News of the Weird has a depressing economics story this week about food prices in the poorer sections of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which is perhaps the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
The price of rice, the staple product, has doubled in the last year. This increase naturally has residents looking for substitutes for rice.
Apparently in the past they have baked “dirt cookies,” using salt and vegetable shortening along with clay from a nearby area. The clay has some nutrients in it, so it is not entirely filler. The problem, though, is that the supply curve of clay is not horizontal; so with this increased demand for the clay, its price has risen too — by 40 percent during the same period. One might say that the dirt is no longer dirt-cheap!
and 
. You can also watch it on 
I really like these short informative posts by Dr. Hamermesh. I learn something new and interesting in every one of them, and they are even more effective due to their brevity. Keep up the good work!
Agree w/MitchK about brevity: too many good articles, not enough time. Dirt cookies original article broke my heart. It also frustrated me: food to Africa? What about Haiti? In US huge amount of wasted food…not just energy. What to do?
Can the US please stop propping up domestic crop prices?
Dirt comes into play here in another way. The severe deforestation has led to the loss of top soil. That can’t be helping the price of rice.
A big share of the blame for rising food prices has to be borne by the distortion of crop prices because of ethanol and other subsidies. The subsidies and incentives are literally killing people in other parts of the world.
careful with jokes involving human suffering- I think the current food crisis is the result of giant agribusiness companies manipulating the natural market for food and turning it into an export-driven market- the fact that the farmland in Colombia is used for coffee exports, rather than food to feed the people who actually live there, is unsustainable- I would say the price spikes are a symptom of the market’s inefficient transport of food out of countries, as opposed to the consumption of local food with less transport cost
When you post a link on the blog, make sure it’s persistent. I couldn’t find this anywhere on News of the Weird. Thank goodness for google: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22902512/
agreed franken – read industrial chapters in pollan’s omnivores dilemma. petroleum has saturated into every fruit and vegetable that americans eat.