Food or Fuel?

Hello Guys and Dolls,

Things in my world have been happening fast and furious lately and as a result, I am not free as often to muse and ruminate which are essential ingredients if I am going to write you an interesting entry. However, I am going to continue in my attempts to make time for writing….

Today, my thoughts have settled on the seemingly parallel issues of the rise in gas and food prices. It seems that every day we are hearing dire predictions associated with the rising prices of crude oil and staple foods like rice and corn. But what do those predictions mean for me, for you and for us, as aware consumers who are hopefully looking at the long term viability of our economy as well as our environment?

Let’s start with some of the factors contributing to the rising cost of food; gas prices are an integral part of the equation, however, these have been on the rise with the same list of sort-of explanations for years. I’ll focus on the new issues related to the inflation of food prices and we can see how the two run similar paths. In fact, one of the largest contributing factors to the price increase is the rising cost for transportation and energy required simply for manufacturing and transporting the food from the farm to the store. As gas prices rise, the more it costs to fill up that huge truck that carries thousands of pounds of corn from the field in the prairies to our store in Ontario.
Another factor is the emergence of a defined middle class in several Eastern countries, Asia and India for example. As Western influence has assaulted their way of life, the citizens of these countries work towards the ‘beaver cleaver’ middle class and expect to have a similar standard of living to the average (or perceived average) American family. This means that cultures that previously consumed very little fossil fuel and meat are now getting their very own Vespas and Big Macs. Obviously, this increases the demand across the board. Now, just to interject, although this may seem to have a negative effect on our lives, here in North America, I am not insinuating in any way that we should not be improving the standard of living around the world, however, we just need to begin to foresee these amazing strides forward and making plans to sustain both our quality of life as well as our quality of environment.

That being said, the fact that the US dollar has been performing so poorly is another factor that brings up the cost of our food. With the dollar dipping dangerously in the world market, smaller portions of food are being earmarked for North American sale and thus there is less supply available to the average consumer. The countries that control the largest percentage of the production (be it crude oil or grain) are going to sell the majority of the stock to the countries with stronger currency as that is more valuable to the vendors.

Another great environmental stride has begun to have a negative backlash in the grocery store, ethanol. The production of ethanol, an alternative fuel source created primarily from corn, now eats up almost one third of the entire corn production in America. Corn is also becoming a very valuable commodity and with it rise the stocks of the companies riding the wave of technology. As a result, companies that purchase corn for ethanol production and experimentation can afford to drive the prices higher than the average consumer because that allows them to have access to a larger surplus of corn. Again, I am not trying to point out the ‘profit-hungry’ ethanol producers, in fact I am 100% behind the exploration of alternative fuel sources, I am merely listing the many contributing factors that are going to make it painful to go to the grocery store this summer.

Continuing on the corn bandwagon, many soybean farmers have discovered that it is much more lucrative to grow corn, and lots of it, than it is to grow soybeans. As a result, soybeans, a very healthy and nutritious food eaten around the globe, are growing scarce. Strangely enough, these soybean farmers may end up kicking themselves in a year or so because if the soybean continues to lose out to it’s more popular friend, corn, we may have an endangered fauna on our hands (figuratively speaking of course) and they may find that their own actions drive the cost of soybeans and thus their own potential profit margin up, (or at least the profits of those still growing those delicious soybeans).

I’m going to throw some figures out there, just so you can see the exponential increase. Canadians haven’t been hit by the brunt of this storm yet as we are slightly sheltered by America, but give it a few months and unfortunately, I hear that our prices will begin to reflect these scary numbers;

From January 2007 until April 30th, 2008

Egg prices have increased by 25%
Dairy prices have increased by 13% (milk, yoghurt, cheese etc)
Poultry prices have increased by 7%
Corn prices have increased by 44%
Wheat prices have increased by 92%
92%!!!!!!!

That is crazy to me!
Another fun little fact, The Food Bank board sent out letters to be posted in every Food Bank across America stating that the Food Bank prices were going to increase by 20%!

Now, I have one final fun little tidbit that makes my stomach churn as a raw nutrition enthusiast, 60% of mothers polled in a middle class grocery store in the US admitted that their children were now primarily drinking soda because it is cheaper than milk. (Globe and Mail )

I think a puppy just died. That is possibly one of the saddest things I have ever heard (nutritionally). To think that we have gotten to a point where it is simply cheaper to poison ourselves than it is to live a healthy life….

I have a saying, a little metaphor if you will.
Treat your body like a premium, high performance vehicle, because that is what you want it to be, right? You want to look great, have strong, consistent performance (even if that performance is just getting out of bed and walking one foot ahead of the next to make it to work every day). You want your body to be a prime piece of work, or at least that seems to make sense, why would you want your body to be like a beater car?
Anyway, so your body is a premium car. If you had a high performance race car, maybe a Porsche or something else flashy, you would be putting premium fuel in that baby, wouldn’t you?
If the dealer told you to put premium in, you’d do it right? I mean who spends a half million dollars on a car and then puts in regular unleaded?
Well, think about your body like a car. Do you want to be putting in the bare minimum in order to get from home to the store or do you want your high performance machine to purr like a kitten? Food works the same way. Yeah, that Big Mac may fill you up at first and sure, calories can be calories, and yeah, why not, we can call that limp piece of lettuce on there your ‘vegetables’. But is it the premium stuff? If there was a fuel called ‘Big Mac’ or at least one that was reminiscent of those fast food ‘burgers’, would you want to put it in your shiny Jag or bitchin Porsche?
No?
Ahhhhh, so tell me, why would you put it in your body?

I went off the beaten track there for a moment, but let’s bring it all back. Food prices are going up, let’s all do our part and help local farmers and organic growers, but be realistic, for the time being, food prices are creeping higher. Gas prices are climbing. Sure, Hilary Clinton wants to give the US a tax break on gas, but is that a long term solution? No. So, again, let’s be realistic, we will all do our part, campaign for cleaner fuels, take public transit and carpool, but gas prices are going up. We don’t have any dinosaurs to make more oil, so eventually we are going to run out.
So here we are, both gas and food prices are climbing and I’m sitting here wondering, which machine will you fill with premium and which will get the old, Big Mac?

PS. I will be writing some tips for saving money, fuel and food that I find helpful when dealing with the conflicting worlds of media and common sense.