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Economics of Food, The: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices
- By Patrick Westhoff
- Published Mar 5, 2010 by FT Press.
- Copyright 2010
- Dimensions: 5-3/8 X 8-1/4
- Pages: 256
- Edition: 1st
- Book
- ISBN-10: 0-13-700610-1
- ISBN-13: 978-0-13-700610-6
- eBook (Adobe DRM)
- ISBN-10: 0-13-707147-7
- ISBN-13: 978-0-13-707147-0
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Product Author Bios
Patrick Westhoff grew up on a small dairy farm in Iowa, just a few miles from the “Field of Dreams.” He earned an undergraduate degree in political science from the University of Iowa and then spent two years in the Peace Corps in Guatemala, working with small-scale farmers. After getting a master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of Texas, he moved back to Iowa and earned a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Iowa State University in 1989.
From 1992-1996, he served as an economist with the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. He worked on several major pieces of legislation, including the 1996 farm bill.
Westhoff has spent most of his professional career studying agricultural markets and policies with the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI), first at Iowa State University and now at the University of Missouri. FAPRI analysis is used by the U.S. Congress, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and national institutions in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In November 2007, he was named a codirector of the FAPRI unit at the University of Missouri (MU). The author also teaches and advises graduate students in the MU Department of Agricultural Economics.
Over the past two years, food prices have soared -- and plummeted. As crops are increasingly shifted to biofuel production, will food prices soar again? Will people starve as a result? What are the hidden relationships between the food on your plate and the gas in your car? Will economic recovery lead directly to massive price inflation in both food and energy? In this book, one of the world's leading experts untangles the complex global relationships between food, energy, and economics and helps readers come to their own conclusions about the future of food. Pat Westhoff reveals what really causes large swings in food prices and what is likely to cause them to rise and fall in the future. Westhoff discusses all the factors that drive changes in the cost of food: not just biofuel production, but also weather, income growth, exchange rates, energy prices, government policies, market speculation, and more. Next, he walks through several of the most likely scenarios for the future, offering insights that will be indispensable to consumers, commodity speculators, and policymakers alike.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Understanding the comlex nature of food prices,
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This review is from: The Economics of Food: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices (Hardcover)
Westhoff has provided an understandable and easy to read coverage of the complex nature of agriculture commodity markets and how they relate to food prices. Unlike many authors who have an agenda and want to place blame, Westoff provides an unbiased presentation of the many and often conflicting factors that impact food commoditities. He points out that, while any one specific economic or polcy factor can impact food price, any number of other factors usually make actual economic outcomes much more complicated. This is an excellent book to provide an unbiased background on food economics and to help evaluate the conclusions others reach when placing blame for food or commodity prices on a specific issue or policy agenda.The Economics of Food: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
A book that teaches you to think., By
This review is from: The Economics of Food: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
I enjoyed this book a great deal. Not so much for the subject matter itself, but for the example it teaches. Yes this book examines how the price of food and food commodiities is effected by various factors. But is that last part of the sentence that is important. The author drives home a very important message which is, you can't judge a chart or graph based on one single factor. Its never as simple as item A effects Item B. Item B might be influenced buy Items A, C, F, and z, but you the graphs and charts you see in places like USA today, are going to oversimplify the relationships so that they can make you believe whatever they want to make you believe.IN short the book is a great example of how statistics can be used to lie or misrepresent the truth, using realy world examples such as Bio-diesel, or High Fructose corn syrup production.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Good book for information on the complexity of our current food and fuel systems, By Derek Greer (CHANDLER, AZ, US) - See all my reviews
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Economics of Food: How Feeding and Fueling the Planet Affects Food Prices (Hardcover)
Patrick Westhoff does a great job at breaking down the complex world of commodities. He does a great job at explaining the implications of food and fuel prices and the effects they have on the lives we live currently and in the future. He constructs a well formulated review of the complications between the need for food on our plates and fuel in our cars. He does so with strong situational awareness of the many variables present when dealing with such vital commodities. Sustainability could be a larger topic in this book, however, it was more directed at being informational than proactive. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in becoming more knowledgeable about who feeds and fuels the world and how. The topics in this book affect us all, in many ways, and the more knowledgeable we all are, the better decisions we can make.
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Online Sample Chapter
Introduction to the Economics of Food: What Goes Up…
Table of Contents
Introduction: What Goes Up 1
Chapter 1 Biofuel Boom 9
Chapter 2 Tell Me the Oil Price 35
Chapter 3 Policies Matter 55
Chapter 4 Rain and Grain 81
Chapter 5 Money in the Pocket, Food on the Plate 97
Chapter 6 Food Appreciation and Dollar Depreciation 115
Chapter 7 Speculating on Speculation 129
Chapter 8 Stuff Happens 143
Chapter 9 A Longer View 157
Appendix Food 101 181
Endnotes 215
Index 233
Downloadable Sample Chapter
Download the sample pages (includes Introduction and Index)
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