I don’t typically do links posts, but some of my students sent me a number of interesting food policy links over the past few weeks. I thought I should share them, so here goes. I might do more and more of those food policy link posts if the quantity supplied is high enough.
- Cornell scientists discover genetic key to efficient crops.
- UN launches global campaign on food waste.
- Does Wall Street profit from of food price spikes?
- The end of an era: Maize surpasses rice in China (in Spanish).
- US shrimp processors don’t like competition, lobby the government to slow imports.
- Extreme temperature, drought, and the wine industry.
HT: Victoria Corti, Ryan Gorczycki, Rachel Leven, and Sylvia Sable.
Quinoa Nonsense, or Why the World Still Needs Agricultural Economists
First came this post by Joanna Blythman on The Guardian‘s Comment Is Free blog:
Quinoa was, in marketing speak, the “miracle grain of the Andes,” a healthy, right-on, ethical addition to the meat avoider’s larder (no dead animals, just a crop that doesn’t feel pain). Consequently, the price shot up – it has tripled since 2006 – with more rarefied black, red and “royal” types commanding particularly handsome premiums.
But there is an unpalatable truth to face for those of us with a bag of quinoa in the larder. The appetite of countries such as ours for this grain has pushed up prices to such an extent that poorer people in Peru and Bolivia, for whom it was once a nourishing staple food, can no longer afford to eat it. Imported junk food is cheaper. In Lima, quinoa now costs more than chicken. Outside the cities, and fueled by overseas demand, the pressure is on to turn land that once produced a portfolio of diverse crops into quinoa monoculture.