No easy solutions to food price rise
I ran across the following Houston Chronicle interview with Norman Borlaug on the topic of rising food prices. The author asks Borlaug about rising food costs, high yield crops and the fear of genetically modified foods. Read on and let me know what you think.
C.S. Prakash
No easy solutions to food price rise
Houston Chronicle
July 13, 2008
Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work in developing more productive strains of wheat and working to ensure their adoption around the world. During a recent phone interview with science writer Eric Berger, the 94-year-old distinguished professor at Texas A&M University said there are no simple solutions to the current crunch in food prices.
Q: Are you surprised at the price increases in wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs, some of which have tripled in just a few years?
A: I'm not surprised. The energy problem and the food problem are tangled up together. Many of the things that go into our food production system, like fuel for tractors and machines, and for fertilizer, have energy costs. Then there's the transport system for delivering goods. In addition, there may be speculation also. It's hard to isolate all of these factors. One change in government policy won't rectify all of these interacting complications.
Q: Do you worry about food riots around the world if prices continue to rise?
A: This is going on already in a few of the hardest pressed countries. Hunger is a pretty great force, especially if a country has seen things getting better and now it's going in another direction. People don't want to lose this progress, so they react in strikes and civic disorders of various kinds.
Q: Give me an example of a country that's made progress in its food supply.
A: India became self-sufficient in basic foods in the middle 1980s. Their production of basic cereal grains went from less than 11 million tons in 1965 to 75 million tons at the turn of the century. Today, they're eating more meat than they ever ate before. And meat requires more grain to feed animals. Now, with the increased price of food, some people are going to be pushed back into a shortage of food.
