Food for Thought

Steve dangled several shiny lures at me in our previous RP, Coffee and Convictions. It was only a matter of time before I gave in and started speculating. Here's what I came up with. Thanks, Steve!—Maer

December, 2524
Capitol City Spaceport, Ariel
White Sun (Bai Hu) system
08:00 local time

I walked home from the coffee shop despite the snow. I needed to think. Meetings with Sonia always offered plenty of food for thought but I needed time to digest it.

AgriCorp has a new strain of wheat modified for the desert conditions they're pushing toward. What was it she said? 'Hoping to increase competition for trade.' Competition against whom? For which market? The Core market share? Or the market on the Rim? Are they looking to make life better for everyone? Or to just line their pockets regardless of those suffering?

The war had shattered supply lines and production infrastructures. Hunger and want crossed Core socioeconomic lines as it had not done before. Those with money suffered less, those with less suffered more, but nevertheless, everyone was hurting. It wasn't hard to figure out. One need only look to history to understand why. After the Black Death on Old Earth had reduced Europe by half, the surviving peasants suddenly had worth. The scarcity of their skills gave them the leverage to break the grip of Feudalism and pave the way for the modern era that followed. If one multiplied that effect today by the dozens of worlds and scores of moons on the Border and the Rim...After generations of being exploited as a cheap source of food and labor, the Rim and the Border refused to continue the practice after winning their independence. With the depletion of workers due to the war and the plague, possessing the skill to grow food and the land on which to grow it translated into powerful leverage. The math was brutal. The equation favored the Rim and the Border. The advantages the Core had enjoyed—fairly or unfairly—no longer applied.

I waited at a corner for the light to change, my thoughts coming fast like the snowflakes swirling past the streetlamps.

The Second U-War had burned itself out on the Mutagenic Plague. Humanity stepped back from the fighting to save itself from extinction, producing a cure in record time. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, thinking it was over. It wasn't. The food shortages in the Core were a symptom of an underlying condition, one that presaged another kind of war that even now gathered steam. I wondered how many were aware of it.

Apparently AgriCorp was. Wheat for bread and noodles was in short enough supply that growing it in the middle of a desert was an attractive option, prompting the development of a strain that would do well in the arid conditions of the Rim. Common sense insisted that AgriCorp would not be the only one to capitalize on opportunities spawned by scarcity and war. Who were the other players and what did they bring to the game? Just as important, what did they have in reserve?

Sonia was tracking Sorghum futures. I knew sorghum was a grain used as a food product, livestock fodder, and biofuel. It could even be made into alcohol. Perhaps not so coincidentally, sorghum was a desert-growing grain as well. Anyone who controlled sorghum would have leverage against AgriCorp's new strain of wheat. Sorghum was clearly another piece in the game. It would be interesting to find out who currently controlled the shares in either crop, if there any new developments were attached to them, and if there were plans to buy up property on which to grow them. Any one of those elements by itself would be sufficient to spark commodities speculation, let alone all three. Were that to happen, it would push the price of food higher than it already was. Scarcity and hoarding would make the prices skyrocket. Unless strong measures were taken, and soon, the bottom line would drive the market and humanitarian ethics would lose to profit. One only had to look to history to predict the outcome.

I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed Sonia's number.

"Sonia, it's Vikki. I know it's late but ..."

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