'Riots likely in uk due to rising food costs'

[Harleyman]

Riots over food prices is stretching the imagination a bit in the case of first world countries but serious inflation is definitely on it's way now that the price of oil is sky rocketing. This will have a ballooning effect on everything else and kill the economic recovery stone dead

[Darth Vader]

I'm very well aware of the pressures facing farmers. I've lived in rural areas for most of my life. I'm also aware that supermarkets pay a pittance to their suppliers.

 

I do think it's more than a little ironic that people who are not prepared to work for low agricultural wages talk about 'rioting' because the cost of a home-delivered pizza or their favourite brand of frozen curry or chicken ding has increased. - Particularly when their own expenditure on food is probably less - as a percentage of their income -than that of more than 90% of the people on the planet.

 

We were told (at the Copenhagen conference in Dec 2009) that:

 

1. The amount of agrochemicals used is too great and must be reduced.

2. Farming methods must change to use smaller amounts of fossil fuel.

 

We know that the amount of (good) land available for agriculture in the UK has reduced considerably during the last 60 years and the population has increased by more than 50% during that period

 

So:

 

Less good land, lower usage of agrochemicals, less mechanisation. = Lower yields per acre.

 

More than half as many people again to feed as there were in 1951.

 

Perhaps its time that countries adopted a policy of growing enough food to feed the people who live in them?

 

Either the UK will continue to import foods from poorer countries; countries like Egypt, where - apparently - people rose up against their leaders (in part) because they can't afford enough food, or the UK will produce more of its own food and will have to pay the going rate for it.

 

Prices will rise.

 

No, in this country, prices are artificially high, to allow the supermarkets to make huge, obscene profits and at the disadvantage of the customer and the producers.

[Rupert_Baehr]

So you spend a greater percentage of your annual income on food than does a poor man in the 3rd world, do you?

 

I don't think so.

 

We - in the West - have obscenely cheap food and we get much of it by buying it (at prices locals can't afford) from poor 3rd-World countries where people don't have enough food to feed their children.

[Mecky]

So you spend a greater percentage of your annual income on food than does a poor man in the 3rd world, do you?

 

I don't think so.

 

We - in the West - have obscenely cheap food and we get much of it by buying it (at prices locals can't afford) from poor 3rd-World countries where people don't have enough food to feed their children.

 

Maybe we shouldn't buy from those countries then

[Rupert_Baehr]

Maybe we shouldn't buy from those countries then

 

Perhaps so.

 

If the root cause of the uprising in Egypt was food shortages/food price rises, why are we buying up their food?

 

Shouldn't they be feeding their own people with it?

 

Much of the food which is imported into the UK from Egypt and from Kenya is air-freighted into the country. How can that be justified?

[Frank Sidney]

If food becomes scarce the British would form a orderly queue. There'd be none of this fighting at the back of a lorry...

[whitehorses]

For anyone who's interested, the following seems to back up my reasons for starting this thread.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bargains-and-rip-offs/household-bills/article.html?in_article_id=524965&in_page_id=510

[Bigthumb]

Have you EVER seen any political activist type threads started by me..Ever? NO cos I don't usually comment , this time however,this issue affects everyone who has to eat.That's why I posted it.

 

So why did you wrongly assume that my post refered to you when it quite clearly didn't?

[whitehorses]

So why did you wrongly assume that my post refered to you when it quite clearly didn't?

 

Erm cos I thought it was a dig, sorry if it wasn't then, all is good.

[Darth Vader]

So you spend a greater percentage of your annual income on food than does a poor man in the 3rd world, do you?

 

I don't think so.

 

We - in the West - have obscenely cheap food and we get much of it by buying it (at prices locals can't afford) from poor 3rd-World countries where people don't have enough food to feed their children.

 

nope. Never said I did. That doesn't mean we have obscenely cheap food though. It means we have more to spend on food, as we have a higher income. That doesn't mean that supermarkets aren't ripping us off along with the farmers.