Food prices forecast to treble as world population soars

[FarCenter]

A government advisor said everyday products such as cocoa and meat could become relative luxuries by the 2040s.

Professor Tim Benton, head of Global Food Security working group, added there could be shortages in the UK in the future as the emerging middle class in south-east Asia sparks a revolution in "food flows" such as the trade in grain and soya around the world.

Professor Benton, from the University of Leeds, told the Daily Telegraph: "Food is going to be competed for on a global scale. There's been a lot written about where food prices are going to go but they are certaintly going to double, with some trebling. It's not just fruit and vegetables, but everything."

The shock forecast came as the chief executive of Tesco, Philip Clarke, warned the era of cheap food was over because of the forecast surge in demand.

In an interview over the weekend, the supermarket chief said: "Over the long run I think food prices and the proportion of income spent on food may well be going up."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10193903/Food-prices-forecast-to-treble-as-world-population-soars.html

[kestrel91316]

1. Sad that my primary goal in the final decades of my life is going to be

avoiding starving to death.

[FarCenter]

3. For centuries, most people have spent most of their effort to get food, shelter, and clothing

They were the "necessities of life". Heating and air conditioning came later.

[kestrel91316]

15. I grew up securely middle class. I never thought I'd come to be as poor as my grandparents

in my later years.

[AverageJoe90]

2. Really, more than anything, it depends on if the .1% can have some of their power wrested away.....

And back into the hands of the people, where it belongs.

[FarCenter]

5. The .1% don't eat that much -- it depends more on the growing middle class with their growing BMI.

Globally, there are more people entering the middle class who can better compete for food and other natural resources.

[WinkyDink]

9. "Globally, there are more people entering the middle class..." Where? And define "middle class."

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. The rise of the global middle class

The new global middle class in China, India and Brazil have propelled their economies to equal the size of the industrialised G7 countries. By 2050, they are forecast to account for nearly half of world output, far surpassing the G7.

Plus, within a decade, the middle class in Europe and North America will be less than a third of the world's total, down from more than half now.

The Brookings Institution estimates that there are 1.8 billion in the middle class, which will grow to 3.2 billion by the end of the decade.
...
Asia is almost entirely responsible for this growth. Its middle class is forecast to triple to 1.7 billion by 2020.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22956470

It's defined as households with disposable income of $10 to $100 per member per day.

The paper which seems to have been taken as the basis for the definition is here: http://www.oecd.org/dev/44457738.pdf

It says (2009 figures):
USA: 230 million middle class
EU: 450 million
rest of North America: 108 million
rest of Europe (which I think includes Russia): 214 million
Japan: 125 million
Whole world: 1845 million

[RebelOne]

4. Why does this article just not use the word triple?

Treble is a very confusing word.

1tre·ble noun \ˈtre-bəl\
1
a : the highest voice part in harmonic music : soprano
b : one that performs a treble part; also : a member of a family of instruments having the highest range
c : a high-pitched or shrill voice, tone, or sound

[FarCenter]

6. It is from a UK website -- they use the Queen's English.

Definition of TREBLE

transitive verb

: to increase threefold

intransitive verb
1: to sing treble

2: to grow to three times the size, amount, or number

Examples of TREBLE

She trebled her earnings in only two years.
Prices have trebled in only two years.

[Mojorabbit]

7. I have a small orchard planted and have

doubled my garden. Can't control what the weather will be like but hopefully this will help. Also have chickens for eggs.

[WinkyDink]

8. The 1% getting the pandemic ready. Let's see; will it be by bird or swine? Perhaps by wheat?

The 99% aren't worthy of the 1%'s land, treasures, water, food, or even air.

Nor jobs, let alone a living wage.

And CERTAINLY NOT their untaxed billions (trillions).

[The Straight Story]

10. Probably written by somone at goldman sachs who bought up some commodities

and wants the price to go up

[FarCenter]

14. Prof Tim Benton

BA, Oxford, PhD 1990, Cambridge, FSB, FLS
Professor of Population Ecology; UK Champion for Global Food Security and Professor of Population Ecology
School of Biology


Background: The severe environmental challenges of the 21st Century are summarised by John Beddington's term "The Perfect Storm" and involves producing more food for the growing global population, whilst coping with climate change, reduction in carbon usage, and by not simply using more land. My interests focus around how we can do this most "sustainably". My research career has been focussed on the linkage between organisms and environmental changes, and my research in the agri-environment sphere also focusses on how farming drives ecological dynamics (at field, landscape and larger scales, up to global). I have used a variety of techniques through my career (including field and lab work, statistical, numerical and analytical modelling) and have held positions at UEA (postdoc), Cambridge University Press (Science Editor), Stirling University (lecturer and Senior Lecturer), Aberdeen University (Senior Lecturer) and Leeds (Professor, 2005, Director of the Institute of Integrative and Comparative Biology (2005 -2007), Pro-Dean for Research (2007-2011). From 2011, I have been UK Champion for Global Food Security, acting as ambassador and spokesperson for matters to do with food and food security, and coordingating work across this area between research councils and government departments.

http://www.fbs.leeds.ac.uk/staff/profile.php?tag=Benton_T

His connection with Goldman Sachs is not obvious. More of an egghead, boffin, or bureaucrat.

However, given his environmental bent, he's unlikely to favor the more obvious solution of plowing up the millions of arable acres in Brazil.

[Warpy]

11. The people with the greatest demand

are going to start to starve. Close on the heels of that starvation will be epidemic disease, and disease does not spare the upper classes, not even barricaded into country estates in first world countries.

[Chan790]

12. "And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all."

The Masque of the Red Death
Edgar Allan Poe
http://www.online-literature.com/poe/36/

THE "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death."

(more at the link)

[Keefer]

16. WTH is

"treble," not counting the obvious musical connotation?

[FarCenter]

17. See Response 6.