Rising Food Prices Again in the Headlines

Rising food prices are a powerful source of unrest in poor countries, so the entire world monitors these prices carefully. Currently they are on the rise again, leading to new concerns. Indeed, this month they rose above the level of 2008, which had sparked food riots in several countries. According to a BBC report, the immediate causes are related largely to weather. 

The current spike in prices is being caused primarily by increases in the cost of sugar and, more importantly, cereals, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.The price of wheat in particular has risen sharply. This is because wildfires last year in Russia, which accounts for 11% of global exports, resulted in an export ban, the institute's director of markets, trade and institutions, Maximo Torero, told the BBC.

The recent floods in Australia, which also accounts for 11% of global exports, has compounded the problem, he said. The price of corn has also risen, because of greater support for biofuels in the US and the increased price of oil, which makes biofuels more attractive. Droughts in Argentina, the world's second biggest exporter of corn behind the US, have also pushed the price up, Mr Torero said. "The situation is very tight. If we have more natural disasters, we could have a problem," he said.

Anchor Babies Stir Up the Immigration Debate

The new year and a new Republican majority in the US House of Representatives have stirred up the immigration debate, with a renewed focus on anchor babies--children born in the US to non-citizens. The 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to anyone born in the United States, no matter what the status might be of their parents. This amendment was passed after the Civil War because the Supreme Court, in the famous Dred Scott decision just prior to the Civil War, had ruled that persons of African descent could not become US citizens. The 14th amendment repudiated that decision and a later Supreme Court decision applied the birthright principle clearly to immigrants. 

The issue, however, is really not about the 14th amendment, but about the reasons why people migrate to the United States. Although some women from Mexico do cross the border to deliver babies in the United States, having a child in the United States is certainly not the reason for high levels of undocumented immigration. People come looking for work and since it is young adults who predominate in the migrant stream, they are likely to wind up getting pregnant and having children in the United States. (Note: I have seen no one suggesting that what we need is to increase the number of family planning providers to undocumented immigrants.) Nonetheless, as reported today in the NY Times, Arizona is leading the way on the anchor baby issue.

This time, though, Arizona lawmakers intend to join with legislators from other states to force the issue before the Supreme Court.

This coalition of lawmakers will unveil its exact plans on Wednesday in Washington, but people involved in drafting the legislation say they have decided against the painstaking process of amending the Constitution. Since the federal government decides who is to be deemed a citizen, the lawmakers are considering instead a move to create two kinds of birth certificates in their states, one for the children of citizens and another for the children of illegal immigrants.

The theory is that this could spark a flurry of lawsuits that might resolve the legal conflict in their favor.

“This is not a far-out, extremist position,” said John Kavanagh, one of the Arizona legislators who is leading an effort that has been called just that. “Only a handful of countries in the world grant citizenship based on the GPS location of the birth.”

New Thoughts on the Impact of Humans on the Environment

The REALLY BIG picture issue related to population growth and development is the extent to which we are changing our physical landscape so much that we change human society in the process. It is a feedback loop, but one that is not yet well understood. The National Science Foundation recently funded a workshop on this topic at the University of Oregon, with the following ideas as background:

With world population projected to reach at least 9 billion by 2050, human interactions with landscapes are increasing at unprecedented rates. Indeed, the environmental impacts of human population growth and accompanying resource consumption have intensified to the extent that the term “anthropocene” has emerged to signify a new geologic era dominated by human activity. In the face of these impacts, including the installation and removal of dams, alteration of surface hydrology through urban development, and the transport of sediment from agriculture and other human interventions, workshop participants called for more attention to the effects of landscape change on individuals and societies, and for intensified efforts to develop predictive capacity for the effects of multiple stressors in human-landscape interactions.