Commodities trading has a lot to do with food production, the types of food grown, etc. As an example, a year or so ago in China during a bad garlic harvest, entrepreneurs were buying tons of garlic, storing it in warehouses until the price rose to make a significant return. This of course created more volatility, driving prices even higher. So I would think its very difficult to tell the difference between actual food shortage vs. speculation and politics. Food may cost more than people can afford, but higher cost does not automatically equal scarcity. IMO, the issue is affordability, not shortage.

Thanks for the link. Her posts are a thoughtful and entertaining read. Reminds me of Amy Dacyczyn's "Tightwad Gazette" books. Not just "how to," but "why to" -- finding elements of elegance, joy and humour in a very modest, frugal lifestyle.

EDIT: I don't care for the word "scavenging" though. It conjures this image of buzzards descending on a well-ripened corpse. I think scrounging or foraging are better descriptions of what she does.

My pleasure Doug! Thank you for the Amy Dacyczyn "Tightwad Gazette" recommendation. I'll seek them out!

There has been no global shortages int eh last couple of years and there is no shortage presently, or even in the short run. Reserves are up from a few years ago and production is well in excess of need and should, barring unforeseen circumstances, remain well above need even as there remains the expected checkered pattern of droughts, floods, blight, and all the rest of the usual causes of failure.

That said the longer term, thirty years and beyond, looks clouded, if not outright bleak. Anthropogenic global warming, AGW, is pushing rising oceans and climatic shifts that are converting many of the best crop lands into saltwater swamps and deserts.

Then there are the many forms of biological blow-back as insects once under control become resistant to insecticides, herbicides no longer work on weeds, fungus laugh at the fungicides we throw at it, and antibiotics, necessary for industrial scale meat and egg production, loose traction.

Then there is the energy side of the issue. Industrial farming is energy intensive to start with. Most of the fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides, are made from fossil fuels and require motor fuels to ship and apply.

On the other end of the equation human populations are going up. Even worse billions of people who barely used motor fuels and fed themselves on a handful of rice and a few vegetables want to drive a car to work, eat burgers and fries, run big screen TVs and air conditioning, and flush a porcelain toilet with drinking water. They want to live like we do and, as Lincoln said 'There aren't enough teats on the sow'.

Water, fuel, and arable land are in short supply. Water used for crops can't be used for drinking, and neither can be routed to wetland. If the wetlands run dry fish populations in the oceans plummet. With many populations getting a good share of their protein from the oceans so shortchanging the wetlands to irrigate crops may end up yielding less food, not more.

This is typical of these issues. Easy answers will cause more harm than good. There are no simple solutions. Good solutions are only going to be implemented by understanding the situation and its dynamics, science, and sitting down and negotiating like adults, politics.

Not making any of it any easier is the fact that for thirty years there has been a concerted effort to discredit both science and politics. So we have largely crippled our ability to know reality and take action collectively.

There is good news. None of these very ponderous and vicious birds will come home to roost for thirty years and they won't bite hard for another forty. So there may be time on some of these issues but how you navigate all this without information and collective action is a mystery.

Storing food and growing a garden is barely a drop in the bucket. It might help some but it is clearly not an answer. Good luck. IMO there is little to nothing an individual, or small group, can do. These are national and global issues that are amenable only to national and global scale solutions.

There is one small fact that I take great comfort in: In forty years I will either be dead or so old that it won't matter. All the young bucks out there who claim to know it all and have easy answers better be right. You have thirty or forty years to come together and get it right.

Not to minimize a serious concern. 39 times 1.7% [assumes immediate reduction rather than whatever the actual decline rate may be] equals 66.3% according to my cellphone calculator, meaning a shortfall of 2.7% to address over the next 39 years, assuming the growth in production rate holds, of course. The biological sciences and all forms of food production have shown remarkable ability to improve yields - so far.

For the USA at least, a shortfall of that magnitude might help us deal with chronic obesity...

In fact, obesity may get worse...in the scramble to produce more food, costs need to continue to come down, which means additional additives for shelf stability and flavor...high fructose corn syrup being just one example. It's a travesty when a gallon of water costs more than a gallon of soda. I'm doing my part by having my own garden, as are our neighbors. I also cook almost all meals, so freshness and flavor are guaranteed without all the additives. I recently saw a show that stated in the 1800's families spent 10 cents per dollar on food, that figure today is 70 cents per dollar. People simply grew most of their own food.
If anyone has more accurate info, that would be great. Please share.

70 cents on the dollar seemed rather high to me, as in my mind that equates to 70% of my income which would be preposterous. I did a quick search because, "Hey maybe I am completely off". I can't confirm the ideology of the writer but this article goes over the national percentages for family budgets. Food is listed as about 14%.

Another website I looked at did research on the food totals of a family of four at around $770 per month, which the percentage is arbitrary to the food lifestyle of the family and household income.

I don't think that 10% would be all that hard to imagine for a family in the 1800 given that in America we were still very much a rural society until the late 1800s. Thus we raised or hunted much of our own food for consumption, sale or trade.

Another 10 vs 70 statisitc I have seen a number of times is the percent of income spent for your average American (I believe defined as a household income of $55,000) vs a family in the developing world. So, 10% spent on food for Americans vs. 70% for people in poor countries. So, what seems preposterous to you or me is everyday reality for billions of people.

I think much of the press about that G-20 meeting referred to in the OP use the wrong headlines. It's really not food shortages that are the immediate problem that they were meeting to discuss, it's the rapid price volatility that is crushing so many of the world's poor lately. I have read that 98% of the world's hungry are from developing countries, and if they have to spend most of their income on food, you can see how sudden spikes in food prices can be catastrophic, especially for growing children.

While it's true that the total global food production is enough to theoretically feed everyone, there really are food shortages in many areas above and beyond the fact that food is getting too expensive for people to buy. When a major wheat producer like Russia bans exports this year so its own people don't riot over rising food prices, there isn't necessarily a lot of reserves to take up the slack in the marketplace, which is partly why wheat prices doubled in a short time. Countries that can pay get the wheat, and those that can't, do without, or do with less. Over time, higher prices should lead to more production, but that takes time and people still have to eat in the meantime.

We are lucky in that the raw cost of food is only a percentage of the price we pay, so spiking food commodity prices don't cause such dramatic spikes in the final price of food for us. However, that may change if economic conditions take a precipitous nosedive. It would probably only be a temporary condition, but it's a good reason to have longer-term food supplies to ride out such disruptions. Actually, on a global level, better food reserves would allow poorer countries to also ride out situations like this, similar to how the IEA announced releasing petroleum from its strategic reserves in response to high global oil prices, but food reserves are quite thin in most countries nowadays. Gardening could likewise provide a cushion through turbulent times.

Several things wrong here. For one thing the government stats say the 25-40% of family income goes to housing. another 10% goes to gas for the car. At the very minimum that is 35% of income and does not leave 70% for food.

The math don't work.

Secondly the average farm famly in the 1800s had a total cash income of 15-30 dollars a year. Out of this they were required to purchase salt, sugar coffee and tea. 90+ % of the nation was agricultural and even the professional people in small town America grew a backyard garden.

Lastly, cooking at home does not guarentee healt, freshness or flavor. I receintly ate a couple of meals with some friends and was appaled that a "health care professional" was living on overcooked meat and potatoes all smothered in gravy, every meal.