Extraordinary events are taking place in the global food market. The price of wheat, soya, maize and milk products has more than doubled in the last few years as demand has outstripped supply for the first time since the second world war. Why? The world’s population is growing, but not at an accelerating pace. Yet millions of poor people, especially in China, can now afford to buy meat, and the production of animal protein requires a much larger input per kilo than that of vegetables. The average Chinese citizen eats 30 per cent more meat now than five years ago. Second, there have been a series of poor harvests across the world. And third, many western countries are subsidising farmers to switch from food to renewable energy crops.
Over 200 years ago, Thomas Malthus argued that population would outrun food supply, and that without stern limits on reproduction the world was heading for disaster. So far, he has proved utterly mistaken; the world’s population has increased tenfold and there is less starvation than in his day. But the global population will probably rise from 6.5bn to 9bn by 2050, which will require the world’s farmers to produce more food in the next 40 years than in the past 200. The Malthusian predictions were wrong for 200 years, but might prove right in the next 50.
In 1800, Britain, like most countries, gave farmers extensive levels of protection in order to keep food prices high and the ruling landlords happy. The price of wheat was higher in 1815 than in 1960.
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