table talk / By Bob Doran

Why Does Food Cost More?

(April 24, 2008)  If you’ve been grocery shopping lately, and paying attention at the check-out stand, you know the food we eat has gone up in price. Basic things like bread, milk and eggs are all more expensive than they were last spring — a lot more. And if you’ve been watching the news, you know food prices are up all over the world, to the extent that they’re causing political turmoil.

While the cost of groceries has increased here, the effects are not felt in quite the same way as in developing countries. The average American family spends around 10 percent of its income on food. In developing countries it’s 80 percent, according to recent statistics from the United Nations Food Program. Their stats also show that the price of corn has risen 57 percent in the last year, beans are up 40 percent and the price of rice, a staple in many cultures, has gone up a staggering 141 percent.

Photo by Bob Doran

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“There are food riots everywhere, from Haiti to India to Egypt to Italy,” reports Raj Patel, a journalist/activist focusing on food policy. “Even China is worried now about unrest due to food price inflation.”

Patel has been involved in food-related issues for some time. He’s worked for the World Bank, the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, and, as his publisher notes, he’s been tear-gassed on four continents protesting against those same organizations. Currently a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, he’s written about food politics for the Los Angeles Times and for The Guardian.

Patel’s new book, Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System,is timely to say the least. It’s put him in demand of late doing interviews for the BBC, Al Jazeera and CNN International and talking with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

Next week Patel is coming this way. He’ll speak Thursday, May 1, at Humboldt State in the new BSS Forum, Room 162. In advance of his visit we asked him a few questions. To start with: Why is the cost of food so high right now?

“There are five basic reasons,” he began. “The first is the price of oil. Because under industrial agriculture it takes a calorie of fossil fuel to produce every calorie that we eat, when the price of that fossil fuel goes north of $115 per barrel, the cost of food goes up.”

And, he explained, it’s not just that we’re paying more to transport food. “Production methods have become very, very energy intensive. Fossil fuels are a critical component in the manufacture of fertilizer, so the price of fertilizer goes up when oil goes up, and food prices go up.”

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