Marble Falls Pictures of hunger and starvation in Gaza are an everyday horror. Even President Trump put the lie to Israel’s Prime Minister saying he could tell by the pictures that people were dying of starvation. As bad as this is now, it also makes it hard not to think about what shape we are globally in being ready to feed billions in a world undergoing climate change.
It was just that concern that drove Richard Sexton, a professor of Agriculture and Resource Economics at the University of California, Davis to write Food Fight: Misguided Policies, Supply Challenges, and the Impending Struggle to Feed a Hungry World, and to talk to me about these issues on Wade’s World. It’s hard to call it a spoiler alert to say he’s deadly worried and thinks we all should be. Worse, it not just a Malthus thing about population growing faster than food supply, although some of it is that, but Sexton makes a persuasive case that a lot of what we doing in practice and policy is wrong and could exacerbate hunger over the rest of this century.
A lot of the problem begins with how we look at land and water. It should be obvious to say that there is only a fixed amount of either, and it won’t get better, but it isn’t. A lot of decisions we’re making about the best use of agricultural land are being driven both by the market and by public policy. Sexton is willing to have a fight about food by throwing facts at a lot of contemporary sacred cows that may seem to make sense or favor some consumers, especially those with more money, but have consequences when it comes to the best allocation of land, water, and similar resources on the macro level.
Take biofuels, as just one example. Public policy, designed to protect the environment and decrease our dependence on fossil fuel, has mandated baseline percentages of ethanol in gas, which some US states and EU countries are increasing. The US is a huge producer of corn and soybeans, which are used for biofuels. Half of all the soybeans we raise are now used that way and between one-third and 40% of all of our corn, and it’s being done on the richest, most fertile soils in America. Sexton is realistic. He doesn’t believe you can put the genie back in the bottle, but he’s clear, we shouldn’t do more of it!
One argument after another goes like this. Organic is fine is you can afford it, but the crop yields are less. Go local, yeah, but it can’t be scaled to deal with hunger and compete. GMOs may seem terrible to some, but they almost all of our corn crop is already GMO, and corn is in a huge amount of what many eat. He also reminds that for all the Franken-food worries, no adverse impacts have been established scientifically to date. Small farms, you guessed it, are nice, but they can’t get to scale. The issues of equity permeate all of these issues.
Lower income families are outside these contemporary food fads financially, and so are many countries. Huge growth is expected in Sub-Saharan Africa in coming decades, but agricultural production is already in crisis in the area. Sexton had enough on his plate, but MAGA-thinking doesn’t help any of this. We can’t ignore the pending food crisis, even as we reduce our AID deliveries to countries that need it now. Our land needs to handle our population, but wise use needs to support others as well. People fighting over food can’t be part of the future. It’s hard to ignore this future, and given the long lead times for agricultural production, means what we do. or don’t do, now already determines the future.