Food is a National Security Issue

By Holly Noonan

HOPE (Oct 26): If you haven't read Michael Pollan's October 9th Open Letter to the Next President in the New York Times, I can't recommend it more highly. This champion of food writers, a man who has been one of the great heroes of illuminating the unfortunate realities of our food supply through his book The Omnivore's Dilemma (and many other books and articles) will actually be in Maine tomorrow night, speaking at Bates College. (I'm gutted I can't be there. I found out about it too late.)

Michael Pollan finally says it outright: "Food is a National Security issue." He notes that more than 30 nations have experienced food riots because of shortages in the past several months, and one government (Haiti) has fallen. He makes the point so clearly as to be unmistakable, that our policies up to now which have encouraged massive flows of cheap, subsidized commodity grain to flow unencumbered across global free-trade zones, has been a mistake. The results of this oil-dependent, unsustainable, non-local food supply system is that the poorest on our planet are starving right now.



As this article from the Economist notes, "Last year wheat prices rose 77% and rice 16% (see chart 1). These were some of the sharpest rises in food prices ever. But this year the speed of change has accelerated. Since January, rice prices have soared 141%; the price of one variety of wheat shot up 25% in a day."

Josette Sheeran, the head of the UN's World Food Programme, the largest distributor of food aid, said recently;


"For those on $2 a day, it means cutting out meat and taking the children out of school. For those on $1 a day, it means cutting out meat and vegetables and eating only cereals. And for those on 50 cents a day, it means total disaster.â€