They’re protesting food prices in Egypt.
There’s armed guards around rice piles in Pakistan.
Malaysians are prohibited from taking sugar out the country.

What is this world coming to? There is a food crisis engulfing the entire world, driving food prices to record highs. Sure, there have been spikes in food prices over the last 50 years, mostly due to weather-related events. For example, in 1972 Soviet crops failed and that led to a doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices.

But today’s situation is entirely different. Today’s prices are caused mostly by changes in– well, in attitude.

The Growing Asian Dragon
China and India are growing, growing, and growing! And their farmlands are shrinking, shrinking, and shrinking. For some crops, notably rice in East Asia the amount of good, productive land is falling, buried under the concrete of expanding cities. The average farm size in China is only 1/3rd of what it used to be.

Asia is also experiencing a population boom. Not only is there less farmland, but there are more people to feed. These countries are gobbling up massive amounts of the world’s food supply. While there is no shortage of food in the U.S., this competition is driving up prices around the world, including the United States. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the global market prices of cereals, dairy produce, meat, sugar and oils were 57% higher in March 2008 than a year earlier.

Western Wishes
In the past, the global diet was mostly fish, rice and vegetables. Now, people throughout the world have more money and are craving Western foods: meat, eggs, and dairy products. Per capita consumption of meat in China doubled between 1990 and 2005. And it’s still growing! This increase of livestock is leading to a rapid increase in the demand for grain feed, too.

Americans are “competing” for these foods and that drives the price up in our own country. The U.S. is not the only Western country affected. For example, Australians now pay 60% more for skimmed milk, and Europeans are adjusting export subsidies to keep food in their own nation.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. Adapting new farming technologies throughout the world will help solve this dilemma. Learn more.

Sources
American Farm Bureau Federation®