Revisiting food.

If you haven't met Robbie Briotta you've missed out. He's a great guy. Here was his comment on that verbose post on food a while ago---"Just some things to think about with this. (Just to play devils advocate personally I agree with you) What would happen if production dropped? We feed millions of people around the world not just Americans with our corn and cattle production. Because its so cheap Americans are able to spend more money on other things which not only boosts the economy but helps people pay for college for their kids, buy homes, etc. compared to the rest of the world who pays if I remember correctly around 17% of their income on food. Also if we stopped producing as much we wouldn't (as a country not the farmers) take in as much money from other countries buying food from us. Not only leaving people in war torn regions possibly starving, but in these tough economic times it'd be really tough and to cut any revenue. I mean our trade balance is already one sided enough as it is. Just some things to think about here of what the opposition would say even though I agree with you haha. "


Response


Man you always keep me awake, gotta love the devils advocate. I completely agree, and wish I had written about it more in the first place--high production creates low food prices, which means more money can be shifted to the other basic needs of an individual in a developed nation. However what we are talking about is simply tossing out government subsidization of the food that is the worst for us. As you know, we walk the line with finding a fair price--consumers want the lowest price and farmers want the highest. What the New Deal did by creating a price floor proved to find that happy medium. Food, in my mind, is not a normal economic good; lowering the price of a toy may mean it is lesser quality and can thus break easier, resulting in a sad kid, but sacrificing the quality food can result in a sick kid. Bad food kills slowly and as you know we pay for it with healthcare costs. Yes food should be within the economic range of everyone, and I think it easily can be if we shift our production from commodity corn, ethanol, processed food, to nutritious people food. It's not a shortage problem its an investment problem. The only reason we use corn for biofuel is because the corn industry has pushed for it and the gov has subsidized it--switchgrass is just as viable of an option. 30% of corn goes to corn syrup, how many people do you know have died of lack of soda? Prices don't have to go up an cent if we just invest in what really matters--nutritious food for all.  The beauty of it all is the production of food ,unlike computers or cars, isn't exclusive; with the desire almost anyone can farm. We did it in WWII with victory gardens, we can do it again. But again the solution isn't just saying hey all poor people go farm. On the end of hurting other countries by lowering production it is the same answer and then some. Again you don't need to produce less at all, you just need to produce less of what is superfluous to basic human survival. I believe we have a distribution problem  http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/sustainable-farming/
(I recommend reading the comments that disagree). I forget exactly which country I am thinking of- possibly Egypt or some other country in the region-- but they went from exporting much of their grain to importing something like 50% of it. Countries that are food dependent instead of independent are much more food insecure (of course their are exceptions, say Alaska), but for the most part relying on imports has hurt underdeveloped countries. Take for instance Mexico; when cheap corn flooded the market many farmers lost their land and livelihoods,driving out local sustainable food sources. As I understand it Mexico became more reliant on monopoly controlled imported grain and  now has high grain prices due to speculation for ethanol (another problem in itself) drives up the cost of this food staple.

here's a good article about how private investment is hurting developing nations  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/world/africa/22mali.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=kicked%20off%20land%20farmers&st=cse

 If we really cared about the plight of those nations, not just our revenue, we would supply them with the tools to grow their own food. Unfortunately helping others isn't exactly a measure of GDP.

And as for the one sidedness of imports verse exports and how that effects us, ehh I've only taken a semester of highschool econ.

Again I maybe wrong on the economics of all of this...

again thank you Robbie