Ever heard of quinoa? I hadn’t until a few years ago. It’s small, it’s usually promoted as a grain (it’s not – it’s technically more like a grass), and it’s an absolute health food craze.
The problem is that demand for it is also destroying Bolivia.
Demand is high because it’s being touted as a fantastic health food (which is arguably true). And because even our poorest people are mind-blowingly rich compared to the average Bolivian quinoa farmer, our demand for quinoa has caused the price to rise to the point where the people who grow it can’t even afford to eat it themselves.
The linked article goes into the details, but suffice it to say that over-farming is depleting the soil, Bolivian people are switching to less-expensive (and less nutritious) foods, and there’s a major ruckus as people fight (and by “fight” I mean actual fighting, not in court) over who owns various parcels of quinoa-producing land.
We’re pulling extremely hard on one end of a supply chain, and it just can’t support the load we’re putting on it.
Of course this is nothing new to us – here are just two recent examples.
10 Gallons Of Corn Gas Please!
Several years back we saw a boom in the construction of ethanol plants here in the United States, due in large part to government subsidies for corn-based ethanol production. The result? Corn prices skyrocketed, since corn is the raw material for our ethanol. Since corn is also a primary ingredient of almost all processed food, the spike in corn prices caused many food prices to jump as well.
That same year also saw a dramatic increase in the price of both wheat and rice. The articles I’ve read indicate that a shift to corn production wasn’t to blame for those increases, but given sufficient time (and continued government subsidies) it isn’t hard to imagine many farmers switching crop production from wheat to a more profitable crop like corn.
Then there’s the grain that we feed our meat-producing animals. Rising grain prices logically raise feed prices as well, increasing the price of meat.
Oh, and for those of you concerned about GMOs? Demand like this is also a huge catalyst for the production of more hardy, better-producing GMO crops.
None of this is particularly good for anybody.
Pretty Candles = Clear-cutting Rainforests
My wife and I used to make soy wax candles. During that time, we saw the popularization of palm oil wax – a very firm wax notable for having very pretty surface patterns after it hardens. We never used it, since it would have required a lot of additional testing and futzing around, but we had to admit – it did look nice.
A year or so after palm wax really seemed to become popular, our main supplier discontinued it – because the skyrocketing demand for palm oil (for everything, including candles) was leading to the clear-cutting of rainforests in order to plant palm trees.
To prevent this, the World Wildlife Fund created a partnership with local oil producers (called the RSPO) to provide guidance and regulation to encourage responsible palm oil production, lending a veneer of credibility to palm oil production.
The problem is that the RSPO effectively has no “teeth”, certification requirements are a joke, the palm oil industry is incredibly corrupt, there are massive economic incentives for the Indonesian government to “look the other way”, and dealing through middlemen muddies the waters enough that it’s pretty much impossible to determine whether any given batch of palm oil is farmed in a sustainable manner.
That doesn’t stop manufacturers from advertising that their oil is “responsibly sourced” – even though it’s widely known to be false.
Are You Seeing Where This Is Going?
As humans, we like simple solutions to problems. That’s why, when we discover what looks like a simple solution, we usually charge ahead without considering that there might be consequences.
- Wheat is bad – let’s use quinoa!
- Petroleum is too expensive – let’s make gasoline out of corn, and diesel fuel out of used restaurant oil!
- We’ll replace all the power plants with wind and solar!
- Instead of using petroleum-based waxes, we can use environmentally responsible palm oil!
All of these solutions work to an extent. Gluten sensitive people would benefit greatly from quinoa. You can make gasoline out of corn, and diesel out of used restaurant oil. Windmills work great in “wind corridors”, and solar is awesome in Arizona. And if you could get responsibly-sourced palm oil, it would be better than petroleum-based waxes.
But there isn’t enough quinoa in the world to even make a dent when it comes to replacing wheat. Making gasoline out of corn affects the supply and cost of other important things made out of corn. There isn’t enough used restaurant oil to power all the vehicles. Wind and solar are miserable energy sources in, say, northern Wisconsin. And palm oil is an eco-nightmare.
These things aren’t bad (except maybe the palm oil!); they’re just things that have natural limits that we can’t ignore.
I’m not going to pull an Everett Bogue and tell you that “minimalism is about saving the planet”, because it’s not. But I do firmly believe that any solution that mortgages the future to salvage the present is doomed to fail.
I’d love to hear your thoughts.