Recent Blog Posts
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The Times' Rorshach Geithner Story
Apr 27 20099:04am EDT -
Sinking Animal Spirits
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Counter-cyclical Urban Policy
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Be Your Own Counterfeiter
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Being Tim Geithner
Apr 25 200912:04pm EDT -
Notes From a Press Conference Naif
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What Good is the News?
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Stressful Enough
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Not Regretting the Pound
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Introducing the New Ford Squeeze
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Non-Economic Questions of the Day
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The Stress Test Blind Alley
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Happy Hour
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Recovery Without Rebalancing
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The Shape of Your Recession
Apr 23 20095:04pm EDT
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May 05 2008 12:00am EDT
Small Farmers Can't Feed the Planet
Mark Thoma and Alex Tabarrok and Paul Kedrosky all feature a tour de force mini-essay from Paul Collier, who left it as a comment on Martin Wolf's blog. I've been a big fan of Collier for a while, and I do hope he starts blogging in his own right soon, since he's really great at this sort of thing. The main causes and solutions to the present food crisis, then, through Collier's eyes:
- Chinese are eating cows which are eating grain which would otherwise have been eaten by Africa's poor.
- Americans are turning grain into ethanol which would otherwise have been eaten by Africa's poor.
- Europeans are banning genetically modified crops, which are Africa's main hope of growing enough grain to feed its own poor.
- Policymakers everywhere romanticize small farmers, when what the world really needs, if it's to feed a growing and ever-wealthier population, is Brazil-style high-technology Big Agriculture.
All of this is eminently reasonable, and if food riots achieve anything, it will be by forcing politicians to wake up to these realities and start feeding the hungry rather than pandering to the biofuel/anti-GM/small-farmer lobby. And if you think that "natural farming" or somesuch can replace technology-fueled agribusiness, think again.
