Food Trouble in India

When I was young, my title would have meant famines or food shortages.  This year, it turns out, the food trouble is too much grain for India to transport and store.

Japanese Agriculture

An article in today's Post on Obama's trip to Japan mentioned the problems the prime minister faces, including this:

But the sharpest acrimony came from the agricultural sector, the longtime granddaddy of Japanese politics, traditionally protected by high tariffs on imports such as rice and butter. With those tariffs obliterated, about 3.4 million farmers could lose their jobs, Japan's main agricultural group says.

The figure seemed high, so I did a little googling and found this link which not only confirms the figure is too high (3.4 million may be the total number of farmers) but includes lots of details on  farming: some are similar to the U.S., aging farmers, part time farmers reliant on outside jobs, heavily subsidized and political.; some are different, as in the average size of a farm is 4 acres, or the "plant factories" for lettuce.

[Updated: According to the NY Times story, the proposed changes might cost 3.4 million jobs.  The Post writer may have misinterpreted that as "farmers", not agriculture-related workers.]

This Must Be Wrong, Though Tyler Cowan Cites It

Marginal revolution refers to this paper (it's not free, so I'm not getting it):

This paper investigates the institutional causes of China’s Great Famine. It presents two empirical findings: 1) in 1959, when the famine began, food production was almost three times more than population subsistence needs; and 2) regions with higher per capita food production that year suffered higher famine mortality rates, a surprising reversal of a typically negative correlation. A simple model based on historical institutional details shows that these patterns are consistent with the policy outcomes in a centrally planned economy in which the government is unable to easily collect and respond to new information in the presence of an aggregate shock to production.

I can't believe the first sentence: a country of some 500-600 million people had food sufficient for 1.5 billion? No way, no how. [Update: according to Wikipedia, food production in 59-60 was 70 percent of pre-famine levels.]

Optics of Cotton and Chickens

Two items froms Farm Policy: (Drafted this a while back, just finished it today.)


“To wit: our crusading president is going to send $150 million of your tax dollars to subsidize the Brazilian cotton industry. Why? so that he can continue to spend several billion more of your tax dollars subsidizing U.S. cotton farmers.
“Reps. Jeff Flake,R-Az., Ron Kind, D-Wisc., Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., and Barney Frank, D-Mass. (find the last time Barney Frank and Paul Ryan agreed on anything) have penned a note to the prez suggesting that perhaps the way to fix the problem is to end the U.S. cotton subsidies.”


Chickens are not nice people.
“Scientists and egg producers warn that deadly skirmishes that start with feather-plucking and turn into bloody frenzies when a bird’s pecking breaks a flockmate’s skin will increase if those same aggressive hens are moved from small cages with five to 10 birds to open pens that can hold dozens.”

Who Do You Have to Outrun When You're a Cotton Farmer?

The Post gets around to writing an editorial on the compensation the US government is giving Brazil for violating WTO rules on cotton subsidies. As you might expect, they condemn it. 

For some reason this sentence hit me: . "Thanks partly to the subsidies, U.S. producers can outcompete lower-cost producers on the world market; American farms account for about 40 percent of global exports."  Now it's the way we usually talk about international competition.  While it's accurate enough for casual talk, when you think about it, and when you remember the joke about the bear in the woods, it needs refinement.


The joke about the bear?  Two campers were in the woods in their tent, just waking up from sleep. All of a sudden across the clearing a bear appeared, obviously feeling as mean and unhappy as Mitch McConnell after the Kentucky primary. The bear starts towards the tent.  One camper opens the tent flap on the opposite side, the other starts putting on his shoes. The first camper says: "Run, we've got to outrun the bear to our car."  The second camper says: "No, I've only got to outrun you."  [Bad joke, I know.]

What's my point? The US has some efficient cotton producers and some not so efficient.  Other countries, like Burkina Faso, or Brazil, have some efficient producers and some not so efficient.  The subsidies we give to our cotton producers help the less efficient (usually the smaller and older ones) stay in business longer.  They also tend to keep people in cotton, rather than switching to other crops, like soybeans, though that effect is much less true that it used to be, say in the 1960's.  To the extent that the subsidies keep our production up, it means the less efficient producers in other nations are under more pressure, either to switch crops or to give up and let more efficient producers in their nation take over the land.

Given these interacting relationships it's difficult to say how badly the subsidies may hurt producers in other countries. So my refrain: "it's more complicated than you think."

Indian Cotton Production

One of  the "memes" of the sustainable ag/organic farming movement is the belief that genetically modified cotton seeds failed in India.  So I found this interesting:

The statistics of cotton production and consumption in different countries across the world were recently revealed by the International Cotton Advisory Committee, showing a steady decline in cotton production in Pakistan from 2.194 million tons in 2005 to 2.08 million tons in 2009. India on the other hand increased its cotton production from 4.097 million tons in 2005 to 5.34 million tons in 2009. Accordingly, India’s cotton export has increased while that of Pakistan is facing difficulty. China too has increased its cotton production while its indigenous consumption has decreased, allowing a greater margin for cotton export.
The increase in cotton production in India and China is said mainly to be the result of cultivating pest-resistant varieties of cotton seeds, which have not yet been introduced in Pakistan. On the other hand, Pakistan’s cotton cultivation has declined due to several factors ranging from cultivation of traditional varieties and via traditional methods, poor marketing, and failure in making timely payments to cotton producers.

A Failure of Understanding?

In an oldish article on Grist, Debbie Barker writes:

It’s an industry-generated myth that ecologically-safe organic agriculture yields less than conventional agriculture. In fact, a comprehensive study comparing 293 crops from industrial and organic growers demonstrates that organic farm yields are roughly comparable to industrial farms in developed countries; and result in much higher yields in the developing world.

But this says

The performance of organic agriculture on production depends on the previous agricultural management system. An over-simplification of the impact of conversion to organic agriculture on yields indicates that:

• In industrial countries, organic systems decrease yields; the range depends on the intensity of external input use before conversion;
• In the so-called Green Revolution areas (irrigated lands), conversion to organic agriculture usually leads to almost identical yields;
• In traditional rain-fed agriculture (with low-input external inputs), organic agriculture has the potential to increase yields.

To be fair, the FAO says: organic agriculture has the potential to feed the world, under the right circumstances.

My point: "decrease yields" is not the same as "roughly comparable"

Whither the Food Crisis?

From the FAO's Food Outlook:

The agricultural market situation today is different from that of 2007/08. World cereal stocks are at far more comfortable levels than they were two years ago, with the stock-to-use ratio at almost 23 percent, 4 percentage points more than at the time. Evidently, the balance of world supply and demand is not even across all commodities, with some markets facing tighter conditions than others. But, in general, supplies held by exporters are far more adequate to respond to rising demand than they were during the price surge period. For example, the wheat stocks-to-use ratio in major exporting countries has risen from 12 percent in 2007/08 to 20 percent this season.

A reminder things can change quickly and the conventional wisdom of today is often like the winter's snow, vanishing with the brighter sun and the longer days.

Food and Population

This is in the nature of a followup to the post on the NY Times article--FAO is estimating we need 70 percent more food by 2050.  But world population is expected to rise by only 1/3; the remaining increase is needed for a higher standard of living, among the poor and the rich.

The Times Gets It Wrong [Or Maybe Not]

Unfortunately, urban myths circulate in many areas.  Sunday Andrew Martin of the NY Times wrote:

While the food supply grew faster than the world’s population from 1970 to 1990, as the Green Revolution’s gains took hold, the situation has now reversed itself. Productivity gains in agriculture have slowed, and since 1990, the growth rate of food production has fallen below population growth.

This, of course, is not true, even though it's a prevalent concept.  Via Wikipeda we learn that the rate of world population growth has  declined:

In 2000, the United Nations estimated that the world's population was growing at the rate of 1.14% (or about 75 million people) per year,^[27] down from a peak of 88 million per year in 1989. In the last few centuries, the number of people living on Earth has increased many times over. By the year 2000, there were 10 times as many people on Earth as there were 300 years ago. According to data from the CIA's 2005–2006 World Factbooks, the world human population increased by 203,800 every day.^[28] The CIA Factbook increased this to 211,090 people every day in 2007, and again to 220,980 people every day in 2009.

Globally, the population growth rate has been steadily declining from its peak of 2.19% in 1963, but growth remains high in Latin America, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.^[29]

Meanwhile, USDA in 2008 wrote:

The annual growth rate in the production of aggregate grains and oilseeds
has been slowing. Between 1970 and 1990, production rose an average
2.2 percent per year. Since 1990, the growth rate has declined to about 1.3
percent. USDA’s 10-year agricultural projections for U.S. and world agriculture
see the rate declining to 1.2 percent per year between 2009 and 2017.1

The ERS publication shows an increase in per-capita production in the period 1990-2007 and projects it to continue for the next 10 years, although at a much slower pace.

[Updated: I had made my point in an email to the NYTimes. Mr. Martin wrote back a response which says the wording could have been improved but the thought was correct, citing a conversation with Ron Trostle of ERS.  I'll try to research further.]

How To Mislead With Statistics

From treehugger, a Lester Brown article on how to rethink food production for a world of eight billion:

"The shrinking backlog of unused agricultural technology and the associated loss of momentum in raising cropland productivity are found worldwide. Between 1950 and 1990, world grain yield per hectare climbed by 2.1 percent a year, ensuring rapid growth in the world grain harvest. From 1990 to 2008, however, it rose only 1.3 percent annually."

This sounds like disaster in the works. What Mr. Brown doesn't do is compare the rates of increase of population and food production on the same graph. Looking at a table of world population growth, we see that in 1962 and 1963, the rate of population increase was 2.19 percent. But those were the only years in which the rate was over 2.1 percent. So between 1950 and 1990 food production outstripped population. Now since 1990 the rate of population increase has declined steadily, reaching 1.25 in 2000 and 1.11 percent this year. So, once again, the rate of food production is higher than population.

Although this part of the piece is misleading, he has an interesting discussion of various techniques, especially doublecropping, which might be possible. And he doesn't hit the locavore/organic drum at all.

Cost of Wheat

This webpage shows the cost of growing wheat in Canada, Australia, Russia, Brazil, Romania, and the UK. The UK has the highest yield, more than twice that of Canada, and its cost per ton is lower than the ABC countries. It's an example of the advantages of climate, I guess.

A Video Is Worth a Thousand Locavore Words

Ann Althouse has a link to a video from gapminder.org which shows how the world has changed in the last 200 years, both in income and health. I may be wrong, but I attribute these gains to the work of human reason working across boundaries, which seems to me to be the antithesis of the locavore movement.

Indian Elections and Vandana Shiva

Ms Vandana Shiva is an Indian activist who attacks the green revolution and industrial agriculture. She's pushed the meme of suicides of Indian farmers, who are over their heads in debt.

But this week the Congress Party, which has led the government, won a surprise victory, which is interpreted as pro-industrial, pro-modernization. I was struck by sentences like this one, in the descriptions: "In his last term, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh oversaw a costly initiative to guarantee employment to the poor in rural India and alleviate farmer debt."

I wonder whether the Congress victory means Indian farmers aren't in as rough shape as Ms Shiva claims, or at least they feel the system is responding to their concerns.

Government and Farming in Scotland

Musings of a Stonehead is a crofter's blog. He had a feed problem the other day, which resulted in an inspection and a report. His post(s) on the experience make for interesting reading. It seems they're a bit more highly regulated in the UK than the US.

Dr. Shiva Again

Since I took one crack at Dr. Vendana Shiva, I might as well take another. This Post article today on the burgeoning middle class in rural India paints a different side of the picture than the poor, oppressed farmers committing suicide she has depicted in the past. An excerpt:

India's rural destiny still depends on good monsoon rains and robust agricultural production, but four years of bumper crops and heavy government investment in rural infrastructure have given birth to what some analysts call an emerging economy within India.

In the dusty market along a bumpy road in Yadav's village, 40 miles south of New Delhi, sales of microwave ovens, washing machines and 32-inch, flat-screen plasma televisions have risen in the past year. Branded-clothing stores called Rich Look and Charlie Outlaw have sprung up, looking to attract upwardly mobile farm youths.

I suspect the truth is in between--commercial, yes "industrial", farming with its chemical fertilizers produces winners and losers, Dr. Shiva sees only the losers, this article shows the winners.

Wealth, Not Scarcity, Was the Cause of High Food Prices

We got through a scare about food scarcity last year--prices soared. Some foodies thought it was a sign of impending disaster, as the industrialized agriculture system was starting to totter. Now things have changed and people have looked at data.

From Farm Policy:

“‘The report indicated world demand is going to be anemic this year,’ leading to more supplies than analysts expected, said Don Roose, president of U.S. Commodities Inc. in West Des Moines, Iowa. ‘It’s a very fragile world economy.’”

"In part, the Farm Foundation report stated that, “In 2008, Farm Foundation commissioned three Purdue University economists to write the report, What’s Driving Food Prices? Released in July 2008, the report had two purposes: to review recent studies on the world food crisis, and to identify the primary drivers of food prices. The economists, Phil Abbott, Chris Hurt and Wally Tyner, identified three major drivers of food prices: world agricultural commodity consumption growth exceeding production growth, leading to very low commodity inventories; the low value of the U.S. dollar; and the new linkage of energy and agricultural markets. Each was a primary contributor to tightening world grain and oilseeds stocks."

What it says to me is that last year the world (outside our borders) was wealthy, had money to spend, and spent it on food, driving up prices. That's what "consumption growth" means to me. The "low value of the U.S. dollar" simply says the world got richer vis a vis us.

This year the world is poorer and we are richer (those of us who are employed or living off Uncle via a pension).

IBM, Farms, and Cities

The back page of the NYTimes has an IBM ad, which notes figures something like: in 1900 13 percent of the world's population lived in cities, now it's 70 percent. This leads to various profound thoughts supporting IBM's business strategy.

What that says to me is two things: "industrial" agriculture with its efficiencies has made the migration possible, and people prefer the opportunities in cities to the back breaking of "artisan" agriculture.

North Korean Agriculture

The Post has an interesting article on North Korea, much of it on food. North Korea makes an interesting test case for theories on food and famine and economics. It turns out the international food aid has greased the way for free enterprise--North Korean bigshots grab the aid and sell it on the open market, encouraging the powerful and connected to support markets. But that doesn't do much for encouraging private agriculture (which isn't much discussed in the article).

North Korean is reverting back to organic fertilizer, i.e., night soil, since they've lost their access to chemical fertilizers which they were very dependent on, but is struggling to feed its population. (That surprised me--I would have assumed their agriculture was not that modernized, but I guess collective farms must have adopted chemical fertilizers.) So, my prejudices are reinforced, private "industrial" ag is the way to go to feed people, at least in today's world.

A Common Error

"Instead of solving the world's food crisis, [since WWII] the USDA's policies have only made it worse."

Jim Goodman in Grist

Goodman's obviously a whippersnapper with no memories before 1990.