Intersections and Intricacies

Caution: this may be boring. Above are some fun pictures from last night and my current perch on the porch with some Chi tea. You know, to offset the stream of conscious rambling that follows.

I've been thinking a lot, as I may have mentioned somewhere already, about the intersection and intricacies of the relationship between health, governance and food (production, distribution, nutrition, etc). So what's up with this?

Luckily the NYT published an article today (or yesterday for you folks back home) on food supply chains and climate change. It talks a bit about global food shortages, especially in the developing world:

"...recent price spikes have helped cause the largest increases in world hunger in decades. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated the number of hungry people at 925 million last year, and the number is expected to be higher when a fresh estimate is completed this year. The World Bank says the figure could be as high as 940 million."

So not only do price spikes cause hunger, they also impact farmer's livelihoods, which impact farmer's abilities to provide for their families. Which in turn impacts health, which in turn impacts future ability to work...All the obvious things I don't need to point out.

AND- there's the climate change piece. So it's argued by lots of smart people who know about the complexities of growing things "that food prices would more than double by 2030 from today’s high levels, with climate change responsible for perhaps half the increase."

So, what do we do, if anything? And who is we? The government? Can it be top down? Or do people have to move the government to act? It seems like there's something about the consumer being the ultimate mover that is correct. But, as we've seen with interventions to clean drinking water with chlorine tablets, it's hard to change behavior, especially when the new behavior tastes bad, requires an inconvenience, etc. And who can actually move individuals to change so they can move corporations, governments, etc? What arguments work (moral, economic, etc), or is that even the right approach?

In context, there also seems to be a growing environmental movement, but is it just trendy? Are people really willing to examine the impact that their lives have on factors outside themselves?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/science/earth/05harvest.html?pagewanted=5&_r=1&hp