Part of the Problem

I'd often heard that much of the developing world's most fertile land is used to grow tea, coffee and tobacco for the first world. My response, like many others, has been to try to buy fair-trade coffee and tea, where the local growers get a fair price, rather than being underpaid by giant corporations (we're looking at you, Nestle).

But there's more at stake now.

As the oil price continues to rise, biofuels (ethanol, made from corn) become a viable alternative, and in many places there's a 10% ethanol blend at the bowser. But this further increases pressure on productive land, as growing crops to burn rather than eat becomes more lucrative, struggling farmers will do it.

Solution - don't use ethanol blend fuel - it matters far more that we run out of food than we run out of fuel.

It gets worse though. I read in the NY Times yesterday - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/17/business/worldbusiness/17warm.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=rice+price&st=nyt&oref=slogin - that Australian farmers in the Riverina, who formerly made Australia one of the world's largest rice exporters, are now shifting towards growing grapes for our burgeoning wine market. (The article notes that the drought is an uncontrollable factor in the depletion of the wine crop too).

The price of staple foods, rice among them, is skyrocketing internationally. There are riots in Senegal and Haiti, as the poor find themselves unable to afford even the most basic food.

My immediate reaction is to stop drinking wine. But then I have to factor in that meat production also diverts land away from crop growth (it takes 10 times the land to produce a pound of beef than to produce a pound of wheat).

Tea, coffee, wine, meat, fuel - my consumption of all these things is at the expense of the nutrition of the world's poorest people. I'm going to have to make some radical choices about it.