I am surprised no one has posted all the talk by the World Bank and IMF about the impending food crisis, some would say current food crisis.  Gets little press here, but makes the front page of the BBC website 5 of the last 7 days.  Our PBS network ran a piece Friday night finally, one hour on Bill Moyers Journal about the high cost of food and how it is hitting poor Americans, and how warped our farm bill is.  They are still trying to write our new farm law without much success, farm payments got a blackeye from Moyers, but I have to say that 85% of what he had to say was pretty accurate, the thing he left out is our inputs are rising as well, and he forgot to mention all the years we have produced food below the cost of production. 

The show pegged the number of Americans needing food assistance at 35 million, sad I think a nation that puts men on the moon can't feed everyone and give all of us adequate health care.  The number worldwide keeps being shown at around the 850 million mark.  So, what is going to be done about it?  We had a hard freeze last night, and Kansas is one of the main wheat producers in the world I think, my bet is wheat will be up today.  Corn planting is getting delayed due to weather.  From the supply side, I don't see a change near term. 

Kansas, I guess the press coverage of the subject is considered old news as far as the FWi Forum is concerned! Now it all seems to be becoming reality. My guess is that it will still take a long while before it sinks into the minds of the urban populations of the 'first' World. So long as the supermarket shelves are stocked it will remain just another news story. At least if the IMF and World Bank have picked it up the behind the scenes work will start, they do after all seem to be the UN organisations who have a broader global view than the individual governments. The BBC is also the main global news source and I expect more so in the poorer countries, hence they are interested in showing that they do take notice. Stuart

The food riots have got our glorious leaders attention but it will take some members of a regime they sponsor being dragged out of their palaces and shot in the courtyard before they do anything.

Meanwhile in the UK the supermarkets are incapable of realising they now have to pay a realistic price to producers to secure production. I will laugh heartily when the govt turns on them and ruins them the same way they ruined us when it suited them.

As for the politicians I do not see many standing up to take the "credit" for the policy of "farmers must get their returns from the market" How odd

See this http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=440175&in_page_id=2&position=moretopstories also in MoS yesterday.

Quote that shocks more than biofuel worries is :

"Longer term, there are signs that Darling and other ministers from the Group of Seven rich nations could tear up 20 years of policies aimed at taking farmland out of production and return to the days of heavily subsidised intensive agriculture. "

I guess I should have asked what will the leading governments of the world do about the situation, and will they make it worse or better?  Our government at the moment seems not at all concerned about it.  They can't or won't pass a farmbill.  Just today in the mail I got a flyer from the NRCS(Natural Resources and Conservation Service) urging me to take more land out of production permanently for wildlife habitat and to control erosion along the river.  Now they want the most productive land we have.  The way the system is set up, people who want land just as a retreat or for hunting can buy it, put it in these programs, and do better than if they rented it to a farmer.  I am quite concerned about this program on a personal level as it affects almost every field I farm.  In a nutshell, while the world stews about food shortages, our taxpayers are paying non-farmers to take land out of production forever.  In the CRP program, generally it was land that should have never been broken out to begin with, but in some of these wildlife and water quality programs, it is the most prime and productive land on the farm. 

Another issue in the USA is the number of people building on 7-10 acre sites.  One house on that, not many.  The area around Kansas City use to be pretty good farmland, lots of dairies, now it is hard to tell where you are as the towns have all pretty much merged, with a few guys stubbornly continuing to farm amongst all the houses.  I am the first to defend our nation when someone else criticizes it, but we do have our fair share of stupid people, and short sighted politicians.  I can't see at the moment anyone over here talking about doing anything to produce more food, if anything it seems just the opposite. 

My concern is not that I will go hungry, that is very unlikely.  My concern is in trying to fix this, will politicians make things worse?  Our consumers are being squeezed from all sides, high food, high gasoline and heating oil.  When people are up against the wall financially, almost always bad things happen.  There must be a happy medium somewhere between decent prices for commodities and people not able to feed themselves, or afford to heat their homes.  I wonder if anyone in any government can figure it out.

return to the days of heavily subsidised intensive agriculture

Just in case this actually happens (I am not holding my breath) here is my wish list from the Chancellor.

1 Abolition of farm assurance.

2 Arable area payment of £275LFA and £200 non LFA (cropped land only no pony paddocks)

3 Headage payments of £500 a suckler cow £100 ewe and £20 sow(outdoor only)

4 50% grant on buildings and infrastructure (sheds drainage cottages farmhouses etc)

5 50% grant on plant and machinery (tractors combines Range RoverV8s etc)

6 Retirement package of £30k a year for all farmers over 65 to help them hand over to the next generation. (5 years max)

7 Free university Agriculture courses with a £10k a year bursary.

8 A £50k start up grant for all  Ag degree holders under 30 years.

Anyone got more?

Better would be a straight subsidy based on your actual production. That would penalise people who were not making best use of their land. No more free money for chucking a handful of linseeds on your field and not harvesting anything.

My favorite would be nationalise all farmland under an EUwide scheme of state intervention. That way you can take all the small scale producers out overnight, put on some proper kit and pay farm managers decent money and bonuses for gross margin targets.

Sorts our poney paddocks, old codgers, tax issues all in one go. 

TeslaCoils:

nationalise all farmland under an EUwide scheme of state intervention. That way you can take all the small scale producers out overnight, put on some proper kit and pay farm managers decent money and bonuses for gross margin targets.

Good idea TeslaCoils. Your scheme is not new however, and so you do not need to worry that there will be sufficient experienced people to see through your project. I suggest an advert in Pravda would elicit a positive response from hordes of people whose CV's will point to successful careers in the roles your scheme implies.

I pulled out some lovely wheat last week,to drill some poxey grass 6meter strips,so the rabits can live there and eat off the next 6 meters,how mad is that,still points make prizes.  Here in a normal year we would get a tank full of wheat with a 6 meter header around a 20 acre field.Times that by all the fields in the uk with margins,thats a lot of wheat.Still the rabits we must look after them!!!.   JOHN.

All i know is my boss has had the devil's own job getting hold of organic molasses to make the last bit of manky hay more palatable to the sucklers. He mumbled something about humans needing it more than cows!!

Tesla coils, you fairly come up with some interesting concepts.

Ihave witnessed first hand state farming in russia, poland, etc . it was a disaster.

Here is another concept;

Prairie style graingrowing, using hydrocarbon based fertiliser will become uneconomic as oil reaches $300/ barrel or more.

Mixed farming will have to return, with cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry, all kept outdoors.

Fences and stockmen will return to eastern england.

Kansas farmer, are the futures rising again due to your frost and wet weather?

Here in scotland, sowing is delayed due to wet ground. it is very cold. the predicted"record" harvest is a long way off.

I hear that planting rain is needed in australia.

Whats the word over there?

He his self, no acreage payments, just bring back intervention for cereals.

No headage payments for stock, just guarantee the price of poerk/beef/lamb.

Acreage and headage payments all end up in the lairds pocket.

Bring back drainage grants, grants for filling in ponds, ripping hedges,oops did i say that?

Sorry, its all too much to take in . I need a drink.

What's all this about a food shortage?  There is no lack of food, only a lack of money to pay for it.  People in other countries earning maybe five pounds a week just can't afford to buy off the world market, so they grow their own or starve.  And in Europe / America etc, supermarkets are throwing away vast amounts of produce because it has not been sold before it goes off, there is plenty for everyone if they have the cash.

Farmers should enjoy any shortage of produce, it keeps prices up.

Glasshouse:  Alot I know, we got to 24F last night and wheat futures were down Monday, go figure.  They might go up 30 cents tomorrow for no apparent reason, but given a real reason to go up they went down.  I think the CBOT should be shut down by the way, they have been the key factor in my opinion in distorting markets for years.

We live in enjoyable times as farmers. I particularly like the howling about Tesco's £2.8 billion profit this morning, it wont be long before a regulator is set up for the supermarkets.

As for subsidy my personal preference is for good prices and no politicians but there is no chance of that, they must "do" something about food price rises.

 Exactly. Politicians feel that they have to take 'action', no matter what it is just to be seen to do something. Inevitably, this leads to chronic short termism. Now, I'm not against short termism per se, but you can compound it when you have three parties who feel that their brands of short-termism must all be different, rather than working towards a common goal. 

Simple problem is not lack of food. It is that there are too many people for the planet.  

It is absolutely bizarre that all of this has come as a surprise to the politicians. They have been warned for years that eventually this would happen.

In the UK, there are many politicians who believed that by getting rid of the subsidy-production link it would actually bring down the cost of food in supermarkets! The general public were persuaded this would happen by these flat-Earth idiots. How did they think that would work then?

In my first Economics lecture at Uni 22 years ago the lecturer said that at some stage in the fairly near future there would be more people in the World than there would be food for them to eat. I have always remembered that. We are now at the stage where that point is coming into view. It is, as others have said, merely a question of affordability between nations and races at the moment. But it is also the phenomenal growth of the Chinese and Indian nations and the appetite for western diets and new-found ability to pay for those diets which is causing these huge movements in price. I read somewhere last weekend that the average Chinese peasant earns 8p/hr. Imagine what will happen to food prices when they earn 10p, 15p or 20p, let alone 500p!!!

This is without doubt the biggest global event in my lifetime and we are just getting under way. My guess is that within 5 years we will look back and see the current global warming debate as a foolish load of global hot air because something much more fundamental will have blown it off the global agenda. Global warming is going to happen anyway, we can't stop it. Make no mistake, there are some appalling times ahead for the poor in the world who get left behind in the meteoric rise of the Chinese economy.

In the end though, with all the current wringing of hands about what to do about fast-rising food prices, the market will sort it out. Of that there is no doubt.

Ronnie James Dio

Politicians hear what they want to hear. Ignorance is bliss.

I think most of them couldn't care less about what goes on outside their lives. Image and publicity, it's like  apopularity contest. 

Voters hear what they want to hear as well, ignorance is bliss for all of us.  What are we talking about in our election right now?  Is McCain too old, is Obamas pastor a racist, now Hillary says her dad use to take her out behind the shed to teach her to shoot(her granddaddy built that shed with his own two hands, I heard her say it so it must be true), and Obama compares her to Annie Oakley.  McCain says the troops will stay in Iraq until the job is done, using 100 years as his benchmark, I am sure he didn't literally mean 100 years, and everyone jumps on that.  What they need to be telling us is how they are going to fix our problems, with specifics.  We talk about all this other BS because in truth none of them have a clue how these problems are going to be fixed.  The American public just closes our eyes and vote for who we perceive to be the lesser of two evils.

The headline this morning is US inflation is 3 times what they thought it would be this last month.  Imagine that.  Now what will they do?  The fed has raised interest rates in the past to combat inflation, but if they do that now it will crimp an already delicate economic situation.  With each passing day, the outlook for the American consumer becomes a little more gloomy.

robexel:

supermarkets are throwing away vast amounts of produce because it has not been sold before it goes off,

Robexel is right in that Supermarkets, slaughterhouses, food processors et al are throwing away hundreds of thousands of tons of good food because it does not meet critieria. The criteria themselves, by and large, overstate risks and postulate worst case scenarios in the event of any failure from any of the criteria.

I estimate that about 40% additional food (at no cost) would come on to our market were the various health bodies to review their criteria in line with real risk as opposed to worst case hypothetical risk and worst case outcomes and, that supermarkets accepted product with visual irregularities.

It is worth remembering that the human race (and its diseases) evolved to our present state in symbiotic and parasitic relationships, and our present preoccupation with hygiene at any cost, seems somewhat silly given that human life has developed within much more tolerant boundaries than are applied now.

Just for the record, I am not saying hygiene and health issues do not matter, only that costs of Assurance are now much greater than any Insurance premium would be for the same risk.

Waste is incredible, not just in food.

Perfectly good cars get crushed, that africans would die for, tyres that could be retreaded get burnt, a lot have plenty tread.

Fridges that are good or need small repairs are scrapped, which the third world would be glad of.

Sewage sludge going to landfill or onto slag heaps is another waste.

Pigswill being banned is a horrific waste of resources.

My grandparents who made do through  two world wars and the great depression will be burling in their graves.

KF,

I have said so many times before the Anglo Saxon Democracies have lost their way, they Elect a politician but the Politicans put people into Depts of State who have no credentials for these appointments and we all end up losers.McCain looks to me the only one of your lot of any consequence the others are chancers looking for a job and a Pension.Over here it is no better of all the Politicans from all the Parties I think only David Davies and John Redman are anything like the mark a proper Politican should be.The world Food crisis [apparant] was just waiting to happen but where were these men of Honour looking after the Nation State when Food was being sold at at cost less two.Just like the Barrow Boys in Industry they are cheap low life that have wormed their way into the job if they had to go infront of the Dragons Den 95% would get the wrath of the Dragons.

USA Wheat report today 21% crap 45% ok.Worce than this time last year.JOHN.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7347239.stm

IAASTD final report now on their website
http://www.agassessment.org/index.cfm?Page=Press_Materials&ItemID=11  

(but it is 2,500 pages so just download the slides and listen to the press conference)