Positive Future #872 (Feature photo – Soybeans and Soybean Oils – CCA 2.0 Generic, United Soybean Board)
While basic food crops take top billing in our minds, you’re not quite there without vegetable oils. What would we do with lettuce greens and cooking our foods without vegetable oils?
The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, keeps track of food price inflation for five major food groups – Meat, Dairy, Cereals (grains), Vegetable Oils, and Sugar. From September of 2020 Through September of 2021, following are the price increases for each of these groups:
Meat: 26.2 Percent
Dairy: 15.2 Percent
Cereals: 27.4%
Vegetable Oils: 61.2 Percent
Sugar: 53.4%
All Together: 32.8 Percent
Food price increases are not only due to kinks in the supply chain, but a host of other factors that deserve further contemplation: 1. The financial incentives to keep food pipelines filled with the least amount of stocks. 2. The less than abundant fresh-water resources. 3. Loss of farmland to urbanization, estimated at roughly 6 million acres a year globally – roughly equivalent to a farm that is 10 miles wide and 1,000 miles long.
Should media focus more time on issues surrounding food and agriculture?
