Food insecurity

blacbird said:

Iowa? How in the galaxy can the state of Iowa be experiencing "food insecurity"?

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Maybe because they stopped growing people food and started growing automobile food instead?

Plot Device said:

Maybe because they stopped growing people food and started growing automobile food instead?

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indeed.

bird, when i saw the thread title, i was instantly transported back to my childhood, where i once had a potato with such poor body-image that we feared it might throw itself upon the peeler.

those types of things can scar a man.

thanks for bringing it back with such force.

Because of the severity of the floods this year perhaps? A lot of the early crops were lost because the fields were under water during planting season. I mean, sure, the deficit could be made up by the produce of other states but Iowa could still have a shortage of fresh produce.

mscelina said:

Because of the severity of the floods this year perhaps? A lot of the early crops were lost because the fields were under water during planting season. I mean, sure, the deficit could be made up by the produce of other states but Iowa could still have a shortage of fresh produce.

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I hadn't thought of that. Any families who survived at least in part on a small family garden plot would surely be in a real fix now if the floods destroyed everyone's back yard gardens.

Isn't Iowa mostly corn? If it is, then it's really not edible just as straight corn. It has to be heavily processed first, possibly out of state.

JoNightshade said:

Isn't Iowa mostly corn? If it is, then it's really not edible just as straight corn. It has to be heavily processed first, possibly out of state.

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In prior deacdes, Iowa WAS growing mostly just feed corn for cows, pigs, and chickens (including but not limited to Iowan cows, pigs, and chickens) and only a small portion of that fair state grew some corn as straight up people food. But in the past two years the big ethanol push has prompted many Iowan corn farmers to switch their target crops over toward ethanol stuff. This subsequently left a lot of animal farmers (in Iowa and elsewhere as well) in a tough position because it suddenly became very expensive to get feed for their livestock. It contributed to THEIR prices going up, which then contributed to the prices of beef, milk, poultry, eggs, and pork products going up as well. Some animal farmers got out of the animal farming business entirely.

Meanwhile, the error of ethanol has already become painfully appearant to almost everyone involved, but there is still at least one more entire year of ethanol contracts that these corn farmers are obligated to fulfill. So the error just continues and the problem gets worse.

The growing of corn to feed automobiles instead of people was adversely affected by severe flooding in Iowa according to a news article.

well, when everyone's lawns are littered with emaciated cars, their oil pans bloated and flies buzzing around their deadeye headlights, maybe people will see the error of their ways.

The apple just called the orange fat.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27757538/

Per this article, the IMF and World Bank thought grain reserves and subsidies were inefficient, not good free-market economics. They copied the just-in-time strategy of other production, and figured investors would naturally make hay while the sun was shining -- more profitable farming would draw the money.

But of course, shit happens when the weather doesn't cooperate, and investment follows the gold at the end of the rainbow, not the field it shines on. There was faster money to be made elsewhere, apparently.

If a mine collapses and some mineral is unavailable to produce gadget X, we can wait. If floods or drought wipe out a year's crop, we starve.

blacbird said:

This is a head-scratcher: According to a U.S. Department of Agriculture survey, the two states having the greatest amount of "food insecurity", that is, percentage of families having difficulty securing adequate food, are Alaska and Iowa.

Iowa? How in the galaxy can the state of Iowa be experiencing "food insecurity"?

caw

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The more that you have to rely on imports the less secure is your source of food.

GeorgeK said:

The more that you have to rely on imports the less secure is your source of food.

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Whats even worse is when you are dependant on food-aid. If the donor country has an economic problem (like they are all having now) half your population starves to death.

William Haskins said:

well, when everyone's lawns are littered with emaciated cars, their oil pans bloated and flies buzzing around their deadeye headlights, maybe people will see the error of their ways.

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There are parts of the Ozarks that offer such scenery now and it doesn't seem to change anyone's mind so far......

One of the primary factors affecting food security in a given region has to do with the "market driven" aspect of food as a retail product. The selling of food is a business, and that business will seek a market that can not only support it, but allow it to prosper. Those of you who live in urban or suburban areas have seen grocery stores fail or move to another spot, as growth in an area redirects traffic flow. But when you do a market analysis of rural areas, the sparse and decentralized population makes it difficult to find an ideal location for a grocery store, especially the megastores that keep retail prices down through volume buying. The smaller (family-owned) stores don't enjoy savings through volume buying, so their prices are (sometimes considerably) higher.

So, folks who live in rural areas are prone to suffer the same problems with food availability that some impoverished Africans do: there's not enough money to draw the food to them. Whether it's sparse population or not enough change in your pocket, the result is the same. To get the food you need, you have to travel greater distances and/or pay a higher percentage of your income to acquire the food, and when radical spikes in the price of gasoline occur, it drives up food prices and the cost of going to get the food.

While corn-to-ethanol and natural disasters have played a role in Iowa's situation, these things merely exacerbate a food security issue that was already present.