COULD YOU expand on the relationship between the rising price of oil and the rising price of food?
THE PRICE of food and the price of oil are closely related. This is so because modern mechanized agriculture is heavily reliant on petroleum and petroleum-based products to generate the increased yields necessary to feed growing world populations and sustain the profits of giant agribusiness firms. Every piece of farm machinery is powered by gasoline or diesel, and most food crops are delivered many miles to market by oil-powered trucks, trains, planes or boats.
Hence, when the price of oil rises, the cost of all these other activities rises as well. In addition, petroleum is the feedstock for many of the pesticides and herbicides and other products that are needed to produce modern "miracle" crops that possess little resistance to disease. These, too, have risen in price.
On top of all this, croplands around the world have been turned over to production for ethanol for road transportation, reducing the crops grown for food and adding additional upward pressure on global food prices.
