The world is closer to a food crisis than most people realise

[Hexen]

The world is closer to a food crisis than most people realise

Unless we move quickly to adopt new population, energy, and water policies, the goal of eradicating hunger will remain just that



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Lester R. Brown
guardian.co.uk (http://www.guardian.co.uk/), Tuesday 24 July 2012 07.21 EDT
Jump to comments (202) (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/24/world-food-crisis-closer#start-of-comments)


http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/1/7/1294426801354/Algeria-food-riots-007.jpg Food riots in Algeria in 2008. Photograph: Fayez Nureldine/AFP/Getty Images

In the early spring this year, US farmers were on their way to planting some 96m acres in corn, the most in 75 years. A warm early spring got the crop off to a great start. Analysts were predicting (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/13/grains-weekahead-idUSL1E8SB68O20120513) the largest corn harvest on record.
The United States (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa) is the leading producer and exporter of corn, the world's feedgrain. At home, corn accounts for four-fifths of the US grain harvest. Internationally, the US corn crop exceeds China's rice and wheat harvests combined. Among the big three grains – corn, wheat, and rice – corn is now the leader, with production well above that of wheat and nearly double that of rice.
The corn plant is as sensitive as it is productive. Thirsty and fast-growing, it is vulnerable to both extreme heat and drought. At elevated temperatures, the corn plant, which is normally so productive, goes into thermal shock.
As spring turned into summer, the thermometer began to rise across the corn belt. In St Louis, Missouri, in the southern corn belt, the temperature in late June and early July climbed to 100F or higher 10 days in a row. For the past several weeks, the corn belt has been blanketed with dehydrating heat (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/22/drastic-weather-doom-american-corn).
Weekly drought maps published by the University of Nebraska (http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/) show the drought-stricken area spreading across more and more of the country until, by mid-July, it engulfed virtually the entire corn belt. Soil moisture readings in the corn belt are now among the lowest ever recorded.
While temperature, rainfall, and drought serve as indirect indicators of crop growing conditions, each week the US Department of Agriculture releases a report (http://www.usda.gov/oce/weather/pubs/Weekly/Wwcb/wwcb.pdf) on the actual state of the corn crop. This year the early reports were promising. On 21 May, 77% of the US corn crop was rated as good to excellent. The following week the share of the crop in this category dropped to 72%. Over the next eight weeks, it dropped to 26%, one of the lowest ratings on record. The other 74% is rated very poor to fair. And the crop is still deteriorating.
Over a span of weeks, we have seen how the more extreme weather events that come with climate change (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-change) can affect food (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/food) security. Since the beginning of June, corn prices have increased by nearly one half, reaching an all-time high on 19 July.
Although the world was hoping for a good US harvest to replenish dangerously low grain stocks, this is no longer on the cards. World carryover stocks of grain will fall further at the end of this crop year, making the food situation even more precarious. Food prices, already elevated, will follow the price of corn upward, quite possibly to record highs.
Not only is the current food situation deteriorating, but so is the global food system itself. We saw early signs of the unraveling in 2008 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/13/food.climatechange) following an abrupt doubling of world grain prices. As world food prices climbed, exporting countries began restricting grain exports to keep their domestic food prices down. In response, governments of importing countries panicked. Some of them turned to buying or leasing land in other countries on which to produce food for themselves.
Welcome to the new geopolitics of food scarcity. As food supplies tighten, we are moving into a new food era, one in which it is every country for itself.
The world is in serious trouble on the food front. But there is little evidence that political leaders have yet grasped the magnitude of what is happening. The progress in reducing hunger in recent decades has been reversed. Unless we move quickly to adopt new population (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/population), energy (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/energy), and water (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/water) policies, the goal of eradicating hunger will remain just that.
Time is running out. The world may be much closer to an unmanageable food shortage – replete with soaring food prices, spreading food unrest, and ultimately political instability– than most people realise.
• Lester R. Brown is the president of the Earth Policy Institute and author of Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Full-Planet-Empty-Plates-Geopolitics/dp/0393344150), due to be published in October





Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jul/24/world-food-crisis-closer

What do we make of this?

[The Jay]

There's already a thread about this. Perhaps they should be merged? http://http://www.revleft.com/vb/missing-link-droughts-t173791/index.html

In a thread two days ago I wrote this:
I saw this on the news and immediately came to the conclusion that we're all fucked. Think about it, in the USA there are some of the worst droughts in decades combined with the oppressively unprecedented heat waves and insect populations. When it comes time for the wheat and corn crops to be completed we're going to have a serious deficit. That deficit will raise prices despite the large amount of monetary subsidies that are and will be increasingly given to lower the price of bread for americans. Given that the USA is one of the biggest if not the biggest grain exporter in the world global prices will rise as well, in addition to any troubles that may be afflicting other breadbasket nations. If the prices get high enough imagine the impact on the Greecian and Spanish economies and the people within. I feel that though the citizens of the USA may be partially shielded from the effects of wheat prices they will not be protected from the dominos falling. I'm no prophet, but all this is plausible I think.

A probable result of the coming crisis of food prices will be an exacerbation of the fiscal problems of the global proletariat and peasantry. That's all obvious though. What I think needs to be answered is how the proletariat and peasantry will react: will it be leftism or rightism?

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

OK, I can give some insight:
In Germany a mere 1.6% of the Labor Force works in agriculture, although everywhere you look there are fields, cows and fisheries. The United States has 0.7%(!) of its Labor Force employed in farming, forestry, and fishing. The UK has 1.4% of its Labor Force employed in Agriculture; ; the advance of the poductive forces have completely diminished the peasantry in the west and brougth to such sophistication that not more than 2% of the Labor Force is used to work towards the current Overproduction.

The United Nations estimates that the Current World Food Production could provide over 12 Billion humans with 2,700 kc a day, but yet 100,000 humans die a day of starvation. The United States population has 50 million of its citizens categorised as "Food Insecure", regularly hungry, by the US Census for Agriculture. The same Census reports that 50% of the Food produced in the United States, is thrown out before it ever reaches the consumer. So the actual amount of Food thrown out is more like over 60% for the whole Western States.

The only realistic crisis that could affect people actually being fed or not, is an economic crisis, when the little wages that they live on now and can barely feed themselves with, are even lowered.
But let's assume there somehow were to be some kind of huge disaster of natural conditions that would all of a sudden reduce agricultural output by let's say 20% (historically unprecedented by the way, in no records can you find such a high number of production decrease per year), 1) there would still be 40% of food thrown out 2) what does it have to do with the advance of the productive forces? Nothing, it would still require the same amount of labor time with the same tools to produce society's needs 3) assuming it would be a disaster of unbelievable proportions (you know: hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding, the locus plague, volcano eruption/ashes blocking sunlight, drought all at once) that would destroy let's say 80% of agricultural production output within a year. You would have about 30%-20% deficit on human needs with the constant of 1% of the Labor Force working in agriculture. I mean, if you would see some kind of relative disaster approaching, wouldn't you, let's say, double the Labor Force working in agriculture from 1% to 2% to double agricultural output?

Please don't fall for the idiotic bourgeois fallacies, we as a species have unprecedented means to fulfill our needs (Satellites to watch crops, predict future crops, computers to calculate crop production, automated machinery). There is no more need for people to be hungry, only if their labor-power is not sufficiently reimbursed are they unable to buy the products to fulfill their needs; the current absurd anti-human situation of capitalism.

[cynicles]

Total bourgeois illusions, the economy is the issue. That being said, the way the food system is structured and the recent drought could potentially lead to more capitalist governments being overthrown this year.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

By the way, Food Prices (because the modern productive forces for their production are so advanced) can be manipulated bu monopoly capitalists by artificially suppressing production and thus driving up market demand, but the agricultural industry is not that advanced yet. Food Prices get most of their fluctuation (all of the relevant one that you would ever read about, such as this one about the "Food Riots" in Algeria... ha!) are speculated on in the global market place. So the Food Riots that happened in 2008 were a result of a teeny tiny dip in Corn and Wheat production but which was speculated on and raised the price of winter wheat and Corn over 450%! We live in a highly monopolized capitalist system in which the markets can be manipulated by certain companies who own a monopoly over certain commodities and can (by means of them and other markets speculating on these production changes) attain enormous profits. One has to wonder though, all this power of the few owners of monopolies most certainly not just used for mere profiteering, it gives them significant economic/political power. In February of 2011 the food prices of winter wheat went up 250% of its of its production cost price. The number one importer of Winter Wheat is Egypt. So i assume that monopoly Capitalists are aware of this, there is as Marx points out in "Capital", a historical tradition of capitalists manipulating prices to hurt or illus the working class. Food Prices are made on the markets, which increasingly are in the control of monopolies, the most obscene the Energy market.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I wonder much shit like this is exacerbated by growing crops for bullshit like biofuels.

I also reckon that certain sections of the ruling classes and their apologists love the way reports like this are presented, because it helps to create a narrative in which the reasons why people are starving aren't predatory capitalism, the erosion of workers' rights and the slashing of social safety nets, but are instead primarily caused by bad weather and the breeding of too many people in other countries wot don't look like us.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Biofuels are an important regenerative resource for the future necessary mobile sectors of the economy, such as most agricultural machinery which cannot be built on tracks or run electrically. Biofuels, although the current usage of them is of course very obscene while more crops are being used for companies to make profits off of them for fuel while over 30 million humans die a year of starvation, are an important innovation for future green economies.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Biofuels are an important regenerative resource for the future necessary mobile sectors of the economy, such as most agricultural machinery which cannot be built on tracks or run electrically. Biofuels, although the current usage of them is of course very obscene while more crops are being used for companies to make profits off of them for fuel while over 30 million humans die a year of starvation, are an important innovation for future green economies.

I disagree. I think biogas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas) is a much better solution for mobile applications, since it can be derived from organic waste, rather than cropland that could otherwise be used to grow food. The processes involved in producing biogas can also be modified to include the reclamation of phosphorous and other essential minerals. An enormous variety of organic waste can be used as feedstock for biogas production, waste that would otherwise present an environmental hazard e.g. those massive open lakes of slurry produced by large pig farms.

While I'm not sure how much energy biogas could provide were its full potential realised, I am sure that its effectiveness as an element of a sustainable energy mix could be amplified by introducing electrical and fission-based replacements for systems that are currently powered wholly or partially by fossil fuels e.g. rail networks, cargo shipping etc.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

"rather than cropland that could otherwise be used to grow food" Why? We are overproducing food on a massive scale already, 50% of food produced in the USA is thrown out before it ever reaches the consumer. I am not necessarily against so called "Bio gas", but liquid Bio fuels are a lot more useful and an immediate necessity enduring the transition away from liquid fossil fuels. The technology and means to produce gas powered transport vehicles is not in such existence as that of liquid motors. Not that i am necessarily against bio gas, it could be an important back up source for industry in cloudy places like Northern Europe.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

"rather than cropland that could otherwise be used to grow food" Why? We are overproducing food on a massive scale already, 50% of food produced in the USA is thrown out before it ever reaches the consumer.

Because the massive amounts of food production we are currently enjoying are effectively being subsidised by a combination of fossil fuels and phosphate mining, both of which are unsustainable into the future.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Whilst i'm sceptical of the idea of scarcity, particularly in relation to food, I also think that we are under-estimating the distributional issues relating to food. Due to uneven economic development, much of the food is produced in parts of the world and needs to be transported regularly and en masse to other parts of the world.

Whilst undoubtedly, a social system as opposed to a system for profit would help change food production and distribution priorities for the better, there are still great problems in terms of logistics, climate change and waste.

[bcbm]

What I think needs to be answered is how the proletariat and peasantry will react: will it be leftism or rightism?

i think there will be a shift towards extremes on both ends as the crisis deepens.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Because the massive amounts of food production we are currently enjoying are effectively being subsidised by a combination of fossil fuels and phosphate mining, both of which are unsustainable into the future.

Yes yes, but engines exist that run on bio fuel! The only thing keeping fossil fuel burning vehicles on the fields instead of battery-, bio fuel- powered automobiles, is the monopoly of the oil capitalists over the energy sector.

[Paul Cockshott]

"rather than cropland that could otherwise be used to grow food" Why? We are overproducing food on a massive scale already, 50% of food produced in the USA is thrown out before it ever reaches the consumer. I am not necessarily against so called "Bio gas", but liquid Bio fuels are a lot more useful and an immediate necessity enduring the transition away from liquid fossil fuels. The technology and means to produce gas powered transport vehicles is not in such existence as that of liquid motors. Not that i am necessarily against bio gas, it could be an important back up source for industry in cloudy places like Northern Europe.

This is nonsense, the wastage rate in capitalist agriculture is very much lower than that.
The general point made by Fidel Castro though is spot on, the programme of turning food into fuel is little short of genocide.

[Paul Cockshott]

Yes yes, but engines exist that run on bio fuel! The only thing keeping fossil fuel burning vehicles on the fields instead of battery-, bio fuel- powered automobiles, is the monopoly of the oil capitalists over the energy sector.

No, that is conspiracy theorising. Oil is cheaper at the moment because less labour is required to produce it than bio fuel, even on the marginal fields. On the average field - ie one in Saudi or Nigeria say, the labour required to produce a joule from an oil well is much lower than the labour required to produce a joule from harvesting grain, fermenting it, and then distilling it to ethanol.

[The Jay]

i think there will be a shift towards extremes on both ends as the crisis deepens.

That is absolutely true. The trick is how to shift that split in favor of leftism. I don't have much opportunity to do so in my position but wish that I could. I'm the only leftist that I know of in my area.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Yes yes, but engines exist that run on bio fuel! The only thing keeping fossil fuel burning vehicles on the fields instead of battery-, bio fuel- powered automobiles, is the monopoly of the oil capitalists over the energy sector.

Do you have any idea how much land we would have to waste on biofuels production before it became remotely comparable to fossil fuels in EROEI? Somehow I suspect it would involve lots of starvation.

[Jazzratt]

Do you have any idea how much land we would have to waste on biofuels production before it became remotely comparable to fossil fuels in EROEI? Somehow I suspect it would involve lots of starvation.
The people who would starve under a potential "biofeul revolution" wouldn't be from the class that biofeul-enthusiast scientists and engineers are drawn from. They don't count :rolleyes:

[cynicles]

Biofuel is a load of garbage, we need a serious redesign of transportation and urban areas to a model that relies as little on fuel as possible, even then thats only a start.

[right to left]

The problem is that the only way our Earth is able to feed most of the 7 billion people living here now is because we are extracting large quantities of unrenewable resources to make it happen. In particular, oil-based nitrogen fixing fertilizers have be used in large quantities, as well as mined phosphate...another natural resource that will reach its peak in as little as 10 years from now. Plus, over half of the world's food production is irrigated with water from rapidly depleting fossil aquifers and renewable aquifers that are being pumped out beyond their rates of replenishment.

So, the world's food production system is already on borrowed time. So, how insane is it to be using a large percentage of the earth's biomass to make biofuels? The human race has already overshot global carrying capacity by about 50% according to the latest numbers I got from World Population Balance, and our economies are depleting natural capital and overfilling waste sinks.

And, when it comes to food (and biofuel production), the earth's biomass is limited by the amount of sunlight that falls on the planet. Sunlight is what fuels life on this earth. So the bigger the share of the pie that humans eat, the less food is available for all other creatures.
As the human population rises everything else falls. This has gotten so bad that currently 200 species a day are becoming extinct. This is a bigger problem than asking how we are going to feed 7 billion people now, and about 10 billion in 2050. If the planet's biosphere becomes irreparably degraded over the coming decades, how are we going to feed more than a fraction of the present world population?

Capitalism finds itself in a double bind. Our economic system demands growth, but Earth's capacity requires restraint. If we shrink our capitalist economies, we face hardship, but if we keep growing, we face ecological collapse -- a classic double bind. So, why are the leaders and policy-makers around the world going with economic growth, and ignoring the prospect of ecological collapse? More indications that the plutocracy is run by irrational greedy bastards who choose to ignore the future if it doesn't fit in to their plans.

[Lynx]

There may be potential in biofuels made from algae. This does not waste farmlands.

[right to left]

To whom it may concern! I submitted a post to this thread yesterday and several others that never got posted, why?
This may be the shortest stay that I have ever been on a forum, as I don't appreciate the censorship aspect of having to have posts approved by some moderator before posting!

[bcbm]

To whom it may concern! I submitted a post to this thread yesterday and several others that never got posted, why?
This may be the shortest stay that I have ever been on a forum, as I don't appreciate the censorship aspect of having to have posts approved by some moderator before posting!

its only for your first ten posts its to discourage spam

[cynicles]

There may be potential in biofuels made from algae. This does not waste farmlands.

Yeah algae seems to be one of the few exceptions I biofuels since it isn't limitted the same way the crops are.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?nomobile=1&v=s0xnlx7hYnI