Food and the Economy - Wheat

When you think of the symbols of food, bread is normally the first thing that comes to mind. Even in literature it is the staff of life, and anyone thinking of the farming harvest will conjure up images of the wheat harvest in their minds eye. Therefore it will surprise many folks, as it did me, that in the 1930s Britain imported most (about 90%) of the wheat for making bread.

While the climate in Britain makes growing the hard wheat (high in protein) required for bread making, it was the wall street crash and the depression that effectively created that situation. Following the 1929 wall street crash, the price of all commodities crashed and it became cheaper to import bread wheat from Canada and the US than to pay British farmers even the cost of production. In 1932 the world price of wheat was down to five pounds (money) per ton. Globalisation is not as new as some may imagine.

The way recent events mirror what happened back in time should be of very little surprise. It seams as though the human animal can not learn from past mistakes. Following the banking collapse and the so called credit crunch, as people were often relying upon credit cards to extend their salaries, the supermarkets suddenly found that people were cutting back on food. Combined with the hike in food prices that preceded the banking collapse, the supermarkets started falling over themselves to sell cheaper food. While it has to be added without impacting upon their profits. Thus, for the major retailers food miles were not an issue, just getting cheap food on the shelves.

Prior to the banking collapse in 2005 and 2006 there were serious worries regarding the world stocks of wheat. There were also shortages of rice and corn (maize) too. Then in 2007 with an increase in ethanol production from food crops, combined with weather effects as a result of global climate change, and there was genuine shortages of major food crops, including wheat. The price of bread here in Britain shot up by seventy five percent. This is based upon the actual prices I saw in the shops and not the official figures. While it did not cause food riots here in Britain, in other parts of the globe; Mexico and Haiti there were food riots.

Then because of the shortage in the previous year, in 2008 there was a global record harvest of wheat so that the price of wheat has fallen to seventy pounds (money) per ton. For Britain that is lower than the cost of production. It should be no surprise that the price of a standard loaf has not yet fallen back to where it was prior to the shortage when wheat was £140 to £145 per ton.

However the revolution that occurred in agriculture and wheat production during the twentieth century is remarkable. Back in the 1930s in Britain, farmers would expect 1.25 to 1.75 tons of wheat per acre. And it had to be an exceptional yield to get over one and half ton per acre. Now most farmers get over four tons per acre. This has been brought about with three major changes that have transformed agriculture. The first is simply mechanisation It was not until the 1940s and the second world war that farmers really changed from using horses to tractors. This mechanisation was needed as without it, the country could not have fed the population then and now. The second factor that enabled the near tripling in wheat yield was chemistry. Chemistry was not new in agriculture or horticulture, it was though the 1947 Agriculture Act that guaranteed the price that farmers would be paid for wheat. Therefore enabling the farmer the extra profit to buy these inputs and gain an increase in yield. Then the third factor was plant breeding. This was not genetic modification, but conventional plant breeding. By breeding wheat that was shorter, more of the plants energy went into the grain rather than the stalk and straw. These more dwarf plants are better able to cope with wind and weather and the mechanical harvesting too.

mechanisation was needed to help reduce the costs of growing wheat, but the down side has been the reliance upon oil. Further, as the machines grew in size, farmers removed hedges and trees and fields grew in size. Until the top soil was actually being lost in the wind and rain, as the hedges and trees that helped retain the soil were missing. There are other disadvantages to mechanisation but this posting can not cover all of them.

The use of chemicals in agriculture or horticulture enabled farmers to effectively remove any competition with the crop being grown. But when you examine some of the chemicals that were used in the 1940s through to the 1960s it beggars belief how these potions were ever allowed to be added to the environment. Lead, Arsenic, and many other poisons known to be toxic to man were freely and liberally thrown into the air and water, in the name of “Feeding the Nation”. In the rules of war you can not poison the air and water, yet in peace time it is possible to do this to yourself and others in the name of progress.

The problem was and still is that; agriculture or horticulture has developed a mentality of a war on nature. This genocidal approach to farming has seriously degraded the natural life cycles that previously the pests and diseases of crops in check.

The other aspect of the use of chemistry in agriculture or horticulture has been the use of oil based chemical fertilisers. The chemicals were so liberally thrown on the land that they were and are running of the land into the water and out to sea. So much so that in Britain half the cost of treating
water is for removing these chemicals from drinking water. That is six billion pounds per year. The effects on the rivers and salmon rivers in particular, has cost fifty billion pounds over the last thirty years. Add to that the loss of the salmon resource, via sports fishing and as food, and that cost could even be double at one hundred billion over the last thirty years.

The greatest change though that has brought about the remarkable increase in wheat yields has been plant breeding. This was, as previously stated, conventional plant breeding using the science of “Natural Selection” to improve the yield and quality of the plants and the seed stock. Even had this been the only way that yields were increased it was this branch of the second agricultural revolution that has had the greatest impact in increasing food production. The problem with this has been simply that the modern varieties are completely reliant upon tractors and mechanised harvesting. Further, these wheat varieties are so susceptible to mildew and rust that chemicals have to be used to produce a crop at all. In fact with out the use of chemicals the yield would be less than farmers were getting in the 1930s.

The Economic system adopted after the second world war was needed then to help feed a starving Europe. War always destroys the ability of a state to feed its population, thus growing as much food, especially the basics like bread wheat was essential. However, by the 1970s, long after that problem of a starving Europe had been solved, the system continued and we had vast surpluses of food going into intervention stores. Thus keeping the price of bread high and farmers rewarded for producing food that was never going to be eaten.

While we live under the illusion of a free market and the effect of the free market can be seen in the retail price that people pay for bread, there is no free market. Nor is the market one of fair trade, as the structure of the market offers the greatest support to the largest farmers and estates. The need for Britain, or any other country, to feed its own population first has to be central to the way food is produced. In fact it is essential that a small surplice is produced most years so that we can help any state that suffers a shortage or a shortfall in production. But this has to be based upon a price that supports the cost of production combined with quotas or limits so that we are not creating such a surplice that foods like wheat are produced in such volumes that we have millions of tons stored for years in intervention storage.

It is well known that the global population is forecast to rise to up to twelve billion humans. Equally the impacts of a changing climate mean that there needs to be a far better system developed to ensure that essential foods are produced while ensuring that it done at a price so that everyone can afford to eat. Further it is essential that this is not done in such a way that there is a cost to the environment. This cost is not just a degradation of the ecology of the natural environment, but as we now understand from scientific research, the methods of production has financial costs too. The cost of cleaning up polluted water is just one of the many costs.

The second agricultural revolution can be seen as source of pride as farmers and agriculture prevented people from starving when most needed. However it should also be seen as a source of shame as it has rewarded the industrial agricultural businesses that have a callous disregard for the environment. There should also be a real sense of shame as when there was millions of tons of wheat grain, as well as butter, beef and many other foods sitting in intervention storage, people in Africa, Asia and south America were starving to death.

We have created a system that relies on the use of chemicals and oil to grow the essential parts of our diet. If only because of the cost of bailing out the banks, the present system can not continue is now obvious. Additionally the current system rewards the farmer for polluting the environment.

Bread is far to vital a food to allow the “market” to run the system. Nor should there be a command and control style economic model. However, there needs to be limits placed upon the wheat grown and the price not only the farmers are paid but the price the consumer pays.

The second agricultural revolution has been called a green revolution, it time that we genuinely have a green revolution.