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Britain runs out of pasta as costs soar
Stephen Hayward, The Sunday Mirror (UK)
Pasta lovers were warned yesterday that spaghetti could soon be off the menu as supplies run short.
The crisis has been caused by Italian farmers, who usually grow the durum wheat for 99 per cent of all UK pasta products, now cashing in by instead selling it for biofuel.
This has sparked a worldwide shortage of raw ingredients and sent prices rocketing.
A 400gram tin of spaghetti hoops in tomato sauce could rise from 44p to 88p. A spokesman for Heinz, which sells 140million tins of pasta meals a year, said: “Food commodities are under an awful lot of price pressure because of the rising cost of ingredients across the board.”
(17 February 2008)
California “Food Miles” Cannot Be Discussed in Isolation from Land Use Policies
Doug Paul Davis, California Progress Report
Recently in the Davis Enterprise, John Mott-Smith had a provocative piece on the importance of keeping down food miles.
From our perspective there are actually two issues that important in food miles. First the distance that the food travels to stores. Second, the distance that we travel to stores to get the food.
In arguing for reduction in distance food is transported, Mr. Mott-Smith writes:
“Generally, locally grown food purchased in season is fresher, more healthful and requires less energy to produce and transport to market, and we should encourage stores and restaurants to provide food that is produced locally.”
Second he argued for neighborhood grocery stores:
“How we get to the market to buy the food is also important. One of the best things we can do is walk or bike to the store. Of course, whether we can walk or bike to a store depends on whether there is a food store near where we live.
Not too long ago, there was a food store within a half-mile of every resident in Davis. The trend to larger stores has been one cause of the closure of several of these “neighborhood stores.” As the effects of climate change and “peak oil” make themselves felt in our economy and our daily lives, having essential services such as a grocery store accessible to each neighborhood will be an important element in reducing the number and distance of vehicle trips in the community.”
Extending his argument out further, what he is really talking about having grocery stores that are locally owned and operated and also small and conveniently located within our neighborhoods.
As we have spent much time discussing this year, we have moved away from the neighborhood grocery store model and towards a centralized model with large supermarkets–the two Safeways and the Nugget on East Covell.
(17 February 2008)
The article mentioned in the article Keep down the ‘food miles‘ by John Mott-Smith is behind a paywall.
Soy displaces cattle as main farm activity in Argentina
MercoPress (Uruguay)
Soy beans has become the main commodity of Argentina’s rich farmland displacing other traditional industries such as cattle breeding and dairy farming, according to studies and statistics from the country’s main breeders organization the Rural Society.
This cultivation season Argentina planted 16.9 million hectares with soy, 650.000 more than the previous year, making the oil seed agriculture’s main money making production and fiscal resource.
… “Of all the current camp options soy requires a lesser investment; prices remain strong and promise to remain strong; demand for oil and bio-diesel keeps growing and it’s the crop less susceptible to suffer the lack of rainfall”, said economist Ernesto Ambrosetti from the SRA Economics Studies Institute.
However it has its drawbacks and the main soy organization admits it.
“In vast areas soy has become a single cultivation” said Rodolfo Rossi from the Soy Association. And he warned many farmers are not involved in the necessary conservation of the soil since soybeans extract a high percentage of nutrients which need to be replenished.
Rossi said that in other areas “soil management is adequate; direct plantation (no plough); fertilizers and winter crops, but in vulnerable areas where rotation of crops is essential it’s not been done”. And this situation could worsen since the price of fertilizers have on average doubled in the last twelve months.
(17 February 2008)
