A lot of interesting things are coming out of the recent upsurge in corn grain being used for ethanol production. There have been papers doubting the environmental benefits of biofuels, and all sorts of other interesting bits of news resulting from the higher price of field corn. Kirsten at The Bird’s Brain notes that popcorn has gotten a little more expensive, and Jeremy at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog links to an article hailing the food-system benefits of more expensive food. It’s a mixed bag, but there are a few things we can expect out of all this:

  • More expensive food at the grocery store means less of a need for subsidies. If you’re worried about how the price of food undercuts farmers in developing countries, you might like this news. If farmers over here can make a profit without government support, then that government money doesn’t translate into ruining farmers elsewhere.
  • More expensive food at the grocery store means local outfits can compete better. If lettuce grown across the country costs the same as the stuff at the farmer’s market, grown nearby, it becomes more feasible to buy the local stuff.
  • More expensive junk food at the grocery store means that the structure that forces cash-strapped people onto less-nutritious food could change a bit, makes more nutritionally-dense food more economically feasible, in relative terms. This leads to the fact that…
  • More expensive food at the store will be very hard on poor people in this country, who we must not forget. It is easy to say from a position of financial comfort that higher food prices are necessarily good when you’re not barely making ends meet. There’s a myth going around that people who are having a hard time affording food must have expendable cash elsewhere. Not everyone wastes money on Nike shoes. It’s not that easy, and its rather patronizing.

Higher food prices are a mixed bag. The ultimate goal, it would seem, should be food prices that are affordable for everyone, that don’t also nudge people in lower-income brackets toward buying less-healthy food. And higher prices won’t automatically mean better-quality food - there’s a lot more in play than mere dollars per bushel. I wonder if this over-simplification will lead to new problems in the future?

I’m still a little worried about the bit of elitism amongst people that write about food and nutrition. Certainly, there’s a place for criticizing people’s food choices, or trying to set things up in such a way that people in lower income brackets fare better while choosing better fare. But did anyone think to ask poor people what they think about these higher food prices?

Bueller?