>>> THE FUTURE OF FOOD <<<

Food is very important. Around here a lot of people call themselves gourmets and they elevate the simple act of eating to a form of art. This kind of gesture has helped to hide the fact that food is an industry. A global, highly interconnected and monstriously big industry, dominated by enormous companies that employ tens of thousands and more people. An industry that somehow or another two out of three people working in the world are depending on. And it is rumbling. Because the habits of eating that have evolved in the last two centuries in Europe and the USA are destroying the lives of the people in the other parts of the world and now the people in China, India and other growing countries are trying to get up to the standards set by the old worlds. This won't threaten the western wealth, and nobody will have to go to bed hungry (that is 99.9 % of all people in the western world...) but there definitely will be some changes. As all kinds of luxury goods from stereos and fancy clothes and fashionable furniture is getting cheaper, the basic foods are becoming more and more expensive. How come?

For decades people in the western industrialized countries have been eating themselves fat. Obesity has become a main theme all through the low brow press and substandard politics. Now even the discount supermarkets can't guarantee ever falling prices for foods anymore. Globalization, of course, is to blame. Millions of Indians and Chinese are discovering the western lifestyle and are buying off the supply on the world market. Everything becomes scarcer. Which means everything becomes more expensive. Scarcity is an ugly world for a phenomenon that belongs to economy like air to live: only if somebody is missing something that somebody else owns a need to exchange or sell starts to exist. Or to look for an alternative or to develop something new. Scarcity is there when the economy of a country goes down and jobs are decreasing and people have less money to spend. Scarcity is also there in times of a boom, when demand outgrows supply. All the time something is scarce. And mostly we are to blame ourselves.

Of course it sounds nice and easy to blame rising prices for milk and butter to the Chinese' new found appetite for cream. China is a long way away and the western consumer pays what he is told to. Globalization is driving the increasing prices? But it is not only millions of new consumers suddenly available on the market, also the weather has an interesting influence on the worldwide chain of food supply. Like this: This year springtime in Europe was too dry and the summer too wet therefore the corn and wheat harvest is below average. And therefore there is less food for milkcows and therefore less milk. And because weather in Australia wasn't optimal either another big exporter is out of the game and therefore milk is scarce all over the planet.

Another example that is directly influence by almost everyone: meat. The global demand for meat is rising. This, on the one hand, drives the prices to new heights, but also, on the other hand, has the effect that other basic goods are becoming scarcer. Like corn or water. It is an easy calculation: A cow needs food. For a kilo of meat about seven kilos of food corn are needed. The growing of seven kilos of food corn takes 900 litres of water. Who eats meat therefore uses up a lot more of agrarian space than a vegetarian. And also a multifold of water.

Also the new economic conscience influences the global agrar markets. In Europe as well as in the USA the producers of gasoline, livestock breeders and food industry are competing for corn. In the Seventies already the USA started to experiment with bio-ethanol gasoline produced from corn. Back then the idea was to somehow use surplus harvest of corn for something useful. Today the main driver of this industry is the fear of climatic change and future oil supply. There are already 110 ethanol rafineries in the USA, 73 are planned. In the year 2016 about one third of the whole corn harvest in the USA will be used to produce biological gasoline. But one tank of a regular SUV filled with biological ethanol needs about 200 kilos of corn. Enough to feed a human for a year. The effects of the change in corn usage in the USA is already being felt by the Mexicans. Traditionally Mexico is importing a lot of corn flour from the USA to be used as food for livestock. But because US corn flour has become scarce and therefore expensive Mexican livestock breeders have been switching over to national corn flour. But this had been used by farmers to produce tortillas. The effect: last year price for corn flour in Mexico doubled, prices for tortillas increased, a national crisis evolved. Corn is the most important food for the poor people in Mexico, they spend almost half of their income for corn flour. The president of Mexico, Felipe Calderon, had to negotiate price caps with a lot of companies.

Some human rights organisations are already warning the world of biosprit-refugees from Malaysia and Indonesia. 80 % of the globally available palm oil come from these two islands. It can be used to fry or to produce margarine. Or biological diesel. More and more acres of rainforest are being grounded to be replaced with agrarian landscapes. In the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan about five million people were displaced to make room for palm oil plantages and moved to the slums of the big cities.

The rich western civilization is able to cope with scarcity. For a long time european farmers recieved a lot of support from the European Union so they would not farm their fields. Now, there is money to be made once again. Managers from the food industry also do believe that the ingredients of a lot of products could be changed without consumers noticing: Milk from cows could be replaced with soja milk and chocolate using 70 % cacao instead of 75 % wouldn't mean a lot less taste. In the production of biological gasoline better technology will help. Until now only a few parts of the whole plant could be used to produce bio gasoline. If it was possible to use the whole plant, much less space would be necessary. But that will take some years still.

Yes, a lot of things will change in the future. The near future. Thinking about your own lifestyle it is hard to really find out what is the best thing to do. What is more ecologically correct - fair trade chocolate that has been shipped over the ocean? But container ships are ecologically better than trains? What about hybrid cars that still need 5.5. litres on a hundred kilometres? It is all terribly difficult.

Georg Cracked, August 2007