Thinking outside the cereal box
Thoughts on the farm bill and the skyrocketing cost of food
The rising cost of food worldwide is more complex than portrayed in recent articles in The New York Times and the Washington Post.

Like a magician revealing his secrets, the once-invisible farm and food system is drawing scrutiny from the media, policymakers, and the public as we realize how intertwined our farm and food system is with the energy sector and global markets.

But how did we get here? How did our modern, abundant, and affordable food system run aground? In a sector that is global in reach, absolutely essential (we must eat, after all), and includes the politics of saving family farms and ending hunger, there is no simple, singular answer. A lot of it has to do with economics and politics. Most of it has to do with what goes into making a box of cereal, and why we even have boxed cereal.

North America has long been the breadbasket of the world -- so much so that bountiful grain surpluses lead business to find innovative alternative markets for those surpluses.

Quaker Oats and cornflakes were early ways to get Americans to consume more grains in the late 1800s. But people can only eat so much in a day, and storing cereal grains for long periods of time depresses crop prices. Over the last 30 years, once-low-value grain surpluses have found several new uses: livestock feed, sweetener (i.e., high-fructose corn syrup), raw material for plastic, and feedstock for fuel in the form of ethanol.

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