Saturday, February 23, 2013

Is there an Impending Food Scarcity in POur Future?

 

 The potential implications of food scarcities are nothing short of a total collapse. The following article by one of the best authorities in the world on environmental issues in general and especially agricultural issue, Lester Brown the founder of World Watch Institute is a good read. Read and comment.

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New era of food scarcity echoes collapsed civilizations

Published by Earth Policy Institute on 2013-02-08
Original article: http://www.earth-policy.org/book_bytes/2013/fpepch1 by Lester Brown
The world is in transition from an era of food abundance to one of scarcity. Over the last decade, world grain reserves have fallen by one third. World food prices have more than doubled, triggering a worldwide land rush and ushering in a new geopolitics of food. Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.
This new era is one of rising food prices and spreading hunger. On the demand side of the food equation, population growth, rising affluence, and the conversion of food into fuel for cars are combining to raise consumption by record amounts. On the supply side, extreme soil erosion, growing water shortages, and the earth’s rising temperature are making it more difficult to expand production. Unless we can reverse such trends, food prices will continue to rise and hunger will continue to spread, eventually bringing down our social system. Can we reverse these trends in time? Or is food the weak link in our early twenty-first-century civilization, much as it was in so many of the earlier civilizations whose archeological sites we now study?
This tightening of world food supplies contrasts sharply with the last half of the twentieth century, when the dominant issues in agriculture were overproduction, huge grain surpluses, and access to markets by grain exporters. During that time, the world in effect had two reserves: large carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) and a large area of cropland idled under U.S. farm programs to avoid overproduction. When the world harvest was good, the United States would idle more land. When the harvest was subpar, it would return land to production. The excess production capacity was used to maintain stability in world grain markets. The large stocks of grain cushioned world crop shortfalls. When India’s monsoon failed in 1965, for example, the United States shipped a fifth of its wheat harvest to India to avert a potentially massive famine. And because of abundant stocks, this had little effect on the world grain price.
When this period of food abundance began, the world had 2.5 billion people. Today it has 7 billion. From 1950 to 2000 there were occasional grain price spikes as a result of weather-induced events, such as a severe drought in Russia or an intense heat wave in the U.S. Midwest. But their effects on price were short-lived. Within a year or so things were back to normal. The combination of abundant stocks and idled cropland made this period one of the most food-secure in world history. But it was not to last. By 1986, steadily rising world demand for grain and unacceptably high budgetary costs led to a phasing out of the U.S. cropland set-aside program.
Today the United States has some land idled in its Conservation Reserve Program, but it targets land that is highly susceptible to erosion. The days of productive land ready to be quickly brought into production when needed are over.
Ever since agriculture began, carryover stocks of grain have been the most basic indicator of food security. The goal of farmers everywhere is to produce enough grain not just to make it to the next harvest but to do so with a comfortable margin. From 1986, when we lost the idled cropland buffer, through 2001, the annual world carryover stocks of grain averaged a comfortable 107 days of consumption.
This safety cushion was not to last either. After 2001, the carryover stocks of grain dropped sharply as world consumption exceeded production. From 2002 through 2011, they averaged only 74 days of consumption, a drop of one third. An unprecedented period of world food security has come to an end.  Within two decades, the world had lost both of its safety cushions.
In recent years, world carryover stocks of grain have been only slightly above the 70 days that was considered a desirable minimum during the late twentieth century. Now stock levels must take into account the effect on harvests of higher temperatures, more extensive drought, and more intense heat waves. Although there is no easy way to precisely quantify the harvest effects of any of these climate-related threats, it is clear that any of them can shrink harvests, potentially creating chaos in the world grain market. To mitigate this risk, a stock reserve equal to 110 days of consumption would produce a much safer level of food security.
The world is now living from one year to the next, hoping always to produce enough to cover the growth in demand. Farmers everywhere are making an all-out effort to keep pace with the accelerated growth in demand, but they are having difficulty doing so.
Food shortages undermined earlier civilizations. The Sumerians and Mayans are just two of the many early civilizations that declined apparently because they moved onto an agricultural path that was environmentally unsustainable. For the Sumerians, rising salt levels in the soil as a result of a defect in their otherwise well-engineered irrigation system eventually brought down their food system and thus their civilization. For the Mayans, soil erosion was one of the keys to their downfall, as it was for so many other early civilizations. We, too, are on such a path. While the Sumerians suffered from rising salt levels in the soil, our modern-day agriculture is suffering from rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. And like the Mayans, we too are mismanaging our land and generating record losses of soil from erosion.
While the decline of early civilizations can be traced to one or possibly two environmental trends such as deforestation and soil erosion that undermined their food supply, we are now dealing with several. In addition to some of the most severe soil erosion in human history, we are also facing newer trends such as the depletion of aquifers, the plateauing of grain yields in the more agriculturally advanced countries, and rising temperature.
Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that the United Nations reports that food prices are now double what they were in 2002–04. For most Americans, who spend on average 9 percent of their income on food, this is not a big deal. But for consumers who spend 50–70 percent of their income on food, a doubling of food prices is a serious matter. There is little latitude for them to offset the price rise simply by spending more.
Closely associated with the decline in stocks of grain and the rise in food prices is the spread of hunger. During the closing decades of the last century, the number of hungry people in the world was falling, dropping to a low of 792 million in 1997. After that it began to rise, climbing toward 1 billion. Unfortunately, if we continue with business as usual, the ranks of the hungry will continue to expand.
The bottom line is that it is becoming much more difficult for the world’s farmers to keep up with the world’s rapidly growing demand for grain. World grain stocks were drawn down a decade ago and we have not been able to rebuild them. If we cannot do so, we can expect that with the next poor harvest, food prices will soar, hunger will intensify, and food unrest will spread. We are entering a time of chronic food scarcity, one that is leading to intense competition for control of land and water resources—in short, a new geopolitics of food.

Adapted from Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity by Lester R. Brown (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.).

26 comments:

Davin Ajodhasingh said...

To answer the question, yes, I believe that we will see food shortages in the future. Changes in climate and irregular weather patterns are the reasons why farmers have a difficult time meeting demand for growing populations. This is why food is becoming increasingly expensive. Auto manufacturers who are trying to go green by using corn fuel to power their vehicles are going to increase consumption alone. World hunger still remains a prominent problem and the uneven distribution of food means that a lot of it is going to be waste. If the threat of food security resulting from environmental degradation isn’t an eye opener, even for the ignorant, I don’t know what it would take. Like the article says: food will become the new oil and land while be regarded as gold. If we get to the point where we have to fight for every meal, it will cause societies to collapse into civil wars and destroy an entire civilization like the Mayans. I hope we can use the examples of the past to avoid a devastating future.

Alexsys Grishaber said...

We will see food scarcity in the future and our later generations have that shortage of food because of what we are doing to the environment today. Although, food hunger is going on today, the way it will be in the future will be an ultimately high issue. I believe that they way we are treating our environment and our land now, we will see the way it affects our later generations. Environmental degradation is something that needs to be taught and education to spread awareness of what we are actually doing and causing upon ourselves.

Christie Homberg said...

After reading this article, I was reminded of the "What the World Eats" Time Magazine photo essay we looked at in class. With the world population growing and hunger affecting more and more people, it's sad to think of families in some countries going through ridiculous amounts of food in a week while others live off of hardly any food.
Food scarcity is going to be a huge issue/problem that future generations will have to deal with. The article says that "extreme soil erosion, growing water shortages, and the earth’s rising temperature are making it more difficult to expand production". Our actions and lifestyles in the past and present have sabotaged our future. Like many other issues, I think that awareness and environmental education will be a key solution to improving our future.

Unknown said...

History has a tendency to repeat itself, and that is exactly what is happening right now. Our population has grown to much and is more divided then ever. Some buy more food then they need that turns into waste while some go hungry night after night. Not only will future generations have the unfortunate job of dealing with our mess, but we will have to see its effects ourselves. The good thing about history repeating itself is that we can learn from it and hopefully not let it happen again. This issue needs to be taught to everyone so the mass population can realize how serious it is. It wont get better unless we commit to a serious change in our lifestyle.

Kay said...

It is clear that food scarcity is a problem that will continue to grow in the future. The top contributors to this are affluence and population growth. If affluent countries (like the U.S) continue to release greenhouse gases, such as CO2, into the atmosphere, we will rapidly speed the processes of climate change and, therefore, severely hurt agriculture around the world. However, even in curbing our unsustainable industrial practices in hopes of reducing CO2 levels, factors such as population growth are still affecting agriculture and world hunger as well. Aside from these two negative impacts, it frustrates me to learn about such 'hot topics' in our nation such as the proposed construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline which could cause crude oil spills, seeping into areas like the Ogallala Aquifer. This aquifer provides water for most agriculture in the United States. An issue like this tells me that our addiction to fossil fuels will ultimately be our demise, as it is in so many ways connected to sever and important world issues like food scarcity. This, among many other factors discussed in the article, point to what seems like irreversible consequences. Things would need to change in an extremely drastic way to correct man's environmental destruction, if, of course, we want to survive as a species.

Jeff Prizzia said...

After thinking about this article, I feel that everything in this world revolves around our population. Population tend to lead to everything else in which we see a domino effect. Food scarcity is a huge issue and the fact that we are seeing these issues from the climate change is even bigger. It seems that everyone and everything is falling apart due to our weather. Soil erosion is like saying that our earth is literally falling apart.We really need to start being aware of what we put into the soil. Our actions have become our habits. We need to continue the education of our youth so that we do not make the same mistake that our past has made for our present. Our past has killed our future, that's the way it is going to be until we change it.

Bradley Malave said...

As the human population grows there would be more people to feed. The available land would decrease because people would use it to build homes. This will leave less area to grow crops. As the population increases the amount of food will decrease. It's terrifying that the world grain reserves have fallen by 1/3. The most important thing is land because with land you can house people as well as grow crops so it would make sense that people are rushing to buy land. It's clear from this article that there are three main sources to the food scarcity problem: increase in population, rising affluence, and the conversion of food into fuel for cars. I would say that out of these three, the more dire problem would be population growth. In class, Prof. Karam taught the class that population growth is determined by how many children women have in their lifetime. In order to lower the among they would have we need to empower women. He further explained that studies show that women who are educated and who have higher paying jobs tend to have 2.5 children on average and have their first child at around the age of 30.

Without food humans can't survive. If we learned that soil erosion was the downfall to the Mayans, rising salt levels in the soil for the Sumerians and now our civilization may be heading down the same path because of the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, we should be so frightened by this that we should reduce our output of Co2 into the world right now. It's a shame that we are in this position but we need to change our system now before it's too late.

Brando B. said...

Of course the rate of world hunger is skyrocketing! Food scarcity is just another problem resulting from overpopulation and climate change. As our human population continues to increase, so does the need to buy groceries and drive to school, work, and soccer games. Relatively speaking, supply is supposed to meet demand. But how can demand be met when there is just not enough supply? As people consume more and more, local farms just cannot compete. People have no choice but than to rely on mega farms and factory farms to meet their needs.

What we need is sustainable development. In the United Nation’s Brundtland Report, sustainable development is defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” How can anyone say that we are working towards sustainable development when not even our present generations are meeting their needs. This past spring break, I spent the week as a Residential Guide for the Center for Community Action & Research’s Alternative Spring Break, an annual initiative to help those in poverty. I had the opportunity to meet and speak to people who were practicing homesteading and fighting for their rights as individuals. These are people who suffer every day to stay alive and obtain a decent plate of food. Ask them if they feel like our nation is working towards sustainable development.

From what is clearly stated in this article and my own experience, it is clear that the world is not taking our present or future generations into consideration and that many of our own people are suffering as a result.

In class, we discussed the IPAT equation. What it really stands for is Environmental Impact = f(Population x Affluence x Technology). As our population continues to increase, a severe desire for affluence will grow, resulting in technology advances that are detrimental to our future. Greenwashing has led consumers to buy electric cars and vehicles powered by food. So is burning coal and wasting food not as bad as using gas? The number one cause of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels. Climate change impacts our agriculture therefore contributing to our food scarcity.

It is a shame that it has taken me nineteen years to figure this out. Not once in my earlier education did I learn about environmental degradation. I wish that I learned that I=f(P•A•T) before I learned that a2+b2=c2. Now, as a young adult, it is my turn to appreciate nature for what it is and live my life differently. This is why I wish to enter the field of environmental education. I hope to work full-time for the National Park Service, where I can teach others about the importance of environmental stewardship. There is a quote that I can call one of my favorite’s by Aldo Leopold, “We abuse land because we see it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

Mary Hekker said...

I do believe that we will see food shortages in the future because of the trends we've already set. Abusing our land has become such a habit that I don't think there's any way to reverse it enough in the near future. Soil erosion, water shortages and rising temperature is making it harder to expand production. Though the world's population that was hungry was repetitively low over a decade ago, it has risen since then and shows now signs of stopping. The human race needs to completely change the way we produce food in order to avoid a shortage. Unfortunately, I don't think we have the means to do that in the time we have.

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Jessica Y. Sanchez said...

Like every other problem currently facing our environment, over population seems to be the leading cause. It’s a scary thing to see our food source threatened. I think once there is more accountability, things will change. It should be mandatory for people who have a vast amount of land to produce a certain amount of food for themselves. I mean, what good is property for a house if all it is used for is aesthetics? People have become so shallow in the way we live our lives, at least Americans. Property was once used to produce food and sustain our own lives, but it seems to be such a norm for it to be admired for its looks. Going back to the thoughts of incentives, the farming generation is becoming smaller and smaller, because of the amount of the lessening of incentives for farmers.

Nikita Iyengar said...

What we should be doing is learning from our past and ensuring that we are not making the same mistakes. We are however doing the exact opposite, and are instead following the same mistakes. The Mayans died out because of their unsustainability, which occurred from soil erosion. We have established that the world right now is living in a way in which we cannot achieve sustainability, and so like the Mayans we will be sure to die out too, but leaving behind much more damage. Food supply has always been a major problem in many developing countries, and now if it is beginning to get worse, and spread to the developed world as well, how is there any hope for our survival? We are using up land, because of our rapidly rising population, land that could have been used instead for crops to feed the people in that area. If food is becoming scarcer, it will automatically become more expensive, and that will lead to the hungry becoming even more impoverished, and creating more hunger in the world. Instead of moving forward, we will be moving backwards.

James Ward said...

The shifting climate causing a less productive food security system is inevitable. This is when modern innovation paired with more local, personal and small scale agriculture will come in to play. We can not rely on large surpluses any longer, unless we suffer the same fate as fallen civilizations of the past. A shift in policy will be necessary to ensure the sustenance we need for the future. I am somewhat optimistic since we have been seeing more of a push for local foods and innovations such as rooftop farms in urban areas.

Chelsey Perman said...

Yes, I do believe that there is an impending food scarcity in our future. Because of the environmental changes that we are going through, this greatly effects the ways that farmers are able to produce food. The article states, "This new era is one of rising food prices and spreading hunger. On the demand side of the food equation, population growth, rising affluence, and the conversion of food into fuel for cars are combining to raise consumption by record amounts. On the supply side, extreme soil erosion, growing water shortages, and the earth’s rising temperature are making it more difficult to expand production." Each of these ideas contribute to the food scarcity in our future and is going to continue to contribute to it until our society makes some drastic changes, and becomes more environmentally friendly.

Laura Sorrentino said...

There already is food scarcity, so in the future? There will be extreme food scarcity unless we control population at the least, minimizing it ideally. We have no 'extra' land that we can utilize as the the demand for food increases. Not only do we not have extra land, we have diminishing land from erosion and depletion of resources. That being said, there is a clear indication of impending food scarcity, misery and poverty to come and reach unprecedented rates. Not only people starving, they are dying everyday from diseases affiliated with unsanitary drinking water. If it isn't the water killing people, then soon to be, it will be lack of food. These problems will only continue to intensify as we create more pollution and erode our lands. pollution of the air, water, land and erosion directly affect crop production, however it is the human population that directly affects all environmental problems, including pollution and erosion.

aziz savadogo said...

It is definitely obvious that food scarcity will be worst in the future as the population is still growing and the temperatures are still rising. The result can only be worst than the situation that we know right now because no international organization came up with a clear and effective plan to resolve the issue. The fact that more and more agricultural land in countries like Brazil are being used to produce ethanol only adds fuel to the fire.Ironically, when Ethanol was first introduced, it was marketed as the ecological alternative to oil.The issue of food scarcity needs to be talked about and dealt with now before it will be too late to do anything about it

Jessica Alba said...

I feel as though climate change is more of the culprit here than population growth, although a rapidly growing population will contribute to climate change. The population of humans on Earth is soaring, but because it has been estimated to peak and then level off followed by a decrease, I don't think that paying most attention to overpopulation will solve the problem of food scarcity. Instead, I think that focusing on reducing carbon emissions will help to keep climates on Earth as they are. With many crops that grow specifically in certain humidity, temperatures, and seasons it is vital that climate change does not accelerate and disrupt this delicate system that will throw many farmers out of balance and out of work. Climate change affects more than the crop itself and has been known to cause many secondary harmful impacts to agriculture. For example, bee populations are on the decline because of changing atmospheric conditions. This is bad news for anyone with a garden who understands how important bees are to pollination. They help crops reproduce more than humans can by flying from plant to plant, and their work is free and efficient.
Also, food is distributed horribly, and this is a major contributing factor to world hunger. There have been many documentaries, some airing on the Food Network, that show just how much food goes to waste before it even has a chance to make it to market. If those in better developed nations would be less picky about how "perfect" their tomatoes need to look before they buy them, there would be a significant drop in food wastes, and from there it would be easier to make the next step to helping those in poverty cultivate food for themselves.

Jessica Alba said...

I feel as though climate change is more of the culprit here than population growth, although a rapidly growing population will contribute to climate change. The population of humans on Earth is soaring, but because it has been estimated to peak and then level off followed by a decrease, I don't think that paying most attention to overpopulation will solve the problem of food scarcity. Instead, I think that focusing on reducing carbon emissions will help to keep climates on Earth as they are. With many crops that grow specifically in certain humidity, temperatures, and seasons it is vital that climate change does not accelerate and disrupt this delicate system that will throw many farmers out of balance and out of work. Climate change affects more than the crop itself and has been known to cause many secondary harmful impacts to agriculture. For example, bee populations are on the decline because of changing atmospheric conditions. This is bad news for anyone with a garden who understands how important bees are to pollination. They help crops reproduce more than humans can by flying from plant to plant, and their work is free and efficient.
Also, food is distributed horribly, and this is a major contributing factor to world hunger. There have been many documentaries, some airing on the Food Network, that show just how much food goes to waste before it even has a chance to make it to market. If those in better developed nations would be less picky about how "perfect" their tomatoes need to look before they buy them, there would be a significant drop in food wastes, and from there it would be easier to make the next step to helping those in poverty cultivate food for themselves.

Tamir said...

If we are already facing food scarcity now, and the prices of food have doubled in less than ten years, you can be sure that we will face even more food scarcity in our future. While the population rate has declined in developed countries, we are still growing at a massive rate, and even more so in undeveloped countries. Population has a direct impact on food supply in the world. Seeing as how this article states that we are living on a year-to-year basis when it comes to food production, what will we do if we do not produce enough food during that year. People are going to starve. We need to make serious efforts to educate farmers to prevent soil erosion(It takes 400 years to create one inch of soil), we need to teach people how to grow their own food instead of depending on "big agriculture", and we need to control overpopulation, by empowering women, promoting contraception, and creating incentives to have smaller families. Povery and starvation are no laughing matter and steps must be taken to diminish these problems

Christina F said...

There were two sentences in this article that really sum up the entire food scarcity crisis, “Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.” These sentences are short but very powerful. We a currently depleting our fossil fuel supply at an alarming rate. We will probably never lift the last drop of oil because it will become too costly and inefficient to extract it from its source. However, we cannot continue to consume oil at this rate due to economic and environmental reasons. Our society should be focusing on moving towards more sustainable forms of energy, rather than focusing which countries can produce the most oil. As we all know, the price of oil has gone up drastically within the past few years, because the demand for it is extremely high. The price of food has also gone up due to the rise in the world’s population. More people means that we need to produce more food to feed them. Another quote from the article explains, “The bottom line is that it is becoming much more difficult for the world’s farmers to keep up with the world’s rapidly growing demand for grain.” Our main defense against the food scarcity crisis is to educate people on the importance of population control.

Jaclyn Barbato said...

As with most other environmental problems, this is directly related to the growing levels of population. Like so many of the systems in nature that exist in equilibrium, the Earth is trying to handle the stresses which have been placed on it. In order to solve the world food problem, it's going to take more than just increased yields. Distribution will be key to be sure that people everywhere are recieving food reguardless of who may be 'financially superior'. On top of this, I believe cropland will have to be rotated, in order to maintain the integrity of the soil/farmland. By having certain farms/fields operate at certain times of the year which are dedicated to growing, and dedicating the rest of the year to land mitigation, we can use our current technology to produce high yields of crops while attempting to preserve the land. Population will also have to be dealt with, either politically/domestically. Although the means are unclear, I believe as we face the impending resource shortages we must cease to ignore our 'foreign' neighbors and act nationally/globally to maintain a healthy population.

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The best thing my family ever started doing was making the mashed potatoes (or sweet potatoes, or squash) TWO NIGHTS before. We make the potatoes with an irresponsible amount of butter, (and the trick is 1/2 of block of cream cheese for a 5 lb bag of potatoes) and then put them in the fridge to wait.
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