic things (see the other comments/discussion in the thread linking to the actual UN FAO reports showing that their global food price index is infact up quite a lot over the last couple years), but the real HEART of the article is this one-two punch: 1) Famines (not the same thing as food inflation) are typically man-made, or CERTAINLY man amplified 2) While the biggest 20th century famine events can easily be laid at the feet of authoritarian governments, our current global system has capitalism playing a similar threat. I feel like the heart of this article is wrapped up in this paragraph: > The cartel of western farmers want to export their product as cheaply as possible, which opens them up to all sorts of Black Swan risks. When the music inevitably stops, the countries that were net-importers of these commodities take the hit while these massive cartels, many of whom are subsidized by their governments, can afford to do so and live another day. Now, of course the hilarious reason why western farmers (partly) have so much to export is because of food security incentives that their domestic governments have in place to ensure enough capacity in production to absorb various shocks. Which I felt that the author should have brought up.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    If we made agriculture as efficient as the automotive production pipelines, hiccups like the chip shortage would literally end civilization. So, bonus. Unfortunately, when you stomp efficiency in one place, it'll tend to pop up somewhere else. Usually in the places without money, because they can't afford the luxury of inefficiency. That that makes them really, really susceptible to your point (1): they're vulnerable to anybody in power with their finger on the artery. It's aggravating, because we've got so much technology that we managed to get out ahead of the arithmetic/exponential conflicts that were reasonably predicted to cause serious hardship. We can feed 8 billion people. It's hateful that a relatively small number of people in just the right places can starve billions at once.
Proven 5y ago
We all know why. The governments and central banks are paying people to speculate and consume, and not produce.
bryanlarsen 5y ago
Vaccines: Trust the science. GMO: Don't trust the science. Choose one or the other. Hypocrisy isn't a good look.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Replace “the science” with “my politics” and all becomes clear.
- rualca 5y ago
  You wouldn't post these kinds of cynical and deeply ignorant remarks if you had the faintest awareness of the science behind the GMO debate, specially the warnings and problems already flagged in the real world where GMOs played a critical part.
  - Santanlan 5y ago
    Would be nice if you could post some links to where we can read up on your claims. Not saying that you're wrong but my only real sources are from university when we got lectures on the very fringe of the core of my education on GMOs. And the source is of course a professor who work on GMO and was very steadfast on how safe it was, not biased at all... But seriously, some sources would be appreciated.
    - rualca 5y ago
      > Would be nice if you could post some links to where we can read up on your claims. They are not my claims, it's the current state of the art regarding GMOs, and one which anyone with a cursory interest in the subject is very well aware. If you honestly have any interest in the subject, you can start by reading articles such as: https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-014-0034-1 https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-0...
      - Santanlan 5y ago
        Thank you. I have very little interest at all about GMOs, but I realize that it's good to know things about things I don't really care about. It's not curiosity that will carry me through the paper but more obligation that I should know more about these things. Some times you have to read through long articles because it might change your mind on current events even if what you really want to do is stick it all in a drawer and never open it again.
NikolaeVarius 5y ago
Article does not cite any sources for claims
cheese_goddess 5y ago
> Fundamentally, the story of golden rice is a metaphor for how tech isn’t the be-all-and-end-all for the hunger crisis, the web of bureaucrats, NGOs, and geopolitics is enough to block any sort of disruption into the ecosystem. In truth, the planet produces enough food to feed its billions, but most of this is produced in affluent, developed nations where supply outstrips demand by a large margin, so a third of the supply ends in landfills as food waste (https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/10/1048452 https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/10/1048452) instead of going where it's needed, particularly Africa and South America where "undernourishment and severe food insecurity are on the rise" (from the UN article linked earlier). This is not a bureaucratic issue, or an issue with regulations etc. Rather, the people who make the food that feed us all don't make it because they want to feed us, but because they want to turn a profit. If they can't turn a profit, then they don't sell the food. So it's a matter of distribution, and economics and not a matter of regulation, or technology. As to GMOs, green hysteria aside, GMOs address the wrong problem at best, throw fuel to the fire at worst: where there is a problem of distribution, as in the developing world, GMOs address a non-existent problem of supply. Where there is oversupply, as in the developed world, they just exacerbate it. To be perfectly honest I'm not an expert in any of this and the above is my clunky, probably half-wrong version of what's going on, that I've pieced together from my patchy knowledge of the food production business (I make cheese, not for a living, but it has given me a narrow perspective from which I think I can safely extrapolate, up to a point). The most alarming part of the truth is that most people -in developed and developing nations alike- do not understand where their food comes from, who makes it, how they make it and where it ends up when they don't eat it. We have centralised food production, made our lives in cities far away from wher the food is made, built our societies around producing all sorts of things we can't eat- and now we're all paying the price. Because, what it all comes down to is that human needs food badly and there's no way around that.
- p_l 5y ago
  Golden Rice however addressed a problem that couldn't be addressed in other ways (not without much bigger strife), by providing a decentralized, locally viable way of addressing the vitamin shortage that all other options failed at. (Of course we could just do it by force, but that has other issues)
jancsika 5y ago
> we can’t precisely measure life satisfaction, but we can quantify GDP per capita, which as we know can be easily faked. So the problem worthy of note with GDP is veracity of the figure? Not an economist, but I thought the problem was that it doesn't illuminate important aspects of the economy we'd want to know-- e.g., whether there's an increasing income disparity in the given nation.
jacknews 5y ago
"A Cambrian explosion in the price of food" huh?
dubeye 5y ago
"highest in a decade". Was it out of control 10 years ago too? When prices were presumably higher than now.
Glavnokoman 5y ago
Because only retard can believe in unlimited exponential growth under limited resources?

22 points by jger15 5y ago

What happen when a patented GMO is engineered not to reproduce naturally and then spread and replace the naturally occurring one?

virgilp 5y ago
How would both of these be simultaneously possible? Surely, if it spreads to replace the naturally occurring one, it must reproduce naturally (or otherwise it can't "accidentally" spread/ without active involvement of the patent-holder).
- skywal_l 5y ago
  Through the natural way of how plants reproduce. The terminator gene gets spread through cross-pollination. But I would gladly be educated on this matter of course.
chrisseaton 5y ago
If it's not reproducing naturally then how is it spreading and replacing other crops?
- skywal_l 5y ago
  Because the other plants still reproduce and accept the genes that have been engineered. The next generation of the "natural" plants being then unable to grow viable seeds.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    That’s reproducing naturally though.
specialist 5y ago
I quite liked Pollan's treatment in Botany of Desire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Botany_of_Desire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Botany_of_Desire Any more, I regard GMO as just another form of rent seeking (corporatism). In this context, I haven't thought of a way the GMO trait would change the trend towards monocultures. Maybe accelerate it?
p_l 5y ago
The engineering against natural reproduction is something required by, among others, Greenpeace in order to prevent spread and replacing of naturally occurring ones.

nl 5y ago

> Last week, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said that its global food price index hit its highest point in nearly a decade. Can anyone find this? Their latest bulletin[1] doesn't seem to say this as far as I can see. There is "East Africa: Prices of coarse grains followed mixed trends in April; exceptionally high levels persist in the Sudan and South Sudan" but that seems to be offset by "Domestic prices of rice generally stable in April with exception of some main exporters where they decreased; those of wheat followed mixed trends" Their price trend release[2] is also mixed news. [1] http://www.fao.org/3/cb4720en/cb4720en.pdf http://www.fao.org/3/cb4720en/cb4720en.pdf [2] http://www.fao.org/giews/food-prices/international-prices/detail/en/c/1398586/ http://www.fao.org/giews/food-prices/international-prices/de...

rbinv 5y ago
FAO Food Price Index: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ "It also marked the twelfth consecutive monthly rise in the value of the FFPI to its highest value since September 2011" Chart: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home_graph_1_jun653.jpg http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home... Historical chart: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home_graph_3_jun653.jpg http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home...
icegreentea2 5y ago
You found the May report, the June one is out. Summary page is here: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/foodpricesindex/en/ The specific graph that captures that point would be here: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home_graph_3_jun653.jpg http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/worldfood/images/home... Note that the 'real' line (yellow) hit its last peak in 2011.

occamrazor 5y ago

In the article I can't find support for the thesis that food inflation has happened, or is happening.

icegreentea2 5y ago
It's not the best written article because while it opens with talking about slow moving systemic things (see the other comments/discussion in the thread linking to the actual UN FAO reports showing that their global food price index is infact up quite a lot over the last couple years), but the real HEART of the article is this one-two punch: 1) Famines (not the same thing as food inflation) are typically man-made, or CERTAINLY man amplified 2) While the biggest 20th century famine events can easily be laid at the feet of authoritarian governments, our current global system has capitalism playing a similar threat. I feel like the heart of this article is wrapped up in this paragraph: > The cartel of western farmers want to export their product as cheaply as possible, which opens them up to all sorts of Black Swan risks. When the music inevitably stops, the countries that were net-importers of these commodities take the hit while these massive cartels, many of whom are subsidized by their governments, can afford to do so and live another day. Now, of course the hilarious reason why western farmers (partly) have so much to export is because of food security incentives that their domestic governments have in place to ensure enough capacity in production to absorb various shocks. Which I felt that the author should have brought up.
- jfengel 5y ago
  If we made agriculture as efficient as the automotive production pipelines, hiccups like the chip shortage would literally end civilization. So, bonus. Unfortunately, when you stomp efficiency in one place, it'll tend to pop up somewhere else. Usually in the places without money, because they can't afford the luxury of inefficiency. That that makes them really, really susceptible to your point (1): they're vulnerable to anybody in power with their finger on the artery. It's aggravating, because we've got so much technology that we managed to get out ahead of the arithmetic/exponential conflicts that were reasonably predicted to cause serious hardship. We can feed 8 billion people. It's hateful that a relatively small number of people in just the right places can starve billions at once.

Proven 5y ago

We all know why. The governments and central banks are paying people to speculate and consume, and not produce.

bryanlarsen 5y ago

Vaccines: Trust the science. GMO: Don't trust the science. Choose one or the other. Hypocrisy isn't a good look.

bombcar 5y ago
Replace “the science” with “my politics” and all becomes clear.
rualca 5y ago
You wouldn't post these kinds of cynical and deeply ignorant remarks if you had the faintest awareness of the science behind the GMO debate, specially the warnings and problems already flagged in the real world where GMOs played a critical part.
- Santanlan 5y ago
  Would be nice if you could post some links to where we can read up on your claims. Not saying that you're wrong but my only real sources are from university when we got lectures on the very fringe of the core of my education on GMOs. And the source is of course a professor who work on GMO and was very steadfast on how safe it was, not biased at all... But seriously, some sources would be appreciated.
  - rualca 5y ago
    > Would be nice if you could post some links to where we can read up on your claims. They are not my claims, it's the current state of the art regarding GMOs, and one which anyone with a cursory interest in the subject is very well aware. If you honestly have any interest in the subject, you can start by reading articles such as: https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-014-0034-1 https://enveurope.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s12302-0...
    - Santanlan 5y ago
      Thank you. I have very little interest at all about GMOs, but I realize that it's good to know things about things I don't really care about. It's not curiosity that will carry me through the paper but more obligation that I should know more about these things. Some times you have to read through long articles because it might change your mind on current events even if what you really want to do is stick it all in a drawer and never open it again.

NikolaeVarius 5y ago

Article does not cite any sources for claims

cheese_goddess 5y ago

> Fundamentally, the story of golden rice is a metaphor for how tech isn’t the be-all-and-end-all for the hunger crisis, the web of bureaucrats, NGOs, and geopolitics is enough to block any sort of disruption into the ecosystem. In truth, the planet produces enough food to feed its billions, but most of this is produced in affluent, developed nations where supply outstrips demand by a large margin, so a third of the supply ends in landfills as food waste (https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/10/1048452 https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/10/1048452) instead of going where it's needed, particularly Africa and South America where "undernourishment and severe food insecurity are on the rise" (from the UN article linked earlier). This is not a bureaucratic issue, or an issue with regulations etc. Rather, the people who make the food that feed us all don't make it because they want to feed us, but because they want to turn a profit. If they can't turn a profit, then they don't sell the food. So it's a matter of distribution, and economics and not a matter of regulation, or technology. As to GMOs, green hysteria aside, GMOs address the wrong problem at best, throw fuel to the fire at worst: where there is a problem of distribution, as in the developing world, GMOs address a non-existent problem of supply. Where there is oversupply, as in the developed world, they just exacerbate it. To be perfectly honest I'm not an expert in any of this and the above is my clunky, probably half-wrong version of what's going on, that I've pieced together from my patchy knowledge of the food production business (I make cheese, not for a living, but it has given me a narrow perspective from which I think I can safely extrapolate, up to a point). The most alarming part of the truth is that most people -in developed and developing nations alike- do not understand where their food comes from, who makes it, how they make it and where it ends up when they don't eat it. We have centralised food production, made our lives in cities far away from wher the food is made, built our societies around producing all sorts of things we can't eat- and now we're all paying the price. Because, what it all comes down to is that human needs food badly and there's no way around that.

p_l 5y ago
Golden Rice however addressed a problem that couldn't be addressed in other ways (not without much bigger strife), by providing a decentralized, locally viable way of addressing the vitamin shortage that all other options failed at. (Of course we could just do it by force, but that has other issues)

jancsika 5y ago

> we can’t precisely measure life satisfaction, but we can quantify GDP per capita, which as we know can be easily faked. So the problem worthy of note with GDP is veracity of the figure? Not an economist, but I thought the problem was that it doesn't illuminate important aspects of the economy we'd want to know-- e.g., whether there's an increasing income disparity in the given nation.

jacknews 5y ago

"A Cambrian explosion in the price of food" huh?

dubeye 5y ago

"highest in a decade". Was it out of control 10 years ago too? When prices were presumably higher than now.

Glavnokoman 5y ago

Because only retard can believe in unlimited exponential growth under limited resources?