Comments on: Soaring Food Prices Force the Poor to Literally Eat Mud

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:52:45 +0000

Mr. Eugenicists,
May I suggest that we the people start using the land upon which the empty shopping malls and factories now occupy for growing food? But only if Agri business doesn’t mind. Close to my house is a brand new shopping mall built upon 192 acres of pristine farm land, and we already have plenty of Wal-Marts, and dollar stores now. Peak food is a disgusting scare tactic for brain washing people to accept a carbon tax and depopulation tactics used by the elite class when the peasantry is no longer useful. Your politically Fascist point of view disgusts me. People have been tempted and teased into a marketing scam to unload marriages, farm out children, eat fast food, be more selfish than the next person, and it’s better to apologize than to ask permission, and now we need you to tell us to stop generating more mouths to feed and accept that you may be eating dirt in the near future. Why did you get out of bed this morning?

By: Unpopular Truth

Unpopular Truth — Sun, 25 May 2008 03:10:43 +0000

I assume you're familiar with the idea of necessity being the mother of invention?
Food tech has improved in the past, so there's no reason to think that given higher prices, there will be even more incentive to improve technology now than ever.
It'll either be in farming (quality, waste reduction, land/water use, etc), in machinery (more efficient harvesting, land maintenance so you dont ruin soil, etc) or storage (we have a big harvest this year, we can store it for 5 years rather than 1).

Basically, stop scare mongering. 99% of the time any country that has famine is not because of food, it's because of corruption in the leadership! Fix that and you'll solve world hunger.

By: Annette

Annette — Sat, 24 May 2008 11:10:03 +0000

Just wait till the governments of Australia make consumers and farmers pay the commercial price of water which includes the scarcity and environmental costs. The flow on (pardon the pun) effects will be tremendous. Food, power (power stations pay nics for their water at the moment), everything will increase just because they will be charging a commercial rate of return on water infrastructure. Add to this carbon taxes that are yet to come in and things are going to get ugly.

Time to get self sufficient or establish communal set ups. We have to consume less of everything. Having worked and researched in natural resources for 15 years I can see the writing on the wall.

By: Robert

Robert — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:19:07 +0000

Food is going to have to compete with energy production for biofuels, so land with water is precious.
I suspect we may not see the extra 3 billion by 2050 as crops depend on fuel (tractors and fertiliser production)

By: nic meredith

nic meredith — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:57:14 +0000

I would argue that Inflation in money supply is the main factor here......thats why the prices are going up.
Especially food.
I believe in Australia we use more resources in our suburban gardens than the entire commercial agricultural sector.