Senator Clinton Wins the West Virginia Primary; Nutrition, Money, and Energy Concerns in the Food Crisis Era

THE "HILL"-S ARE ALIVE....

Regarding the West Virginia Democratic primary results, which were (as expected) skewed heavily toward Senator Clinton, I don't exactly know what to say. I suppose I could do what I normally do--find an angle and wax lyrically about it. But does this particular primary really mean anything substantive? If so, what? (I know a West Virginian. To that person I'd like to say that I'm sorry to seem as though I am downplaying this particular primary; the fact of the matter is that I really don't know what to say about it, because I really don't know what its importance in the grand scheme of this election cycle is, since we have long since anticipated the [West Virginia] outcome we've received...).

Yet I feel as though I should say any of a number of things, given the importance of West Virginia in the general election. It is, after all, a potential swing-state....

I suppose, however, that we may have to wait in order to see what happens next week in Kentucky and (especially) Oregon in order to gauge the importance of the West Virginia primary. For now, all we know is that the outcome hasn't cut deeply in any way, shape, or form into Senator Obama's existing delegate lead, and it also seems to have given Senator Clinton a day of good press.

IT'S A GLOBAL SUPERMARKET, WHETHER WE LIKE IT OR NOT

Whoever is elected the next President of the United States will have to increasingly find ways to deal with what amounts to a present global food crunch. U.S. News and World Report's May 19, 2008 issue features a lengthy article on this global food crisis ("Fixing the Food Crisis"), which is widening and deepening by the month. In the United States and much of Europe, the "crisis" consists mostly of rather strikingly higher prices of late for food items produced overseas, as well as some items produced at home (in the U.S., domestically produced eggs and cheese seem to be particularly high in comparison to a year ago). In many poorer parts of the world, the crisis is far more dire, with food supplies and food prices squeezed by the rise of what might be called "affluent tastebuds" elsewhere.

The increased food prices in the Western world (and a few other already-developed nations) are due to a number of factors, the biggest of which is the fact that much of the developing world is doing just that--developing. China and India are leading the charge toward rapid mass industrialization, and in doing so their economies are growing by enormous leaps and bounds each and every month. It is therefore the case that they are increasingly demanding more and more of the world's resources, particularly, but not exclusively, oil. (I wrote about this in my May 9, 2008 post that centered on Fareed Zakaria's new book "The Post-American World," which can be found below...). And they now have the money to pay for the oil they demand.... Thus, in demanding a larger and larger percentage of oil resources, they are increasingly resembling Western countries such as the United States and much of Europe, etc.

Along with worldwide oil resources, people in many rapidly developing nations are eating in a different manner than they used to. This is to say that they are now, by and large, in a better position to eat enough food to move beyond "subsistence" levels (of course there are exceptions); their increasing wealth means that, at a general level, they can demand to eat more "filling" meals. It also means that they are demanding the right to eat more and more meat (again, this means that they are resembling many Western countries) as each year goes by. For instance, according to U.S. News and World Report, Brazil's yearly meat consumption per person has more than doubled since 1980 to its present level of 197 pounds per person per year; China, with its population far in excess of a billion people, has seen its yearly meat consumption quadruple to 109 pounds per person per year. The already-affluent U.S., by contrast, has seen its meat intake increase steadily (if not at such enormous percentages) to its present level of over 270 pounds per person per year.

Meanwhile, many poorer countries (many, though not all, located in Africa) still struggle to feed their populations in a way in which they at least achieve subsistence levels, and people in wealthier Western nations are feeling the money squeeze each time they purchase food, whether it be at a grocery store, a farmer's market, or a restaurant.

It is no wonder that one of the suggestions of the authors of the U.S. News... article is that we start shifting global paradigms regarding meat consumption, and one of the best ways to do that is to set a good example in the already-developed world. This will take the strain off meat production and it means that more (meatless) food can be available to all people, both domestically and globally. The article, for instance, suggests that it takes about seven pounds of corn to produce one pound of beef (the animal that will be slaughtered is fed, among other things, large amounts of corn), and nearly seven pounds of corn to produce one pound of pork. It also suggests that it takes nearly three pounds of corn to produce one pound of chicken. (Perhaps not surprisingly, some vegetarian groups claim that, when all forms of food are taken into account, it takes far more than seven pounds of food that humans could potentially eat to produce one pound of beef or pork.)

Now, one could argue that the particular type of corn used to feed livestock is not what most people would consider desirable and/or "tasty," but that is missing the point. At the risk of being labeled a "vegetarian" (which would be no bad thing, of course), the point is that a lot of valuable farmland is presently being used up in order to produce meat, but, if converted, a solid percentage of it could produce far, far more meat-less food, which could then be sold at cheaper prices, considering the amount that could be produced. This could help to take some (though certainly not all) of the strain off of both domestic and global food supplies when they are set against demand, and it could help to provide a counter-balance to some of the rising food price trends.

Since I (and the authors of the aforementioned article) am not advocating that we abandon eating meat altogether, but rather reduce the amount of meat that we eat, this also means that we folks in wealthier nations may have the opportunity to re-discover, at mass levels, other sources of protein--particularly plant-based protein, which has the added bonus of being economically inexpensive in comparison to meat-based protein--and therefore have more balanced diets. (Imagine how much more balanced our diets would be if, say, Americans and Europeans reduced our average yearly meat consumption by half.)

The article goes on to list several other ways that we can help at least slow down both the rapidly-rising price of food at home and alleviate hunger in areas hit hard by the growing affluence (and therefore growing food consumption) of much of the rapidly-developing world. Among the ways suggested are: improving how food aid schemes are structured and delivered to struggling portions of the globe; curbing our present (and ridiculous, as far as I'm concerned) mass development of ethanol as an alternative fuel resource and instead focusing on biofuels that do not remove potential sources of food from the market; rapidly developing renewable sources of energy; expanding funding for research focused on improving yields worldwide; and lifting tarrifs and taxes on imported foodstuffs to and from struggling nations worldwide.

(I would also suggest developing modern, up-to-date sources of atomic energy, much like France does. This would not be antiquated, Three-Mile-Island-esque atomic power, but far-safter, more modern atomic power, the likes of which the United States and, until quite recently, Great Britain have refused to consider to a serious extent. This would help alleviate the strain on some oil supplies, such as those used for home heating oil in a surprisingly large percentage of North American homes, which in turn would help to curb food price increases by freeing-up some more oil for the transportation of foodstuffs.)

If we get onboard insofar as this is concerned (and reduce our U.S.-average of throwing away 320 pounds of food per person per year, according to U.S. News...), we could and would do the following: rediscover our environmentally conscientious natures; save our families money on a monthly basis; reduce the global food shortage; and help our gas-money stretch further at the pump as alternative (and increasingly renewable) sources of powering our methods of transportation are developed on a mass scale.