Is A World Wide Famine In The Works?
by Thomas Riggins
Countercurrents.org (December 21 2007)
Was it just seven years ago that the new millennium dawned? I remember all the talk about how this new era would give us a chance to escape from all the follies of the 20th century. Well, it didn't take long to realize that all the old follies were still with us, waiting to be repeated.
World hunger is one of them. The last century was dotted with mass famines, all of them man made. Surely the UN and the leading nations of the world would not let that sorry record repeat itself?
It appears, however, that they will. The UN is doing its part to help prevent famines, but the UN can only do what the leading nations, represented on the Security Council will allow it to do. We must remember that any criticism of the UN is in reality a criticism of the five permanent members of the Security Council.
At any rate, the UN has warned us that a famine of Biblical proportions may be on the way. Tuesday's New York Times has the story. "World Food Supply is Shrinking, UN Agency Warns", by Elisabeth Rosenthal (December 18 2007). Here is the gist of it.
Jacques Diouf, who runs the UN Food and Agriculture organization has stated that there "is a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food" in the coming years. That doesn't sound very good at all. Rosenthal, reporting from Rome, says his reason for announcing this is that because of "an 'unforeseen [?] and unprecedented' shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring [good old supply and demand] to historic levels".
There appears to be only twelve weeks worth of wheat and eight of corn left in storage (based on world wide consumption levels.) to feed the world in case of an emergency. One reason for this is that it is more profitable to grow non food crops than food crops. There has been "a shift away from farming for human consumption to crops for biofuels and cattle feed" [more McDonald's burgers for the First World obese]. And, don't overlook the fact that "the early effects of global warming have decreased crop yields in some crucial places".
The leader of the World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, is quoted as saying, "We're concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world's hungary". Other experts are equally glum. A major, crop disease or climate change in an important area would put the hungary in "a risky situation". This has already happened in Australia (lack of rain) and In Ukraine (also climate change) with less food being produced.
The UN's Diouf thinks the advanced countries will have to come up with new ideas to reflect the new economic and environmental realities. New ideas are in the works, but they may be based on putting people before profits. When has the US done that lately?
But not to worry here in the USA. We will be able to ride it out. Ms Sheeran noted that, "In the US, Australia and Europe, there's a very substantial capacity to adapt to the effects on food - with money, technology, research and development. In the developing world, there isn't." It's comforting to know that if disaster strikes it will be the poor of the Third World who die off while we will continue to pollute the atmosphere, destroy the climate, and have all the junk food we need to see us through.
_____
Thomas Riggins is the book review editor for Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net or at Thomas Riggins Blog.
http://www.countercurrents.org/riggins211207.htm
______
World Food Supply Is Shrinking, UN Agency Warns
by Elisabeth Rosenthal
The New York Times (December 18 2007)
ROME - In an "unforeseen and unprecedented" shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the United Nations' top food and agriculture official warned Monday.
The changes created "a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food", particularly in the developing world, said Jacques Diouf, head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
The agency's food price index rose by more than forty percent this year, compared with nine percent the year before - a rate that was already unacceptable, Mr Diouf said. New figures show that the total cost of food imported by the neediest countries rose 25 percent in the last year, to $107 million.
At the same time, reserves of cereals are severely depleted, the agency's records show. World wheat stores declined eleven percent this year, to the lowest level since 1980. That corresponds with twelve weeks of the world's total consumption, much less than the average of eighteen weeks' consumption, in storage during the 2000-2005 period.
There are only eight weeks of corn left, down from eleven weeks in the same five-year period.
Prices of wheat and oilseeds are at record highs, Mr Diouf said Monday. Wheat prices have risen by $130 a ton, or 52 percent, since a year ago. United States wheat futures broke $10 a bushel for the first time Monday, a psychological milestone.
Mr Diouf said the crisis was a result of a confluence of recent supply and demand factors that, he said, were here to stay.
On the supply side, the early effects of global warming have decreased crop yields in some crucial places. So has a shift away from farming for human consumption to crops for biofuels and cattle feed. Demand for grain is increasing as the world's population grows and more is diverted to feed cattle as the population of upwardly mobile meat-eaters grows.
"We're concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world's hungry", said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program, in a telephone interview. She said that her agency's food procurement costs had gone up fifty percent in the last five years and that some poor people were being "priced out of the food market".
To make matters worse, high oil prices have doubled shipping costs in the last year, putting stress on poor nations that need to import food and the humanitarian agencies that provide it.
Climate specialists say the poor's vulnerability will only increase.
"If there's a significant change in climate in one of our high production areas, if there is a disease that affects a major crop, we are in a very risky situation", said S Mark Howden of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research organization in Canberra, Australia. Already "unusual weather events", linked to climate change - like drought, floods and storms - have decreased production in important exporting countries like Australia and Ukraine, Mr Diouf said. In southern Australia, a significant reduction in rainfall in the last few years led some farmers to sell their land and move to Tasmania, where water is more reliable, said Mr Howden, one of the authors of a recent series of papers on climate change and the world food supply, published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"In the US, Australia and Europe, there's a very substantial capacity to adapt to the effects on food - with money, technology, research and development. In the developing world, there isn't."
Ms Sheeran said that on a recent trip to Mali she was told that food stocks were at an all-time low. The World Food Program feeds millions of children in schools and people with HIV and AIDS. Poor nutrition in these groups increases the risk of serious disease and death.
Mr Diouf suggested that all countries and international agencies would have to "revisit" agricultural and aid policies they adopted "in a different economic environment". For example, with food and oil prices approaching records, it may not make sense to send food aid to poorer countries, but instead to focus on helping farmers grow food locally.
The food organization plans to start a new initiative that will offer farmers in poor countries vouchers that can be redeemed for seeds and fertilizer and will try to help them adapt to climate change.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/business/worldbusiness/18supply.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/index.html
Countercurrents.org (December 21 2007)
Was it just seven years ago that the new millennium dawned? I remember all the talk about how this new era would give us a chance to escape from all the follies of the 20th century. Well, it didn't take long to realize that all the old follies were still with us, waiting to be repeated.
World hunger is one of them. The last century was dotted with mass famines, all of them man made. Surely the UN and the leading nations of the world would not let that sorry record repeat itself?
It appears, however, that they will. The UN is doing its part to help prevent famines, but the UN can only do what the leading nations, represented on the Security Council will allow it to do. We must remember that any criticism of the UN is in reality a criticism of the five permanent members of the Security Council.
At any rate, the UN has warned us that a famine of Biblical proportions may be on the way. Tuesday's New York Times has the story. "World Food Supply is Shrinking, UN Agency Warns", by Elisabeth Rosenthal (December 18 2007). Here is the gist of it.
Jacques Diouf, who runs the UN Food and Agriculture organization has stated that there "is a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food" in the coming years. That doesn't sound very good at all. Rosenthal, reporting from Rome, says his reason for announcing this is that because of "an 'unforeseen [?] and unprecedented' shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring [good old supply and demand] to historic levels".
There appears to be only twelve weeks worth of wheat and eight of corn left in storage (based on world wide consumption levels.) to feed the world in case of an emergency. One reason for this is that it is more profitable to grow non food crops than food crops. There has been "a shift away from farming for human consumption to crops for biofuels and cattle feed" [more McDonald's burgers for the First World obese]. And, don't overlook the fact that "the early effects of global warming have decreased crop yields in some crucial places".
The leader of the World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, is quoted as saying, "We're concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world's hungary". Other experts are equally glum. A major, crop disease or climate change in an important area would put the hungary in "a risky situation". This has already happened in Australia (lack of rain) and In Ukraine (also climate change) with less food being produced.
The UN's Diouf thinks the advanced countries will have to come up with new ideas to reflect the new economic and environmental realities. New ideas are in the works, but they may be based on putting people before profits. When has the US done that lately?
But not to worry here in the USA. We will be able to ride it out. Ms Sheeran noted that, "In the US, Australia and Europe, there's a very substantial capacity to adapt to the effects on food - with money, technology, research and development. In the developing world, there isn't." It's comforting to know that if disaster strikes it will be the poor of the Third World who die off while we will continue to pollute the atmosphere, destroy the climate, and have all the junk food we need to see us through.
_____
Thomas Riggins is the book review editor for Political Affairs and can be reached at pabooks@politicalaffairs.net or at Thomas Riggins Blog.
http://www.countercurrents.org/riggins211207.htm
______
World Food Supply Is Shrinking, UN Agency Warns
by Elisabeth Rosenthal
The New York Times (December 18 2007)
ROME - In an "unforeseen and unprecedented" shift, the world food supply is dwindling rapidly and food prices are soaring to historic levels, the United Nations' top food and agriculture official warned Monday.
The changes created "a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food", particularly in the developing world, said Jacques Diouf, head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
The agency's food price index rose by more than forty percent this year, compared with nine percent the year before - a rate that was already unacceptable, Mr Diouf said. New figures show that the total cost of food imported by the neediest countries rose 25 percent in the last year, to $107 million.
At the same time, reserves of cereals are severely depleted, the agency's records show. World wheat stores declined eleven percent this year, to the lowest level since 1980. That corresponds with twelve weeks of the world's total consumption, much less than the average of eighteen weeks' consumption, in storage during the 2000-2005 period.
There are only eight weeks of corn left, down from eleven weeks in the same five-year period.
Prices of wheat and oilseeds are at record highs, Mr Diouf said Monday. Wheat prices have risen by $130 a ton, or 52 percent, since a year ago. United States wheat futures broke $10 a bushel for the first time Monday, a psychological milestone.
Mr Diouf said the crisis was a result of a confluence of recent supply and demand factors that, he said, were here to stay.
On the supply side, the early effects of global warming have decreased crop yields in some crucial places. So has a shift away from farming for human consumption to crops for biofuels and cattle feed. Demand for grain is increasing as the world's population grows and more is diverted to feed cattle as the population of upwardly mobile meat-eaters grows.
"We're concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world's hungry", said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program, in a telephone interview. She said that her agency's food procurement costs had gone up fifty percent in the last five years and that some poor people were being "priced out of the food market".
To make matters worse, high oil prices have doubled shipping costs in the last year, putting stress on poor nations that need to import food and the humanitarian agencies that provide it.
Climate specialists say the poor's vulnerability will only increase.
"If there's a significant change in climate in one of our high production areas, if there is a disease that affects a major crop, we are in a very risky situation", said S Mark Howden of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research organization in Canberra, Australia. Already "unusual weather events", linked to climate change - like drought, floods and storms - have decreased production in important exporting countries like Australia and Ukraine, Mr Diouf said. In southern Australia, a significant reduction in rainfall in the last few years led some farmers to sell their land and move to Tasmania, where water is more reliable, said Mr Howden, one of the authors of a recent series of papers on climate change and the world food supply, published in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"In the US, Australia and Europe, there's a very substantial capacity to adapt to the effects on food - with money, technology, research and development. In the developing world, there isn't."
Ms Sheeran said that on a recent trip to Mali she was told that food stocks were at an all-time low. The World Food Program feeds millions of children in schools and people with HIV and AIDS. Poor nutrition in these groups increases the risk of serious disease and death.
Mr Diouf suggested that all countries and international agencies would have to "revisit" agricultural and aid policies they adopted "in a different economic environment". For example, with food and oil prices approaching records, it may not make sense to send food aid to poorer countries, but instead to focus on helping farmers grow food locally.
The food organization plans to start a new initiative that will offer farmers in poor countries vouchers that can be redeemed for seeds and fertilizer and will try to help them adapt to climate change.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/business/worldbusiness/18supply.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin
Bill Totten http://www.ashisuto.co.jp/english/index.html
posted by Bill Totten at
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