A blog by Mel Riser about LifeBoat Permaculture and Solar Villages

Friday, September 07, 2007

The coming Food Crisis

The looming food crisis





















New figures from the World Bank, he says, show that 15% of the world's present food supplies, on which 160 million people depend, are being grown with water drawn from rapidly depleting underground sources or from rivers that are drying up. In large areas of China and India, the water table has fallen catastrophically.

Scientists are becoming increasingly alarmed. Earlier this year, water specialists from hundreds of institutes around the world published the biggest ever assessment of water and food. Their conclusions were chilling. With the earth's water, land and human resources, it would be possible to produce enough food for the future, they said. "But it is probable that today's food production and environmental trends will lead to crises in many parts of the world," said David Molden, deputy director general of the International Water Management Institute.

Climate change, meanwhile, is leading to more intense rains, unpredictable storms, longer-lasting droughts, and interrupted seasons. In Britain, the recent floods will result in a shortage of vegetables such as potatoes and peas, and cereals such as wheat. This comes on top of a 4.9% rise in food prices in the year to May - well over consumer price inflation - and a 9.6% hike in vegetable prices.

Britain can get by, but elsewhere climate change is proving disastrous. "I met leaders from Madagascar reeling from seven cyclones in the first six months of the year," Josette Sheeran, new director of the World Food Programme, told colleagues in Rome recently. "I asked them when the season ends and was told that such questions are becoming more difficult to answer. Farmers know that predictable patterns in weather are becoming a thing of the past. How does the global food supply system deal with such changing risk?"

The answer is: with ever greater difficulty. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that rain-dependent agriculture could be cut in half by 2020 as a result of climate change. "Anything even close to a 50% reduction in yields would obviously pose huge problems," said Sheeran. Within a week, Lesotho had declared a food emergency after the worst drought in 30 years and greatly reduced harvests in neighbouring South Africa pushed prices well beyond the reach of most of the population.

All this is far too gloomy, say other analysts and politicians. Earlier this year, Brazil's president, Luiz Lula, told the Guardian that there was no need for world food shortages, or any destruction of forests to grow more food at all. "Brazil has 320m hectares [3.2m sq km] of arable land, only a fifth of which is cultivated. Of this, less than 4% is used for ethanol production ... This is not a choice between food and energy."

Others say that the food price rises now being seen are temporary and will fall back within a year as the market responds. Technologists pin their faith on GM crops, or drought- resistant crops, or trust that biofuel producers will develop technologies that require less raw material or use non-edible parts of food. The immediate best bet is that countries such as Argentina, Poland, Ukraine and Kazakhstan will grow more food for export as US output declines.

Back on the great plains, meanwhile, ethanol fever is running high. This time last year, there were fewer than 100 ethanol plants in the whole United States, with a combined production capacity of 5bn gallons. There are now at least 50 more new plants being built and over 300 more are planned. If even half of them are finished, they will help to rewrite the politics of global food.