THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 19, January 18, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
FOOD CHAIN NOT STRETCHED TO THE LIMIT -- YET
By Dennis T. Avery
SOLUTION TO THE EARTH'S FOOD CHAIN TIGHTENING: PERMITTING FARMERS TO USE THE MOST EFFECTIVE PEST
CONTROLS, CHEMICAL OR BIOTECHNOLOGICAL -- THE ONE U.S. GOVERNMENTAL ACTION THAT COULD
EASE THE CURRENT GLOBAL FOOD PRICE SPIKE: LIMITING THE AMOUNT OF U.S. CORN THAT IS TURNED INTO CORN
ETHANOL -- FLAWS IN THE POLICY OF GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES & MANDATES FOR PRODUCTION OF CORN ALCOHOL FOR
USE AS A MOTOR FUEL
FULL STORY:
The cable network MSNBC is warning that the world food chain “has been stretched to the limit” by rising world
demand and a series of crop failures in several countries. The TV network’s warning is premature. The U.S.A., in fact,
could ease the current global food price spike with one administrative action — limiting the amount of U.S. corn that gets
turned into corn ethanol.
Recently, about one-third of America’s huge corn crop has been diverted from food and feed into an ultra-costly auto
fuel that gives consumers poorer mileage, even as it drives up their food costs. The corn ethanol diversion creates an
artificial scarcity of farmland, as it attracts more land into corn instead of wheat or other crops — and the price effects are
felt globally. In 2008, the ethanol mandate drove food prices up by more than 50 percent worldwide, and triggered food
riots in Mexico and several other countries.
But we didn’t learn the lesson. Half the members of the U.S. Senate thinks they need corn ethanol subsidies to get
re-elected. U.S. President Barack Obama thinks corn ethanol is “rural development,” not realizing that half the increase in
corn farmers’ profits comes from the pockets of their neighbors who are paying double for the grain they feed to chickens,
hogs, and cattle.
The real food crisis hasn’t hit yet. The crop shortfalls in the U.S.A., Russia, Argentina, and Australia aren’t even all that
unusual. Bad weather happens, and it hasn’t gotten worse with “global warming.”
MSNBC is not wrong about the rising global demand for food, but they’re crying “wolf” before the wolf cubs are
born. It’s true the world must double its food production in the short space of 40 years, to feed a human population that
will peak at perhaps nine billion people. Seven billion of them will be “rich” by today’s standards. After 2050, our
declining birth rate will start the first-ever longterm shrinkage in human numbers. It was lower death rates that caused the
“population explosion,” by the way, and not farmers “producing too much food.”
The real joker in the deck is that a continuing food shortage will not even cause much hunger. If food is in short supply,
farmers around the world will simply plow more and poorer land to grow more low-yield crops. The Green Revolution
spared about 7 million square miles for wildlife in the 1960s — the land area of South America. That benefit from
“high-yield conservation” could be lost in the coming decades.
MSNBC doesn’t talk about solutions to the food chain tightening, but we will. We must triple the food yields on
the planet’s existing farmland, by intensifying production. The public must get over its chemo phobia, and license its
farmers to use the pest controls that work best, whether they be chemical or biotechnological. Our ill-considered bans on
such safe chemicals as DDT and Dursban have cost 50 million needless deaths in the tropics, are bringing widespread
suffering from bedbugs in America today, and pest losses could lead to destruction of much of the planet’s wild
biodiversity in the decades ahead.
The Environmental Protection Agency “protects” us from “toxic chemicals” by moving their goalposts. The EPA can
multiply the “no effect level” in rat tests by 100 or even 1000 to set the “acceptable daily intake.” Thus, they can declare
just about any chemical they choose too toxic for our children.
Lost in this arithmetic is the reality that anything is toxic in too large a dose, including salt and sunlight. “The dose makes
the poison,” as Paracelsus told us 500 years ago.
Oh, and there won’t be much room on the more heavily populated planet in 2050 for organic farming. We’ll need to shift
our future concern from “toxic chemicals” to lost wildlife. Think “high-yield conservation” when you think of modern
farming.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Agriculture, the Economy, & Human Health & Welfare:
Policy Issues Relating to Food Production & Consumption
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Dennis T. Avery, a senior fellow for the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., is an environmental economist. He was
formerly a senior analyst for the U.S. Department of State. He is co-author, with S. Fred Singer, of Unstoppable Global
Warming Every 1500 Hundred Years. Readers may write him at P.O. Box 202, Churchville, Virginia, 24421 -- or send
him email at cgfi@hughes.net
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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