Alastair wrote:
>
>
>>From my POV it seems that the economics of it are rather similar to
> Peak Oil. Once the demand exceeds the supply the price goes sky
> high. If any one of the factors which have altered that balance had
> not happened then there would be no food crisis yet!
Strictly, demand can never exceed supply, but I know what you mean.
> The factors are: on the demand side - the increase in meat consumption
> by the Chinese, and the use of grain for biofuels. On the supply side
> was - the Australian drought perhaps induced by climate change, and
> the increased cost of oil.
The cost of oil also affects the demand side -- it would be interesting
to look at the cross elasticity of demand between petroleum and biofuels
(it would be surprising if someone hadn't already studied this). In
concrete terms if oil drops to $15 a barrel, where it was not so many
years ago, the demand for biofuels would crater.
> I have not seem how much the price of ooil
> affects the price of food in the supermarket but it impacts the cost
> of fertilisers, irrigation, farm machinery, and transport costs from
> farm to market and from market to supermarket. What other costs to
> farmers have?
Land rent and labor, to name two big ones. Also seed, fuel, and
herbicides or pesticides.
Ray
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated
venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of
global environmental change.
Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the
submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not
gratuitously rude.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected]
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
