If it isn’t enough to have gas and diesel hovering around–and about to surpass–$4 gallon, an equally vital need for RVers is the need to eat. Food prices, especially rice, corn, and wheat have soared in price over the last year. We Americans (and Canadians) can be thankful, though at the same time frustrated and depressed, that the world’s poor, that already spends 80% of their income on food, are now facing hunger and starvation.
What is going on?
Can we attribute this disaster to global warming and the price of oil? If so, why then in the face of this global crisis are the multi-national food conglomerates making record profits? Monsanto last month reported that its net income for the three months up to the end of February 2008 had more than doubled over the same period in 2007, from $543 million to $1.12 billion. (For something that will really raise your ire, read Vanity Fair’s investigative report, Harvest of Fear, about Monsanto). Cargill’s net earnings increased 86%, and Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s largest agricultural processors of soy, corn and wheat, increased its net earnings by 42%. The operating profit of its grains merchandising and handling operations jumped 1,600%–from $21million to $341million. And despite the increase in organic food production, income for the Mosaic Company, one of the world’s largest fertilizer companies, rose more than 1,200%, from $42.2m to $520.8m, believe it or not because of a fertilizer shortage.
And it’s not just the disastrous effects of global climate change and the escalating price of oil driving food price increases.
As India and China’s populations rise into the middle class, so do their middle class tastes. Like being able to afford more meat at the dinner table. Since it takes 7 pounds of grain to make 1 pound of beef, there is a shortage of grain as feed lots expand (and forests get denuded for grazing land) to meet the growing need for beef. Then there are the speculators, driving food prices up as they push food futures into the stratosphere.
What’s next? Campground prices soaring over $50 a night? What’s that you say? They already are? So I now drive less, drive slower, stay longer (but not in $50/nite campgrounds), boondock more, and now I eat less also.
But one way or another we (at least those of us who don’t live in impoverished nations) will all get through this. It’s not a bad thing for us to drive slower and fewer miles, or boondock in the great outdoors more, walk and bike ride when we can, and use sustainable energy sources like solar and wind generators, and all the other things that will help us RVers to cope with rising prices and increasing shortages. And as far as the food thing, it’s also not a bad thing to eat less—beef and other unhealthy or scarce foods—and more fresh, local, unprocessed, and bulk foods. Might even lose a few pounds. And that’s a good thing, too.