In the new issue of Regulation, economist Pierre Lemieux argues that the recent oil price decline is at least partly the result of increased supply from the extraction of shale oil. The increased supply allows the economy to produce more goods, which benefits some people, if not all of them. Thus, contrary to some commentary in the press, cheaper oil prices cannot harm the economy as a whole. Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies. Search form The End of Cheap Food? In my latest post for The Atlantic’s online Science, I explored how changes in the environment have led to more expensive food. I ended with the following chart: This chart illustrates how, as food becomes increasingly cheaper, world population has skyrocketed. It’s hard to say exactly what’s responsible for the connection, but it’s possible to draw some tentative conclusions: the spread of Western-style agriculture, the development of new farming technologies, urbanization, and improvements in transportation are all factors. This seems to have been a bit of a surprise to many readers. The headline was “The End of Cheap Food?,” so it’s no surprise that people wondered where the conclusion was. There’s one way around this problem: look at the data, note the trend, and then ask: Is there a connection between population growth and cheaper food? When you take this approach, it becomes quite easy to see what the data is showing. The chart below shows that a $1,000 food bill for one person is equal to only $1,500 in 1970 dollars; the food bill has only increased 30 percent over the past 35 years. On the other hand, the same $1,000 bill is worth $9,000 in today’s dollars. In other words, we’ve been growing our economy 30 times faster than our food consumption. Why is this important? Simply put: the fact that the price of food has increased more slowly than our incomes is the primary reason we’re not having a population explosion. We have many more mouths to feed than we did 35 years ago, but real incomes have grown significantly, and therefore we can afford to buy more and more food per capita. Food and Agriculture Food and Agriculture Policy It’s one of the classic themes of modern American politics: the food price increases have a huge impact on poorer people in America. People don’t like seeing food prices go up, which is why the argument is often made that we’re not really in a food crisis. It’s true that there are people in America who really struggle to afford food. As the Washington Post notes: “More than 30 million Americans (about 9 percent) live below the poverty line, defined by the Census Bureau as $19,916 for a family of four.” The problem is, those are relative numbers: in the world of rich countries, where the average American lives, $19,916 is a very decent amount of money to have. There is no doubt that some Americans are struggling with access to affordable food. In the past year, there have been several instances of supermarkets cutting back on fresh produce and other necessities because they didn’t want to lose customers. That said, many Americans are able to enjoy an abundance of food that most Americans would have thought unimaginable even 20 years ago. As recently as the 1950s, many families had trouble making it through the year, and would turn to government programs to supplement their meager food allotments. That is very different today. As the Washington Post explains: “More than 80 percent of all food purchased is now eaten at home, compared with just over half in the late 1960s, according to USDA figures. As home-cooking has become a lost art, food service outlets have been a tempting substitute. In a nation where more than half the people eat in restaurants three times a week or more, restaurants are by far the largest users of fresh fruits and vegetables. Yet in 2000, they were paying only about $1 billion for their daily requirements of produce, compared with $30 billion paid by supermarkets.” If you were to travel back in time to the 1950s, you would find that Americans took very good care of themselves. Most families had refrigerators. Most people had kitchen gardens. Some families, particularly in poor areas, would go without some things because they simply couldn’t afford to pay for them. Other families might have to make compromises, like using condensed soup for soups. But it’s not even close. The typical middle-class family today enjoys a large selection of foods they simply couldn’t afford in the past. This may not seem like much, but if you were born in the 1950s, you might not believe that things were this good. The average American today is living a very comfortable life that didn’t exist 35 years ago. Yet somehow we think that government programs are bloated or should go away. That defies common sense. For more information, check out the Economists in Washington Center, a project of the Cato Institute that studies how people make decisions about food and how government might help. Certain trends suggest that food production must increase dramatically in the next few decades: Global populations are growing. In fact, “world population is forecast to increase 50 percent from 6.9 billion people in 2000 to more than 9.1 billion in 2050, according to population projections released by the United Nations.” In America, the trend is the same: “The United States Census Bureau projected in 2008 that the U.S. population, now 310 million, will grow to more than 400 million by 2060. The U.S. will remain home to three of every four babies born on the planet in the next 50 years, and will also have the largest percentage of population growth, according to U.S. Census projections. ” Yet a lot of people want to curtail food production. They want to force Americans to eat “local” food, which would mean giving up some of the best food on the planet (e.g. New York City) and restricting our diets, especially in the cities. Other people want to reduce our use of agricultural chemicals, which means more water runoff and more soil degradation. I could go on, but you get the idea. We’ve been told that there’s a food crisis: global production is in decline, our food will be unsafe, and people in poor countries will go without. But the facts aren’t on the alarmist’s side. We may be going through a transition period: we are less concerned about the environment than we have been in the past. But there’s no need to panic. After all, our country is bigger than ever. Our agriculture is more productive than ever. Our population is declining: even though we aren’t currently a net exporter, we are becoming less reliant on imported foods. Food And Agriculture Policy Food And Agriculture And Global Environmental Change This is a very encouraging trend. To what extent can our food consumption be curbed without doing harm? The problem is that we’re in the midst of a transition that’s taking place around the globe. China is one of the world’s largest and most populous countries, but it only produces about a third of its own food. China also has a growing middle class, with an average disposable income of $5,300 per year. That means that for many Chinese, it’s not enough to subsist on bread and water—they can afford to eat real food. This trend is a positive development in China. In fact, “China is now the world’s second-largest consumer of fish and seafood after the United States, and it has the highest rate of fish consumption on the planet, ahead of its neighbor and rival Japan, with an average of about 75 kilograms per person per year.” As China begins to feed itself, it’s not only their numbers but also their tastes that are increasing: Chinese citizens are becoming more health conscious and demanding more and more meat, especially pork. “In the Chinese media, this trend is described as the ‘Hamburgerization’ of China.” In short, it’s a big positive, and there’s no reason to believe that China is going to become a country of vegetarians. The same trends are occurring in most developed countries. “The trend is the same in every country where the number of vegetarians has been studied. Even in the most vegetarian-friendly societies, vegetarianism is a very small minority. As consumers in developed countries turn away from meat, they