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Chrispeels Examines Causes of Rising Food Prices

The following article by Maarten Chrispeels, “Rising Food Prices: Multiple Causes But No Easy Solutions,” was published May 9, 2008 in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

A little over a year ago, tens of thousands of Mexicans protested rising corn prices in what became known as the “tortilla wars.” Today, unrest over rising food prices has spread globally, and governments are scrambling to respond to this crisis and feed their poorest citizens.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, food prices worldwide have risen 80% since 2005. The billion poor people in developing countries who are food insecure and spend up to 75% of their income on food go hungry when food prices double. The era of abundant cheap food seems to be coming to an end, and malnutrition, which had been declining slowly for the past 50 years thanks to the Green Revolution, is on the rise again.

Prices of all basic agricultural commodities—rice, corn, wheat, sorghum, soybeans—have nearly doubled in the last two years, paralleling the rise in the cost of oil. Not only have bread and breakfast cereals increased in price, but also beer (made from barley or rice) and soft drinks (sweetened with corn syrup), as well as beef, chicken, pork, and all animal products, including dairy, fed on grains.

The causes of these price increases vary from country to country and from crop to crop and are so complex that no simple solution is in sight. The real solution is to accelerate agricultural production worldwide, a goal that will take years to achieve.

The rising affluence in the emerging economies of China and India has increased the demand for meat, and Asia has become a big grain importer. People who can afford to would rather eat pork or chicken than rice and lentils. But it takes four to eight pounds of grain to produce a pound of meat.

The recent dramatic increase in the price of oil is a second major cause of the rise in food prices. Agriculture, food processing, and food distribution are energy intensive. Fields must be planted and fertilized, crops must be sprayed and harvested, foods must be processed and transported, cows must be milked and the milk pasteurized, and meat, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables are transported over long distances in refrigerated conditions. Every step in the food chain requires energy. As energy prices go up, so do food costs.

Concerned about global warming caused by the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the European Union and many of our states, including California, instituted biofuel mandates, and biofuel production is the third major cause of the food price increases. In most cases, producing biofuels means converting oils from canola or soybean into biodiesel or starch from corn or wheat into ethanol, setting up a competition between food and fuel.

In the past 10 years, the proportion of the U.S. corn crop used for the production of ethanol has risen from 5% to 25%, causing corn prices to rise. Farmers, seeing that they could get a good price for their corn, planted less of the other crops or moved those crops to less fertile land. A smaller supply means higher prices.

Global climate change brought about by the rising temperature of the Earth is the fourth major cause. Altered weather patterns have been accompanied by floods, tropical storms, and droughts all over the globe. Witness Myanmar this week. Australia, normally a big exporter of wheat and rice, is in the grip of a multiyear drought and has seen its grain production plummet.

Over the past 25 years, developed countries have kept grain prices artificially low through massive farm subsidies. If we add up all subsidies—such as direct payments, import taxes, tax advantages—the total comes to nearly $1 billion per day for all the developed countries together.

These subsidies have had the effect of reducing the incentive for investment in agriculture in developing countries. They could always rely on importing cheap food from abroad, and indeed the poor countries of Africa and Asia have also become big grain importers.

At the same time, the developed countries dramatically cut their support for agricultural research in developing countries. The international agricultural research centers that brought us the Green Revolution crops that doubled global food supplies between 1960 and 1990 have been starved for funds.

At the same time, the United States and the European Union made substantial investments in the basic plant molecular sciences, including crop genomics. The genomes—or the entire genetic makeup—of rice and corn have been decoded, and those of other crops will soon follow, providing scientists with the genetic foundation to create vastly improved crops. It is as if the left hand wasn’t told what the right hand was doing, because all this genomic information could benefit crop productivity, if only there were enough plant breeders and other agricultural scientists in developing countries to use it.

Agricultural biotechnology has created two parallel paths to help translate genomic information into crop improvement. On the one hand, plant breeding entered a new era by using genomic information to trace the transfer of desirable traits from one generation to the next.

Just as we are learning which genes are associated with human diseases, we can now figure out which genes are associated with desirable crop traits such as disease resistance, seed size, protein content, or depth of rooting. This approach, called marker-assisted breeding, has already been implemented in developed countries, but a large cadre of trained scientists and plant breeders working in developing countries will be required if those countries are to reap the benefits of crop genomics.

In addition, plant breeders can use genetic engineering to transfer genes that specify desirable crop traits between plants of different species. For example, the famous “golden rice” rich in provitamin A was made by introducing a daffodil gene into the rice plant.

Although the United States is the leader in this technology, food companies and fast-food chains—afraid of protests by “green” organizations and of losing customers—are refusing to use certain genetically engineered crops. As a result, the biotechnology companies abandoned their plans to release genetically engineered wheat and potatoes with valuable new traits.

In addition, many countries completely oppose the planting of genetically engineered crops, alleging—in spite of a complete lack of evidence—that there are environmental and health risks. One silver lining on the dark cloud of rising food prices may be that this opposition is weakening as people see what biotechnology can do for crop productivity.

By 2040, we will need to double food production. This will require the application of our new molecular knowledge to crop improvement as well as a substantial investment in agricultural research all around the world. We need to train thousands of plant breeders who have the capability of using all that we will soon know about crop genes and applying it locally to generate the crop varieties best adapted to the many ecological niches where crops are grown.

If one-tenth of the money we now spend on subsidies were spent on agricultural innovation, we could look forward to a world where no one goes hungry. The only question that remains: Do we have the political will?

Maarten Chrispeels is a professor in the Division of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego, and director of its Center for Molecular Agriculture.

ASPB members interested in writing commentaries in their local newspapers can call the newspapers to learn the requirements for submitting letters to the editor or op-eds. Op-eds are generally longer than letters to the editor. If you exceed the word limits, the letter or op-ed likely won’t get published. Some newspapers want to have the letters signed and require submission of e-mail address and home phone number.

Choosing timely topics, as Chrispeels did with rising food prices, increases the chances of publication. Letters are more often selected that respond to an editorial or other published item in the newspaper. Don’t be discouraged if your first letter or op-ed is not published. The majority of submissions are rejected. However, letters to the editor and op-eds offer a cost-effective avenue for public education outreach. They can influence many readers, including decision makers.