The search is on for scapegoats as fuel, food prices rise

By Wayne F. Pryor,
VFBF President

Anyone out there getting filthy rich at consumers’ expense?
Anybody?

That’s what I thought. That’s not, however, the impression you might get if you turn on the news. Sadly, there are some U.S. consumers and media outlets convinced that grocery prices are going up and people in developing nations are starving because American farmers have sold everyone out to grow corn for ethanol.

I know that’s not true, and you know that’s not true. Any number of agricultural and economic experts know it as well.

Thankfully, they’ve begun speaking up. And Farm Bureau has joined them.

Earlier this year the American Farm Bureau Federation issued a formal statement to Congress that the problem “is global and requires global solutions.”

Farm Bureau analysis shows petroleum-based energy is the primary factor driving domestic food prices. Forty-four percent of rising food costs is due to energy costs, according to AFBF.

In addition, AFBF cites several other contributing issues: significant weather-related production shortfalls in grain-producing countries like Australia; economic development and income growth in countries like China and India; and decisions by some countries to limit or curtail exports of rice and other products into the world market. Other factors include higher transportation costs, the weak dollar and commodity speculation by outside investors.

A series of articles distributed by Virginia Farm Bureau Federation to its media contacts across the state have attempted to set the record straight as well.

One included an interview with Montgomery County Farm Bureau President Nick McNeil Jr. While food prices have gone up, Nick noted, “fuel, fertilizer and feed prices have doubled, if not tripled, in the past couple of years. Basically everything we have to have to keep doing business has gone up, and we can’t pass those prices on to the consumer.”

Another article featured the remarks of Jonah Bowles, VFBF agricultural risk management coordinator, who noted that “nobody knows how a new quest is going to play out,” with regard to how U.S. ethanol production has unfolded. As an alternative fuel, “it works, but it has consequences.”

Reducing dependence on foreign oil lies in changes to current technology and U.S. consumption habits, Jonah noted. “We have the potential to greatly reduce our dependence on foreign energy,” though the solution is not as simple as a farmer choosing to grow one crop over another.

It’s nothing new for the American public to have an interest in how you run your business. And to some extent it’s to be expected: Your products are the American public’s food, and that’s a personal connection.

But this is not a time to point fingers.

At a European Policy Center conference on biofuels this spring, speaker Mariann Fischer Boel compared anti-biofuel sentiment to the ancient ritual of blaming a goat for a community’s social ills and then chasing it away.

“The problem with a scapegoat is that it’s only a symbolic solution,” she said. “You send the goat into the wilderness, but the real problems remain. We don’t need scapegoats.”

What we need—and what Farm Bureau will continue to encourage—is rational, informed dialogue, along with a measure of patience and a spirit of cooperation.

Because we’re all having to work through this together.

And finding solutions is everyone’s business.

Wayne F. Pryor, a Goochland County beef and grain producer, is president of Virginia Farm Bureau.