Food

It's Monday evening and I'm in Flagstaff, Arizona. We drove about eleven hours today, through two time changes (Arizona does not switch to daylight savings time, why can all the other states be so smare?) and about 500 miles. Needless to say, I'm a little tired. But this will get rid of some excess energy.

I mentioned a growing water problem last night. Tonight, my friend Marilyn Alm mentioned food. Food does not come from the grocery store; it comes from farms. And we have fewer farmers these days. Agricultural land is being turned into housing with no regard for where the water for these places will be found or how the additional people will be fed.

This year, for the first time in many years, Russia can't export wheat. They don't have enough to feed their own population. China announced that it is considering the revocation of the "one child per family" policy. But China grows enough food to feed about a third of its population. In the United States, the price of wheat shot up about 300% this year.

So, we are approaching a crisis of hunger and of energy, as well as water. What to do? Well, I think that some very hard decisions will have to be made by the governments of many countries. These decisions may lead to those making them being outsted from power. But they and we are going to have to chose between making unpopular decisions (and implementing them) and watching our grandchildren starve.

That is no exageration. Our world population is growing faster than the supply of food grows. People are moving to places like the desert for its beauty and the dry air with no thought for the water it will take to keep their lawns green. Those lawns, by the way, are humidifying that dry air.

There is no guarantee that advances in agriculture and in genetics of crops will be sufficient to keep everyone fed. There is still great resistance to genetically tailored crops. What do people think hybridization is? Did you know that the apple is a member of the rose family? How did that thorny, pretty smelling flower become a lucious fruit?

Agreed, some of the steps that are taken to increase the food supply are short sighted. We are beginning to see what dosing cattle with antibiotics does to some bacteria's resistance to them. No-one has done satisfactory, long term experiments with some of the other methods presently in use. Is our food supply a time bomb, ticking silently to zero?

In the United States and most European countries, we have become addicted to things like sugar and caffeine. They aren't particularly good for us. But we have been consuming steadily increasing amounts of both since the 17th century. There don't seem to be many undesirable side effects if we discount increasing weight and some irritation before that essential morning cup.

The addiction is passed on to our kids. Most colas have plenty of caffeine to start a day the coffee way. The new "energy" drinks have even more. These are very popular with adults and with children. I'm wondering what effect that will have and what will happen when it becomes necessary to convert lands presently under coffee and sugar cane to wheat, rice and beans.

Enough. My rant is finished for tonight. I hope, dear reader, that you will ponder the questions I have raised. If you have any answers, I would be very grateful if you would post them in the comments section.