Sharply rising food prices are making politicians sit up and do something. But what?
Pegging prices is one option but this alone does nothing to address the underlying problem. On the contrary, it is a disincentive to produce food and bring it to where it is most needed. But when people are poor and have insufficient purchasing power, what else can be done.
It is said that third world farmers are too poor to purchase seeds. On the face of things, this is strange. Presumably they have got a good price for selling the crops they have just harvested, especially if food is in short supply, as is claimed. Or perhaps the farmers have got a bad price and someone else is cashing in. The temptation is to blame greedy middlemen, but they make nothing unless they both buy and sell, and in selling where they will get the best price, they are channelling the food to where there is most demand. Which may not be the same thing as where is it most needed, but if people are poor they cannot demand.
So there are two question. First, who owns the land on which the farmers are growing the crops? Could it be that landowners are charging too much rent and leaving farmers with insufficient to buy seeds? Second, why are there all these poor people? It is not a natural state of affairs. I suspect they are being prevented from earning a livelihood through exclusion from the means of production. Again, it is an issue of land tenure. But none of the commentators or politicians seems to have noticed.
I wrote to my MP on two entirely separate issues recently. The first was to do with the replacement for the Inter City 125 train, which at £2.6 million per vehicle, is twice as expensive as it ought to be. The second concerned the benefits of a switch from business rate and Council Tax to a tax based on site values. In both cases, the replies were full of spurious, unsubstantiated assertions and completely flawed arguments. This is typical. You will not get an iota of sense from the government on any area of public policy at all - finance, economics, trade and employment, agriculture, housing, health, transport, energy. All junk. If you write to your MP you will invariably receive answers that are an insult to your intelligence, no matter what subject you are writing about. Of course they cannot understand statistics. They are innumerate. Whitehall is staffed with idiots with a high IQ. Look at their IT projects. And mind your purse, they will have that too.
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