frogblog

The international food crisis is having strange effects.  For instance:

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials said on Wednesday.

Things could have been worse, as Freakonomics notes, rats have been fleeing to higher ground from flooded areas of the lower Mekong river, making it to catch them and creating a greater supply to match demand.

So luckily there are adverse weather events otherwise the price of rats might be even higher. HopeDance magazine takes a more macro look at the issue:

Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy night’. It looks like the severe food problems long predicted by some agriculture, climate and peak analysts are arriving more or less on cue, with tragic results. Some of the problems are more obviously connected to the growing energy crisis, some apparently not. But the underlying drivers of all the problems are energy and population, and that means there is something the West can do about it, provided we make the right connexions between our dinner plates, the gas pump and plight of the global poor.

That all sounds a bit gloomy, but luckily here in the fruitbowl/breadbasket that is New Zealand the solutions are easy ones that just involve investing more in local diverse and organic farming. Diverse farming may or may not include rats, depending on your preference.

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