Read this rundown of the various food shortages and riots occurring around the world. For people making one or two dollars a day, the price of food is becoming more than they can afford and they are responding with protests and violence.
This isn’t some Sally Struthers commercial talking about starving kids in Africa. This isn’t some obscure leftist anti-globalization doomsday diatribe. This is happening today, all across the world. We’re talking about increases of 50, 60, 180% in one year in places like Haiti, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan. Even Italy has had protests over the cost of pasta.
The chart below shows the change in the price of rice in the past three and a half years:
Rice is a staple for a large part of the world’s human population, especially in East, South and Southeast Asia. At these prices, people who are already living at subsistence levels will fall below that level. They will begin to starve, they will begin to riot, they will tear down the fabric of their society in order to try to survive.
And it will only get worse.
The price of food is going up for two reasons. The easy-to-demonize reason is the advent of biofuels. While I agree that biofuels are an absurd use of farmland given the pressing demands on the world’s food supply, it’s not the main culprit.
The real culprit is the increased worldwide demand for food. Not only is the population growing, but people in emerging economies are becoming more affluent. When that happens, they start to eat a higher quality diet and that invariably includes meat.
The problem is, meat is horribly inefficient as compared to any crop. It takes up a huge amount of farmland to raise cattle and the cattle themselves eat a huge amount of feed: 7 kilograms and a great deal of water for each kilogram of beef.
In addition, methane from cows may contribute up to 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas problem.
I tried going vegetarian a few months ago, partly because of these reasons, mostly to just eat a more healthy diet. I started to eat a lot of salads, skipped the chicken in burritos and started ordering tofu with my chinese food. Even discovered tempai and quinoa.
At first it was easy. I didn’t miss meat at all and proudly provoked shock from my friends when I told them I went vegetarian. But eventually, I started being constantly hungry. Even while I was eating, I was thinking about what I would eat next. On top of that, I found myself eating far more fish than I normally eat. And to be honest, I trust fish even less than meat.
So, I decided to become mostly vegetarian. I still go for a vegetarian option at every opportunity. But if I’m really craving a hamburger, I’ll have it. If I’m at dinner with friends with an American menu, I’ll order meat without an ounce of guilt.
Is it perfect? No. Am I a true vegetarian? No. But I eat 90% less meat than I used to, probably just once a month, which is a huge improvement over where I used to be.
But if everyone just became a 50% vegetarian, it would have an enormous effect on both the global economy and global warming.
You can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
