Hungry and angry are the only two words in the English language that end in "gry". (The overly punctilious also make reference to an Asian hat of some kind.) Below are links to news reports, opinion pieces, and academic articles that are related to the topics taught in my course, "World Hunger, Population, and Food Supplies," (AREC 365) at the University of Maryland.
Howard Leathers, Associate Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
email me at hleathers@arec.umd.edu
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Sequencing the Corn Genome. The Washington Post has an article on the completion of mapping out the corn genome.
"Many agronomists hope the information buried in corn's 32,000 genes and 2.3 billion letters of DNA may help sustain the century-long improvement in yield and hardiness into an era of climate change and, possibly, food shortage. ...There are at least 180 genes -- and perhaps as many as 1,270 -- present in some varieties but entirely missing in others. These genes (or groups of them) function like iPhone "apps," doing work that is essential for some users but unnecessary for others. (Scientists think the merging of genetic apps may be one explanation for "hybrid vigor," which is the better performance of offspring compared with their parents.) Knowing which genes carry non-universal traits -- such as the ability to survive in standing water or tolerance for drought -- will be extremely useful to plant breeders, said Richard K. Wilson, a human geneticist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis who helped lead the sequencing project. 'You want to see if you can get the two different desirable traits into the same plant,' Wilson said. 'When you have the genome, then you can pick and choose at the point where you have seeds. That is huge.'"
posted November 20, 2009 at 6:30 a.m.
They'll have to pry this pencil from my cold, dead hand. This guy claims that the 2008 Farm Bill outlaws wood (by amending the Lacey Act that makes it illegal to import, sell, or possess products made of wood from protected species trees).
posted November 18, 2009 at 11:30 a.m.
Jeffrey Sachs on the World Food Problem. Mark Thoma quotes Jeffrey Sachs's article in the December 2009 issue of Scientific America. "It is not enough to produce more food; we must also simultaneously stabilize the global population and reduce the ecological consequences of food production—a triple challenge."
posted November 18, 2009 at 11:00 a.m.
Hunger Food Insecurity in the US is at a 14 year high. The USDA reports that food insecurity is up during the current recession. The NYTimes article on the subject is here. the USDA report is here. An updated opinion supporting the view that a distinction needs to be made between "hunger" and "food insecurity" is here.
posted November 16, 2009 at 3:30 p.m
updated November 20, 2009 at 6:30 a.m.
Falling Fertility. The Economist has an article (and more info here) about fertility declines in developing countries. Here's a nice graphic with a cute baby:
"In the 1970s only 24 countries had fertility rates of 2.1 or less, all of them rich. Now there are over 70 such countries...Why has fertility fallen so fast, so widely? Malthus himself thought richer people would have more children and, as any biologist will tell you, animal populations increase when there is more food around." A good answer to this follows. Plus, here's another fabulous graph:
posted October 31, 2009 at 5:00 p.m.
Famine in North Korea. The New Yorker (November 2, 2009) has an article about famine in North Korea.
posted October 31, 2009 at 4:30 p.m.
End of Cheap Food. Standard Chartered Bank has released a report of that name. "The report concludes that a. `Feeding the world’ is achievable at a global level, but at a cost which will inevitably mean higher prices. b. Regional variations in food availability will widen, leading to more cross-border investment in the agricultural sector, the risk of protectionist policies, and heightened food security concerns for net food importers. c. At the local level, food affordability will become a key focus of fiscal and trade policy across the developing countries. While higher prices have positive implications for farm incomes and investment incentives, they will hinder the drive to improve food security for the poor."
posted October 28, 2009 at 3:00 p.m.
Can Biotech Crops Feed the World? A NY Times colloquium addresses this question, with commentary from (among others) Prof. Per Pinstrup-Andersen of Cornell and Prof. Michael Roberts of NC State.
posted October 28, 2009 at 2:00 p.m.
Biofuels and Global Warming. If forest land is converted to crop land to grow crops for biofuels, increased biofuels use might increase greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study.
posted October 25, 2009 at 9:00 a.m.
Save the Planet, Eat Your Pet. Two New Zealand academics have written a book about the ecological/environmental impact of pet ownership. According to this description: "The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, researchers have found." The book Time to Eat the Dog, by Brenda and Robert Vale, is not listed on Amazon. So, for the time being file under "too good to fact check."
posted October 22, 2009, 11:30 a.m.
Nanotechnology in Agriculture. New research shows that seeds exposed to carbon nanotubes germinated earlier and produced larger plants than non-exposed seeds. "Those effects may occur because nanotubes penetrate the seed coat and boost water uptake."
posted October 22, 2009 11:30 a.m.
Posner and Becker on World Food Price Prospects. Economist Gary Becker and legal scholar Richard Posner take up the question "Will World Food Prices Resume their sharp increase?" Becker: "the efforts and ingenuity of farmers and researchers are able to greatly increase world food supply to meet even very large increases in the world demand for food." Posner: "I am one of those timid souls who worry about the downside of technological advance and economic growth. I find the prospect of continued increases in population and income, and of the technological innovations necessary to cope with those trends, unsettling." In the near term, however, exchange rate (value of the dollar) is likely to be the biggest factor in dollar denominated food prices. Can a dollar devaluation be big enough and permanent enough to make this a part of the long term answer?
posted October 12, 2009 2 p.m.
New Global Warming and the Food Supply. The Economist describes some new findings from IFPRI concluding climate change will have a negative impact on global food supply.
posted October 2, 2009, at 9:20 a.m.
Potatoes and European Economic Development. Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian have a new paper on how potatoes influenced nutrition, demographics, and economic development in Europe.
"Our study contributes to the debate by providing causal estimates of the impact of improved nutrition on population growth. We estimate the effect of improved nutrition caused by the large increase in availability of calories and nutrients that followed the introduction of the potato from the NewWorld to the OldWorld. … Our estimation exploits the introduction of the potato to the Old World following the discovery of the Americas. This event, together with geographic and climatic variation in a country’s ability to cultivate and adopt the new food crop, provides a source of variation in nutrition that is plausibly exogenous to other factors that affect population growth. Because potatoes are superior to existing crops in terms of both calories and nutrition, we proxy for access to improved nutrition with the amount of land that is suitable for cultivating potatoes. … Our results show that Old World regions that were suitable for potato cultivation experienced disproportionately faster population and urbanization growth after the introduction of potatoes. …[O]ur baseline estimates suggest that the potato accounts for 12% of the increase in population, 22% of the increase in population growth, 47% of the increase in urbanization, and 50% of the increase in urbanization growth."
posted October 2, 2009 at 9:20 a.m.
Beer Tax. "A tax increase of 3 cents per beer would cut youth gonorrhea by 9 percent."
posted September 30, 2009 at 2 p.m.
Enough. Dan Silverstein loves the new book by Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman, Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty.
posted September 29, 2009, at 1:30 p.m.
Cuban Farming. The Washington Post reports that Cuba is moving away from socialized agriculture.
posted September 29, 2009 at 1:30 p.m.
Potato Genome. A draft of a map of the potato genome has been completed.
posted September 29, 2009 at 1:30 p.m.
Costs and Benefits of cutting Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Bjorn Lomborg opines in the Washington Post. "Imagine ... that...every nation commits to reductions ... designed to keep temperature increases under 2 degrees Celsius. The result will be a global price tag of $40 trillion in 2100, to avoid expected climate damage costing just $1.1 trillion."
posted September 29, 2009 at 1:30 p.m