Published: April 01, 2008 12:04 am            

Column: Food crisis demands local solution

ONEONTA, N.Y. — We’re learning once again that the best way to get Americans to pay attention to an issue is to raise prices.

People in other nations are fighting over food because of shortages, prices everywhere are soaring and experts say it is not going to get any better.

Sad how the situation sounds so similar to the oil crisis, where now the standard line is that gasoline will forever be in short supply and never fall below $3 a gallon again.

Why is it that we’re always so surprised when resources dwindle to the point that there aren’t enough to go around?

But for most of us, when the choice is between paying or changing, we’ll pay if we can. If too many can’t afford to pay, then there’ll be trouble _ unless we make a real effort now to take more control over our food sources.

Food costs worldwide rose 23 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. Grains shot up 42 percent, oil 50 percent, and dairy products jumped 80 percent.

By the end of last year, 37 countries faced food crises. For many of the world’s poorest, it is a disaster because humanitarian aid is being stretched to the max.

The U.N.’s World Food Program says it’s facing a $500 million shortfall in funding this year in trying to feed 89 million needy people around the globe. The program’s director said this week that the world’s poorest people are being “priced out of the food market.”

Here at home, you can still get what foods you want as long as you can afford them. Food prices rose 4 percent in the U.S. last year, the highest rise since 1990, and are expected to climb that much again this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

You have seen and heard about the big jump in the price of wheat because it impacts so much of what we buy in grocery stores. Wheat prices have tripled in the past 10 months and while they may level off, they’re not going back down.

What we haven’t had in America are clashes over a shortage of bread and other baked goods, as has occurred in Egypt and some other African nations. Does that mean we’ll never be fighting for our daily bread? Who knows?

So, what is going on, anyway? Why are all these shortages suddenly occurring? We can understand how we blew our chance to develop alternative energy sources to alleviate the demand for oil. But food, too?

Yes, we have the cost of transporting food skyrocketing because of oil prices. To help with our oil demands, we’ve planted lots of land with corn for ethanol, instead of grain for food.

Then there’s the growing prosperity in China and India, and the increasing desire by their huge populations to eat well _ with lots of beef _ like most Americans do. And what do beef cattle eat? That’s right; grain. And thanks to globalization, it’s all connected.

Actually, it’s not like we weren’t warned about it decades ago. We just didn’t want to hear it _ or change our ways of life.

It was in the early 1970s that Frances Moore Lappe in ``Diet for a Small Planet’’ suggested that we could easily feed the world’s hungry if we stopped wasting so much land and feeding so much grain to our beef habits. Now she and her daughter are still at it, with 21st-century strategies on how to deal with those same issues.

If there ever were a time to think globally and act locally, this is it. Much of the increase in our food prices is because of transporting food products from faraway places to people. The challenge of growing and producing more of our food locally is more a political problem of will than it is of logistics.

A Cornell University study published in the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems concluded that if everybody in New York state had a low-fat vegetarian diet, we could provide enough food for 32 percent of our population. Imagine that: nearly a third of the state’s residents living off food produced in New York.

Naturally, not everyone is going to switch to low fat and veggies. But maybe enough would make the effort to make a difference.

It is easy to get depressed about the sorry state of the world’s energy/food crises, and our leaders’ inability to deal with them. But we really can try to do something about it around here.

Get involved in community gardens, farmers’ markets, local food co-ops, and tell your county leaders how significant it would be for them to take the lead on such an important issue as sustaining ourselves with more local food and energy.

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Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at cary@thedailystar.com.

        

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