At Lake Erie Metropark

Fun Photo of the Day

 

The Puzzle of Blackstone Lodge

Mystery reading this week: The puzzle of Blackstone Lodge  by Martin Edwards, first published 2022. Set in the 1930s, this book is crammed with culture and drama — food, wine, fashionable and not fashionable clothing, motor cars, household situations, complicated relationships, unexplained disappearances, and murders of course. It’s a good mystery, more or less in the style of the well-known writers of that era: I’m thinking Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie. Like the locked room mysteries of early mystery writers, it’s very complex, with many characters, constantly shifting motives, and vast numbers of clues. The most amazing portrayal is that of a spiritual medium who possesses highly effective methods of seemingly offering contact with the dead to bereaved customers  — and charging them very high prices. The gradual revelation of the reality of this character and the discovery of how she is able to be such an effective medium is masterful.

Finally after several murders and much effort to find the murderers and their motives, there’s a very long denouement in a very unusual setting. Finally, in this scene and one more conversation, the author reveals the perpetrators — both suspected and unsuspected. The young woman amateur detective, Rachel Savernake, masterminds the entire final revelation. Although the novel is complex — even over-complex and maybe a bit too long — it’s a readable tale, and it amuses me that the author, writing in the present time, the 2020s, returned to so many classic mystery novel conventions.

A Bottle of Wine

“Jacob reclined on the settee in the sitting room of Gaunt House. Nell Fagan’s death had ruined his day, but a glass of Château Pavie 1921 provided a touch of solace. He was no wine buff, but it was the most stunning Bordeaux he’d ever tasted. … Jacob washed down Hetty’s shepherd’s pie with more than his fair share of the Château Pavie.” (p. 186-189)

Ah, yes, the pleasure of visiting a grand household that hasn’t lost its money in the Depression. I don’t know what the wine was worth then, but I’m sure it was expensive. (The bottle depicted here is available, believe it or not, for around $3500, though it may have lost some of its flavor in the past century or so.) 

UPDATE: in response to comments — to repeat, the price of a surviving bottle of the 1921 vintage TODAY is very high, but that wouldn’t have been the price in the 1930s when the book is set. Today a recent vintage is around $400.

Quite a few scenes of food and drink contribute to the atmosphere of this novel, and I always love to see how the author employs food details as a way to enhance atmosphere and character development. 

In sum: I found this to be a good read, even if very complicated and drawn-out. Above all, I am highly impressed at the vast number of loose ends that are explained in the final chapters.

Review © 2023 mae sander

Paint the Rock!

“The Rock” — an Ann Arbor Tradition

In a little park (most people would call it a traffic island)…

Here stands the rock, which is repainted several times a week with all sorts of designs.
After decades of being repainted, the rock surface has several inches of paint accumulated.

Some painters get carried away and paint everything in sight.

The sidewalks in the park get the same treatment. I’ve showed photos of the rock quite a few times. 
The art work changes constantly. It’s even more ephemeral than most street art and graffiti.
By now, most of these images have been painted over with new images.

Blog post © 2023 mae sander

Shared with Sami’s Monday Murals

 

Katsushika Hokusai’s Rice Images and the Japanese National Dish

Rice in Japanese History and Cuisine

I've been rereading the book Rice as Self by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, which mentioned the many images of rice cultivation by the famous artist Hokusai (1760-1849), whose works I included above. Not long ago, I reviewed this book in a blog post here. 

Ohnuki-Tierney, a scholar of Japanese history and sociology, presents the role of rice in Japan from the earliest times, including the ways that rice was part of culture and mythology and the ways it was essential to the divinity of the Emperor and to the development of nationalism before World War II. The author also documents the way that the Japanese diet has shifted away from rice in recent times, up until the early 1990s (when the book was published). I’ve checked a few more recent sources, and rice consumption in Japan has continued its decline in the ensuing 30 years. 

I especially enjoyed the description of gods and god-like characters that had a role in defining the importance of rice in Japanese life. For example, Amaterasu, the sun goddess, had a great-grandson called Amatsu Hiko Hiko Hohotemino Mikoto — that is “a male child of the Sun Goddess and Lord of rice stalks with numerous heads.”  As a god of rice culture, he predominated over his brother, a sea-god. Significantly, this rice-god became the ancestor of the first Emperor, whose descendants have been the Japanese Emperors ever since that time. (p. 52)

The Emperors of Japan were eclipsed by the actual political and military rulers, the Shoguns, for several centuries. During the Shoguns' rule, Japan was cut off from international contact. In 1868, the Emperor Meiji was restored to actual power, the beginning of vast changes, also initiated by the opening of the country to foreigners -- forced by the military presence of Admiral Matthew Perry whose ships had arrived in 1853. 

The whole new era demanded a whole new national myth, which included a definition of rice as the key to nationalistic food ways. Rice had always been an important and sacred food, but now it became an even more important aspect of the Emperor as a divine being who symbolized the nation. The process of creating this national myth is fascinating and very complicated, especially as the era was simultaneously a time of rapid westernization of Japan, including the adoption of technology, literature, clothing styles, and many other features of European and American culture -- including food. 

The central place of rice developed right alongside of the introduction of much more meat to the Japanese diet. So complicated! A symbolically national meal developed partly from an existing tradition of elaborate banquets where small elegant dishes, mainly vegetables, were served with rice as the final course. This Kaiseki meal is still served by very upscale restaurants in Japan, as a kind of ideal, not an everyday menu.

The militarization of Japan in the prelude to World War II, and the terrible destruction and reconstruction of the post-war era, was a time of much more modernization of Japan, but with a definition of the exceptional Japanese essence. During the postwar era, American wheat was shipped in to prevent mass hunger, and was mainly used for another traditional inexpensive and popular dish: ramen noodles. Nevertheless, rice remained as the national staple and ritual food, even as rice consumption dropped -- on average, people had eaten 5 bowls of rice per day, and now they eat one, or even have some days without rice. Bread consumption recently surpassed rice consumption, and the Japanese now eat a highly varied diet. But there is still a high value place on eating rice that has been grown in the rice paddies of the nation, just as it was valued in the early 19th century when Hokusai's iconic images were created.

Exploring a National Dish

The question of what is the real national food of Japan is the subject of one chapter in Anya Von Bremzen’s recent book National Dish (I wrote about the chapter on France last month in this post.)

She, as well as Ohnuki-Tierney, describe how first Chinese food and later Western food entered Japanese foodways — both quote the saying “Wakon yosai” which means “Japanese spirit, Western learning.” Von Bremsen writes of this motto:

“I recalled the famous Meiji period motto describing essentially the native genius for adapting and appropriating—Japanizing and indigenizing—borrowed ideas. Of course before Meiji, the saying was wakon kansai, or ‘Japanese spirit, Chinese learning.’” (National Dish, p. 102)

Which is more popular in Japan: noodle bowls or rice? Or have they been overtaken by pizza, hamburgers, or other Western dishes? What’s most popular in the Japanese convenience stores (like Seven-Eleven)? Many Japanese people rely on these stores for buying much of their food. 

Von Bremzen writes:

"Noodles as such arrived in Japan with Chinese Buddhist monks around the twelfth century. But it took another eight centuries for a dish recognizable as ramen (noodles + meaty savory broth + toppings) to emerge as a popular snack dispensed by yatai pushcarts and cheap Chinese restaurants." (p. 88)

She summarizes the question of which is more essential: ramen noodles or rice:

"Ramen and rice, rice and ramen. They made a curious dialectical binary: one a Chinese-origin hybrid that eventually relied on imported American wheat, the other a homegrown treasure imbued with a near-mystical aura as the 'edible symbol' of the Japanese self. Fast versus slow, appropriation versus tradition. And yet both were part of the national food canon: rice, a hallowed cornerstone of washoku (a timeless and supposedly ancient ideal of an ur-Japanese meal); ramen, the 'naturalized' modern star of kokuminshoku, inexpensive 'people’s cuisine,' one that fueled Japan’s post-WWII reconstruction and boom." (pp. 78-79). 

Her attempts to figure out what food is most important there took place during a rather amusing stay in Tokyo a few years ago. Like Ohnuki-Tierney, Von Bremzen concludes that despite the decline in rice consumption, Japanese people still have an actual reverence for rice: it’s the soul food of Japan no matter how much or how little they eat, and no matter how much more flavorful and deliciously aromatic other choices may be.

A Formal Japanese Meal

A small plate of food from a Kaiseki meal: one of many elaborate dishes.
Evelyn is in Japan, and had this meal a few days ago.

The rice served at the formal meal, with tea.

Blog post © 2023 mae sander

Totoro

Totoro Sushi, Ann Arbor.

At Totoro, a sushi place named for the Miazaki movie “My Neighbor Totoro” we had a pleasant dinner.

Miso soup with tiny cubes of tofu. Miso, made from fermented soy beans, has been eaten in Japan for
many centuries. It was originally invented in China over 2000 years ago.

My Bento Dinner. A selection of Japanese dishes with varied history.

The chicken katsu -- breaded and fried chicken breast-- is a version of a Western dish. The Japanese eat a variety of noodles, mainly introduced from China centuries ago, but the wheat noodles are Western: they became popular after the war when American wheat was imported to alleviate food shortages.

Len’s Bento Dinner. A sushi roll and sashimi, vegetable tempura, and noodles.

Sushi and sashimi -- fish and rice -- are a traditional Japanese dish. I've noticed many references to people eating sushi in Japanese fiction; in particular, sushi is often mentioned in Osamu Dazai's book No Longer Human, which I read recently. The popularity throughout the world of Japanese-origin sushi is fascinating. In The Sushi Economy, by Sasha Issenberg, I read that sushi is a totally global food phenomenon, constantly changing as it moves from market to market, yet viewed as somehow more authentically Japanese than other global cuisines. 

"The narrative of a perfected past debased by the homogenizing pressures of integration is a convenient fiction embraced by reactionaries of all stripes. Yet sushi's history shows a foodstuff always in flux, remaking itself over centuries due to shifting pressures of economics and culture." [p. xxi]

The Original Totoro

The film My Neighbor Totoro by Hayao Miazaki is one of our favorites!
The hostess at the restaurant, which is named for the film, said that everyone tells her that they love Totoro.

Film poster for My Neighbor Totoro. Miazaki's films are fabulous.
His creation, the mythical beast Totoro, is now a children's and adult's classic.

A wall hanging that we bought at the Studio Ghibli
store in Tokyo some years ago.

Blog post and food photos © 2023 mae sander

Local Walks

An elf must live here!

 

Maybe a troll lives under this bridge?

Climate Change Is Here

Maui in 2009: my memory is of a lush Garden of Eden. My thoughts are with the people of the island.

(Photo © 2009 mae sander)

Every day I read more stories of the consequences of a warming world, especially consequences to the more and more fragile global food supply. I read about much irresponsible neglect and bad choices by authorities and big agriculture, and about looming disasters. 

“A combination of calamities — extreme weather, Russia’s targeting of grain supplies in Ukraine and some countries’ growing willingness to erect protectionist barriers to food trade — has left food supplies more vulnerable and less prepared to absorb any one disruption, analysts say.”  (source)

Throughout the world, there are such disruptions. People in many countries are suffering from heat waves, and experiencing crop failures for lack of rain or for vastly too much rain. Large numbers of refugees, especially from third-world countries, are fleeing hunger-stricken areas. A variety of food scarcities make good nutrition unaffordable for many people, including the disruptions caused by the Russian war on Ukraine as well those caused by climate issues. According to Time Magazine: 

“The fingerprints of climate change are all over the intense heat waves gripping the globe this month, a new study finds. Researchers say the deadly hot spells in the American Southwest and Southern Europe could not have happened without the continuing buildup of warming gases in the air.”

Worst of all are the unprecedented disasters such as the fire in Maui, events that result from years of drought and heat waves. In Maui, specifically, after the long lack of rainfall and after the neglectful abandonment of former agricultural fields to noxious, fire-prone weeds, it seems in retrospect that such a conflagration was almost inevitable.  The Washington Post reports:

“Maui is facing a compound disaster, where many different agents acted together to make the fires so horrific. As human influences on the climate and environment grow, the risk of these disasters is escalating.”

Many more consequences of global warming — signaled by this, the hottest summer every recorded — appear to be inevitable as well. I try to picture the world as it is and as it will be, and the long term is very depressing. Some people, it's true, do prefer to focus on the short term, and on a few places where a hotter planet provides a few positive effects on agriculture; for example, 

“Countries in the Northern Hemisphere, especially Scandinavian countries, are currently experiencing some positive effects from climate change in terms of crop yields. This is due partly to the CO2 fertilisation effect where increased amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere aid plant growth, but mostly because low levels of warming extend the growth duration of mainly perennial crops such as grass pastures, but reduce the duration of the staple annual crops, such as wheat, maize and rice. However, these effects are not permanent and will not balance the global negative effects of climate change. There is no doubt in the evidence and conclusions of more than 1,000 global and regional studies, that a temperature rise of 1 to 2 degrees Celsius will generally mean a loss in yield of a number of crop varieties, both in the tropical and the temperate regions. An increase of 3 to 4 degrees later on in this century will have very severe consequences for global food security and supply. However, it is remarkable to see that the rice plant is coping a lot better with the changes than other crops.” (source)

Concrete Examples 

Will things continue to deteriorate? Unfortunately, that seems to be the most probable future. It’s a gloomy endeavor, but here are some current facts about very specific results of a changing climate:

• Oranges and other citrus crops are being devastated by weather-related disasters, for which a warming planet is a major contributor. Florida, which supplies 90% of orange juice to US consumers, is especially hard-hit: “Orange juice prices are expected to rise further in the US after a bacterial disease and extreme weather intensified by global heating ravaged this season’s crop of the citrus fruit.” Hurricanes, temperature extremes including freezing, and crop diseases resulting from the heat waves have reduced the size of the crop drastically. Brazil, California, and other citrus-growing regions have been similarly affected. (Source)

In the 1920s, oranges were a miracle, as shown by this orange crate label.
Maybe oranges will be a miracle again!

• The problem is everywhere: “A healthy diet in the UK will be put at risk by climate breakdown as European droughts shrink fresh fruit and vegetable supplies, experts have said. Fresh produce from the Mediterranean, upon which the UK is reliant, will become more expensive and harder to obtain as extreme heat causes yields to reduce, putting a healthy diet out of reach of the poorest in society.” (source) 
  
  
• Field crops are affected by heavy rainfall in many agricultural regions. This change in precipitation is one of the disruptions of normal weather from a changing climate. One consequence to agricultural areas is erosion and loss of topsoil. The washed-away soil is polluting lakes, rivers, and coastal waters. Pollution and loss of oxygen in bodies of water means a negative impact on fishing, another threatened food source for humankind.
  
  
• Within a century, if unchecked, climate change will be devastating to wildlife as well as to agriculture. For example, a study by the Audubon Society predicts that two thirds (389 of 604) of North American bird species are threatened with extinction from climate change as it is currently predicted to proceed. In the Hawaiian Islands, several native species have already been almost driven to extinction as the warming climate has enabled mosquitos to live at higher altitudes, and thus transmit avian malaria to the small surviving native bird populations. Four species are particularly at risk. (source)

This Florida Scrub Jay is one of the US bird species considered to be most at risk.
Climate change and many other factors play a role in the endangerment of bird species.
We saw this bird at Merritt Island NWR, Florida, in 2015.

Conclusions? Actions?

Despair, I hope, is not an option here. Unfortunately, however, effective action is limited, and personal action without a collective will is virtually useless. Perhaps if governments and institutions reacted purposefully, some of the worst consequences of global warming could be mitigated. Perhaps at least people could be prepared for what's coming. I see little chance that our governments and institutions are in any way capable of leading collective action that would work. Democracies are in many cases dominated by people with short-term and probably selfish goals, who would sacrifice nothing for a future that they prefer to deny. I guess that it's no use expecting miracles -- not even from oranges.

As far as I am concerned, all we can do is try to help the victims as the consequences occur. In particular, I think there are some organizations that can be trusted to help the Maui victims. It's important to realize that most of the Hawaiian people displaced by the total destruction of Lahaina are workers, mainly in the tourist industry, and many didn't own the homes they lived in, or if they did, were uninsured against the loss. Even the local homeless shelter was destroyed in the Lahaina fire.

Residents of Lahaina were already struggling before the fire took everything they owned, and now they have the challenge of rebuilding their lives in an economy that caters more to millionaires and tourists than to hotel employees. So if you do decide to donate, please be sure you find an organization that can be trusted to support the victims in a way that is appropriate and won't end up further disadvantaging them. Also, beware of scams on the internet that claim they are collecting money for the victims, but might just be pocketing what you send them (or worse, misusing your financial information).

Here is an article from Food and Wine Magazine that suggests ways to donate if you choose to do so: "How to Help Hawaiian Islanders Affected by Maui's Wildfires: These charities are giving direct aid to locals. Here's how to donate."  I also recommend the organization World Central Kitchen which is working with local chefs to feed those displaced by the fire.

There's not much more I can say!

Blog post © 2023 mae sander

Yasunari Kawabata: Repost from 2009

For a long time, I have been fascinated by Japanese film and literature. This month, I have been rewatching and rereading some of the classics, and also trying some that are new to me. I also wanted to look back at some past choices that I've written about. The following post, from August 4, 2009, describes a book by Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972). Thousand Cranes was originally published in serial form from 1949-1951, in book form in Japanese in 1952, and in English translation in 1958. Kawabata became Japan's first Nobel-prize winner in literature in 1968.

The Tea Ceremony

Yasunari Kawabata's Thousand Cranes takes place in Japan soon after World War II. The central character is a 25 year old man whose late father was a collector of rare old tea ceremony objects and a practitioner of the traditional tea ceremony. Quite a few of the key scenes take place in the now-mildewing tea-ceremony cottage in the family garden, and the collected objects play a major role in this psychological drama.

The focus of the book is the young man's relationship with his father's two mistresses and the daughter of one of them. An unnamed maid and another young woman are the only other characters in the book: it's almost like a stage play with only a very small cast.

Several times, there is an enactment of the tea ceremony or some part of it, at a critical emotional point. Water boils. A tear falls on the iron kettle. The choice of rare and special water vessels, tea bowls, and decorative objects creates atmosphere and they become symbols to the characters and to the story. Sometimes a meal is served.

Nothing, basically, is ever said about the characters' tasting the tea, eating the food, or even noticing what food is being served. The tea ceremony is all about ritual and proper behavior. The way it affects the characters is important in the drama of their interaction and their individual problems. However, I find it very telling that the actual content of the tea vessels is not part of this drama, as I believe it would be in an actual tea ceremony. Savoring the tea is listed in documentary books as part of the ritual -- personally I find the tea at tea ceremonies unbearably bitter, and couldn't appreciate it.

I'm not able to tell if this lack of sensual participation or tasting the small snacks or the meal of tea time would be a meaningful symbol for a Japanese reader. It may be too late to know this, as the traditions described in the book are much rarer now than they were 50 years ago when the action took place.

Copyright © mae sander 2009

“The Hidden Fortress”

We watched another historic-era film by Akira Kurosawa.
It’s set in some unspecified medieval time period.
The film stars Toshiro Mifune and Misa Uehara. It was released in 1958.

 

A princess is rescued from her hiding place in a hidden fortress by a samurai
and two peasant adventurers. If she is captured, she will be beheaded. Of course she
is rescued and returned to her rightful realm across two borders and much difficult terrain.

The princess is tough, and nobody messes with her!

The princess and her rescuers at one point attend a night-time fire festival that’s fantasmagoric.

The scenery is dramatic. There are many horses and troops of soldiers.

In The Hidden Fortress four individuals travel together after Princess Yuki’s hiding place in her hidden fortress is breached. Her protector, played by Mifune, enlists the help of two comic peasants who only want the gold that the princess is taking with her. These lowlifes aren’t very loyal, but they are motivated by greed for the gold (the word greedy comes up over and over). 

The four adventurers go through all kinds of landscapes and face all kinds of perils until finally, they cross the last frontier and Princess Yuki is restored to lead her rightful kingdom. Many of the plot points and character types in this film are acknowledged by George Lucas as inspirations for Star Wars, where a princess also goes through many adventures to be restored to leadership of her kingdom.

The Life of Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) directed 30 films during a career that lasted over 50 years. He also worked as a producer, a screen writer, and in his early life, as an assistant director. Kurosawa's films are powerful and memorable, and his influence is lasting.

During the first decades of his career, Kurosawa's films were made at Japanese studios, mainly in Tokyo. His work became a model for various Western film makers, especially Sergio Leone of Italy who adapted Kurosawa's plots set in Samurai Japan into plots set in the US West -- the so-called "spaghetti westerns." Later in life, Kurosawa worked with American directors in Hollywood, particularly with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who had both acknowldged his influence on their work.

Early Life

Reading Kurosawa's memoir, titled Something Like an Autobiography, which was published in 1983, is quite fascinating, both as an account of history and of a remarkable career. The account begins with his childhood and schooldays, and details his career up until 1950. That is to say, he covers only the initial part of his career: the part before his greatest fame and recognition.

Kurosawa's memories of the 1920s, and the attitudes of his father, who came from an old Samurai family, are quite interesting. He remembered events like the great Tokyo earthquake and resulting fire in 1923. He also described how his father took him often to see silent films, which in Japan were narrated by professional story tellers so that audiences would better understand them. His brother later worked in such a role. Kurosawa describes vaguely his political activism in the 1930s, but seems to avoid any detailed political discussions.

Very little is said about the militarization that took place in his early adulthood in Japan or about the prelude and outbreak of World War II. Although he seems to have been engaged with a political organization, he explains very little about that. After 1940, Kurosawa offers almost no detail about his personal life. He mentions his marriage to an actress who had a starring role in one of his films, and mentions that they had a child, but he reveals almost nothing else about his family.

In 1941, Kurosawa notes that he was exempted from military service, and spent the years of the war making commercial films at the studio where he had started a few years earlier. He seems totally absorbed in describing the competition and acrimony between his studio and a rival, not the upheavals that must have been taking place all around him. His reaction to the wartime conditions had little more than a description of his utter detestation and resentment of the censors that judged every film. Almost as an afterthought he wrote:

"I offered no resistance to Japan's militarism. Unfortunately, I have to admit that I did not have the courage to resist in any positive way, and I only got by, ingratiating myself when necessary and otherwise evading censure. I am ashamed of this but I must be honest about it." (p. 145)

Having read about the extreme suffering of the Japanese people during and after the war, I can’t help but feel that this memoir isn’t telling us everything. 

Kurosawa the Great Film Artist 

Kurosawa began working as an assistant film director and script writer in the late 1930s. In his memoir, he gives details of his contribution to each of his films from 1938 through 1950, He describes his innovations in film-making, and explains how he learned from other directors, how he developed his own style and methods of working, how he identified the great actor Toshiro Mifune (1920-1997), how he worked with technical staff, and how his films were received. I have seen very few of these early films, as in fact, Kurosawa is best known for his work that followed his first international success with Rashomon.

When it came to Kurosawa's account of his methods and accomplishments in film-making, I was particularly impressed by the way he combined Western film ideas with the conventions, visual details, and plots of traditional Japanese theater, particularly Noh drama. I was interested in his use of Japanese literary works as the basis of his scripts. For example, Rashomon, which he made in 1950, was based on the story by author Ryūnosuke Akutagawa titled "In a Grove," which was published in 1921. Rashomon was the first of Kurosawa's films to become famous in Europe and the US, when it won the Golden Lion award at the festival in Venice, Italy.

I first encountered Kurosaawa's work when I attended various film series that were formerly common on university campuses before the availability of DVDs and streaming. A few of them were shown in Berkeley when I was a student there in the 1960s. Later, I saw many of the films at an ongoing Japanese film series that ran for many years at the University of Michigan. As far as I can find out, the series ran from 1954 until 2018. Kurosawa's status as a creative giant of cinema art has never declined. Several of his most acclaimed films are available on streaming now, and I hope to watch or re-watch some of them, including Rashomon.

Review © 2023 mae sander

Update: The Guardian published an article on Rashomon on August 15: "Rashomon: Akira Kurosawa’s truly daring film is still electrifying -- Famously telling four contradictory accounts of the same event – a samurai is dead – Kurosawa’s unsettling movie influenced countless productions that came after"

Fresh Local Produce

Argus Farm Stop, Ann Arbor, MI

Eggplant at Fusileir Farm Stand, Chelsea, MI.

 Blog post and all photos © 2023 mae sander

UPDATE: A comment on this post complained that Bidenomics caused food prices to rise. The Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman recently wrote an article on this exact subject titled  “Why Are Groceries So Expensive?” He specifically asked “Why? Can we blame Bidenomics?” His answer is, no we can’t blame the President or his economic policies. Krugman says:

“The key point to understand about food inflation is that it’s a global phenomenon, outside the control of any one government (except, in a sense, Russia’s …) and transcending the pricing policies of even the biggest businesses.”

 Russia’s role in the global phenomenon of rising food prices is twofold. First, the invasion and continuing war in Ukraine is preventing them from continuing to be a major grain supplier, which is a critical contributor to rising prices. And second, Russian policies have caused major increases in the price of fertilizer — they were a major source of this necessity for global agriculture.

I wanted to respond to this comment because I think this understanding why things are the way they are is crucial to understanding these price issues. I don’t blame the farmers who charge high prices for local produce, and I don’t blame the government for what they can’t control either.