"Nine meals from anarchy..."

"... was the expression coined by Lord Cameron of Dillington... to describe just how perilous Britain's food supply actually is... Long before many others, Cameron saw the potential of a real food crisis striking not just the poor of the Third World, but us, here in Britain, in the 21st Century.

The scenario goes like this. Imagine a sudden shutdown of oil supplies... If the trucks stopped moving, we'd start to worry and we'd head out to the shops, stocking up our larders. By the end of Day One, if there was still no petrol, the shelves would be looking pretty thin... It was Lord Cameron's estimation that it would take just nine meals - three full days without food on supermarket shelves - before law and order started to break down, and British streets descended into chaos...

Well, today Britain is facing a very real crisis. Granted, it is not the threat of a sudden, terrifying phenomenon such as the hurricane that struck New Orleans. But in its capacity to cause widespread hardship and deprivation nationwide, it is every bit as daunting...

Conventional wisdom had it that in an age of mechanisation, the cost of producing the food that we eat would decrease as technology found new ways of improving yields and minimising labour costs. But there was a problem that hadn't been factored in. Production methods are now such that 95 per cent of all the food we eat in the world today is oil-dependent...

One analysis of the fodder pellets which are fed to the vast majority of beef cows to supplement their grazing found that they were made up of ingredients that had originated in six different countries. Think of the fuel required to transport that lot around the world...

Fifty years ago, food represented around 30 per cent of the average household budget, whereas nowadays it is nearer to 9 per cent... In other words, cheap food has not only helped keep inflation down, it also allowed the postwar consumer boom to flourish.

With our most basic and necessary commodity - the food on our plates - costing proportionally less every decade, we had plenty of free capital to spend on luxuries: flat-screen TVs; the holidays abroad; the home improvements and extensions that so many of us have acquired. That's all set to change in a major way. A new era of austerity is approaching, and we are ill-prepared for its scale and effect...

This time last year, it cost me around £7.50 a month to feed one of my pigs. Today, as wheat prices nudge upwards towards £180 a ton, that figure is closer to £15 a month...

(How much longer, I wonder, will the seafood business Young's of Scotland find it economic to fly prawns to Thailand to be cleaned and de-shelled, before flying them back to Scotland for packaging)?"


Image and text above from an article in the Daily Mail (U.K.). I deplore fear-mongering, and the tone of the article does border on "alarmist," but the author is using the introductory scenario to emphasize the important concept of the relation of food prices to energy prices. The end result is a sobering and very thought-provoking piece. For those interested in the subject, I recommend reading the original in its entirety at the link.