Per Christum

The Vatican has weighed in on the current spike in food prices:

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — As world leaders were meeting in Rome to work out a response to the global food crisis, the Vatican weighed in on two levels — morality and macroeconomics.

Pope Benedict XVI laid out the moral principles in a message June 3 to the World Food Security Summit, saying that hunger and malnutrition were unacceptable in a world that has sufficient levels of agricultural production and resources.

The pope said a chief cause of hunger was lack of solidarity with others, and he emphasized that protecting the right to life means helping to feed the hungry.

The pope also spoke of structural changes needed in the global agricultural economy, but he didn’t get into particulars.

Those finer points, however, were examined in unusual detail in a little-noticed briefing paper produced by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

The document offered the Vatican’s take on the mechanisms behind the food crisis headlines. On one of the most hotly debated issues today, it came down squarely against developing biofuels from food crops at a time of global hunger. Read it All.

We have seen a rise in pretty much all commodity prices in the last few years. I have been following the price of one commodity - oil - since about 2002. I faithfully check the price everyday. I don’t know what the “answer” is to high commodity prices. There are a lot of factors involved, increasing demand, less supply, geopolitical issues, weak dollar, weather problems, biofuels (which I now think are not much of a solution, unless we can get them from non-food & higher yielding plants), etc. However, I think that many Americans are learning a valuable lesson: you can’t always have your cake and eat it too. If we are struggling with high prices, just imagine how much the poor in the world are struggling. I do know one thing: I can do my part to cut down on my personal food and energy usage (not that my personal conservation is going to reduce demand very much, but it saves me $$$, and if everybody did it…).

On a related note, check out an excellent post by Catholic Mom Climbing the Pillars on Hypermiling, a topic I addressed on Per Christum a few weeks ago (I have been a hypermiler for some time).