We’ve been talking about the disconnect between the
realities of food production and the artificial understanding of agriculture
held by most Americans. The fact that there’s a disconnect is in part
understandable when you consider that fewer than two percent of the population
feeds more than 100 percent of the population (don’t forget exports) and the
vast majority – more than 98 percent – are two or more generations removed from
the farm.
But being physically disconnected from agriculture isn’t the
entire story. Education, media and entertainment paint a vastly skewed picture
of the basic realities of the physical world, and a population that is
increasingly urbanized and “connected” is in fact increasingly disconnected
from reality. One might describe this phenomenon – where hundreds of millions
of people blandly accept fiction as fact – as a mass delusion.
A few years ago a NASCAR driver attempted to win a race by
charging into the final corner much too fast. He flew off the straightaway with
excess speed and flashed by the race leader. But then physics took over, and
his car slammed into the wall as he tried to corner. After the race he
explained that he’d tried the maneuver on a video game and had been successful
– the game allowed his virtual car to zip through the corner against the wall
without damage and without paying the cost of transferring kinetic energy, or
speed, into the heat energy produced by 3,500 lbs. of race car grinding against
the Safer Barrier under centripetal force.
This was a reasonably experienced, successful driver. The
point isn’t that he didn’t know what would happen – he did – but that he
allowed himself to believe that the natural laws of physics just might prove to
be malleable.
Unlike the driver, who had plenty of experience in the
physical reality of hitting the wall, the majority of Americans have no
experience with production agriculture, and increasingly, no experience of
nature outside the artificial environment of cities and towns. Without
experience – and like it or not, television and video games do not represent
experience – these people are vulnerable to believing that reality is what the
media, entertainment and education “experts” say it is, rather than what it is.
As I write this on July 17, the Washington Post (among
others) is reporting that food prices are increasing because of the present
drought across the Midwest and great Plains. The story in the Post is written
with the certitude of an author who is describing factual reality.
But the drought is a recent phenomenon, while food prices
have been rising since 2008, even though crop production as an aggregate has
increased. So why isn’t the law of supply and demand driving food prices?
Firstly, and despite government and administration claims
that the nation is “dong fine” economically, increased government spending has
been directly driving inflation across the economic spectrum. The
administration cherry-picks outlying data points and reports that there is no
inflation, yet every food-buyer in the nation knows that food prices have been
on the rise for years. The media have been largely silent on the subject until
now, when they have a drought to blame it on, and can protect their precious narrative.
But the fact remains that commodity prices contribute little to food costs, the
bulk of which lie in processing and transportation. Nor do the relatively tiny
drought-fueled market increases of today explain away the inflation of the last
four-plus years.
Secondly, ever since the Renewable Fuels Standard became
law, food prices have been decoupled from the agricultural market and coupled
to energy the energy market. The driving force behind corn price increases has
been ethanol, which has become the largest single user of corn. As corn goes,
so do other food commodity prices.
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