H/T Dad 29
It was bound to happen.
I can buy this:
Four main factors are seen as driving prices higher: weather, higher demand, smaller yields and crops diverted to biofuels.
The 40% of the US corn crop diverted to make an inferior fuel that helps no one except the people who are subsidized to produce it. Ethanol operates at a net energy loss. that is, it takes much more energy to produce than it provides. So in addition to starving people, ethanol production is using up fossil fuels that could power other things directly. It is not possible to produce ethanol at a net energy gain. Physics: It's not just a good idea, it's the law. But I digress.
Weather is always an issue. Farmers live and die at the pleasure of the weather. Smaller yields? I suspect the love-affair with organic farming and the idea that fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides as well as GM crops are all evil is contributing to the smaller yields.
This, I'm not buying.
Volatile weather patterns often attributed to climate change are wreaking havoc with some harvests.
Weather has always been volatile. It follows patterns more closely related to ocean cycles and sun cycles than (alleged) AGW.
Food shortages have always been the result of government policies, whether the intentional starvation of peasants under Stalin or the "save the fish" policies of the United States. The most productive farmland on Earth has been decimate to pay homage to an "endangered" fish.
This was a no-brainer a long time ago.
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