The New York Times’ Sunday magazine big feature today is indeed a big read – it’s a 9-page letter on food and agricultural policy by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, addressed to the incoming US President
It’s a lot of blocktext for sleepy eyes to wake up to but stick with it: this big epistle makes absorbing if frightening reading:
…with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.
The impact of the American food system on the rest of the world will have implications for your foreign and trade policies as well. In the past several months more than 30 nations have experienced food riots, and so far one government has fallen. Should high grain prices persist and shortages develop, you can expect to see the pendulum shift decisively away from free trade, at least in food. Nations that opened their markets to the global flood of cheap grain (under pressure from previous administrations as well as the World Bank and the I.M.F.) lost so many farmers that they now find their ability to feed their own populations hinges on decisions made in Washington (like your predecessor’s precipitous embrace of biofuels) and on Wall Street. They will now rush to rebuild their own agricultural sectors and then seek to protect them by erecting trade barriers. Expect to hear the phrases “food sovereignty” and “food security” on the lips of every foreign leader you meet.
And what are Zimbabweans eating right now? Nothing, it seems. But the starving in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia and the Sudan are easy to ignore, as are food riots in the Phillipines and India; out of sight etc.
But food insecurity is getting closer to home all the time. I’ve been wondering what the hell the Icelanders are going to eat next year when much of their food is imported and they have no money to pay for it…
Who me, say ‘I told you so’? For the past few years I’ve been banging on about how horribly unprepared people are for the inevitable food shortages and poverty that will follow the world’s bigger nations’ disastrous policies.
I will be enjoying my coffee and bacon while I still can, but in the meantime I’m stockpiling oatmeal and potatoes and re-reading all my Marguerite Patten WWII cookbooks. Just in case.
