As I pulled several wilted tomato plants from my sorry, soaked vegetable garden this weekend, I listened to a news report about how global warming and attendant change in weather patterns are expected to lead to famine and massive population movements.
I read two items today that remind me once again how food and foreign policy are so profoundly linked.
One is a Washington Post story on how Michelle Obama’s celebrity in Russia is to a large degree focused on her creating and tending an organic garden at the White House.
The other is a sentence in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs:
“Families in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia spend up to 80 percent of their incomes on food; for the average U.S. household, that would mean an annual grocery bill of $40,000.”
How would life be different if 80 percent of earnings had to go to food? I really can’t imagine it.
In 2008, Americans on average spent 9.6 percent of income after taxes for food. But I don’t believe that really cheap food is the answer to food shortages. Food that is American-cheap and processed has given us soaring obesity and diabetes, and diminishing fertility of farmland. I’m sure it will cost more to support food grown locally in a sustainable way. We should no more be the food provider to the world than we should be the policemen to the world. Both concepts are unsustainable.
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