Quote Originally Posted by Beelzebubalicious View Post
Great. Just what we need - to become dependent on Russia for food and energy. I'm sure they're also stockpiling women for the growing gender deficit...
Hey Eric ! There are some intriguing links at the Moscow Times, and it wasn't too long ago that Nashi Summer camps were advertising pro-creation

Anyhoo, back to the thread. Now here's a unique opinion from Konstantin Sonin, a professor at the New Economic School and a columnist for Vedomosti.

You should not worry too much about the 1.5 billion Chinese people. If the increase in prices is caused primarily by the increase in meat consumption in China, this means that the quality of life has improved there. If things had gotten worse for them because of their increased meat consumption, they would have ceased to eat meat. In that case, prices would have dropped, and they would have gone back to living as before.

You also should not worry about the people in the United States or Europe. All the U.S. government has to do to solve the problem is to reduce subsidies to its farmers, including payments for non use of farmland, and prices will drop substantially. To be sure, the agriculture lobby in the United States is very powerful, and even touching the issue is dangerous for Congressmen, but the overwhelming majority of Americans are not producers of grain, but consumers.

At some point, the rise in food prices will pressure the government to stop fulfilling the lobbyists' requests to limit agricultural supply. In this case, an increase in competition and production among producers will lead to sharply lower grain prices.

For countries that significantly depend on food imports -- including Russia -- this logic does not apply.