Revkin.net - Concerns about sustaining growth in agricultural...
Concerns about sustaining growth in agricultural productivity on a finite planet with a changing climate are legitimate. But it is important to keep a long-term, inflation-adjusted context when pondering recent food price spikes, as in this graph from “Population Growth, Increases in Agricultural Production and Trends in Food Prices,” a paper by Douglas Southgate in the Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development.
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3 comments:
What was it that happened in 1973 to drive up food prices like that?
I should know this. It wasn't a plague. Peach leaf curl?
I dunno.
The spite corresponds to the first huge upswing in oil prices during the Carter "energy crisis". It went much higher after that however.
While it is true that the oil shock of the early seventies coincided with this food price spike, the food price increase was due to massive crop failures in parts of the Northern Hemispere due to severe cold winters followed by cold Springs in the early 70's, time of the great "Ice Age is coming" scare. Noteworthy were crop failures in the former USSR and India which led these countries to import massive amounts of wheat from the USA causing the price spike.
Dalcio
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