In Defense of Food

I have finally gotten around to starting Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food. As I get through more of the book I'll share more about it. One of my first and, I think, best posts here on Torqopia ("You are what you eat") discussed Pollan's earlier book, The Omnivore's Dilemma.

In the meantime, Paul Krugman at the NYTimes writes about the rising cost of food and the various causes, including the rise of China and American ethanol subsidies. He also makes this observation:

Governments and private grain dealers used to hold large inventories in normal times, just in case a bad harvest created a sudden shortage. Over the years, however, these precautionary inventories were allowed to shrink, mainly because everyone came to believe that countries suffering crop failures could always import the food they needed.

This left the world food balance highly vulnerable to a crisis affecting many countries at once — in much the same way that the marketing of complex financial securities, which was supposed to diversify away risk, left world financial markets highly vulnerable to a systemwide shock.