Unintended Consequences

Good stories are very important ways to help people think in new ways. Back in the early 1980s Wendell Barry, a philosopher farmer, compiled some of his essays into a book, The Gift of Good Land: Further Essays Cultural & Agricultural (1982). One of his essays traced the consequences of the Food For Peace Program, created by Congress in the 1970s. Mr. Berry went to Peru to see how farmers cultivate crops. Peru was short on wheat and people were hungry. The Food for Peace program brought in free wheat. The local price of wheat collapsed. Farmers stopped growing wheat and turned to a similar crop, barley. Barley is used to make beer. So Peru became self-sufficient in beer, but still lacked enough wheat and too many people remained hungry.