Greg Bourne, CEO of WWF Australia, has predicted that we will run out of food in 40 years as we run out of water. Aaron Edmonds, a wheat farmer in Western Australia, elaborating on a recent prediction from Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute, thinks it will be much sooner:
"This year’s world grain harvest is projected to fall short of consumption by 61 million tons, marking the sixth time in the last seven years that production has failed to satisfy demand. As a result of these shortfalls, world carryover stocks at the end of this crop year are projected to drop to 57 days of consumption, the shortest buffer since the 56-day-low in 1972 that triggered a doubling of grain prices." Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute.
This is assuming Australia pulls in a 36 million tonne grain harvest which at the moment looks unlikely to crack 10 million with Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland in dire trouble. NSW has recently received rains but has no subsoil moisture and South Australia has had a good start but will be needing rains very soon.
We know that India has had problems with its wheat crop this year importing 3.5 million tonnes, the first time it has imported any grain since 1999. China has just become a net importer of corn despite prediction this would not occur until next year.
There will be food shortages within 5 years in affluent countries. The question society needs to ask itself is this. Just how do we propose to reinvigorate the rural sector now we have almost brought it to its knees by bankrupting social and intellectual capital, discouraging investment, and offering meager reward for the great spoils of a rich culinary rersource base. Pigs eating out of a trough rarely give thought to where the next meal will come from. Are humans any different?"
Aaron Edmonds
I'm not so pessimistic. Here's a graph from the Lester Brown report:
[Graph from World Food Stocks Fall to 57 Days of Consumption, Earth Policy Institute, click here]
Looks like those shortages are starting to pan out a lot sooner than even I have anticipated. The wheat market is very tight and of course we assume the quoted stocks of global inventories are in fact correct. I know for a fact that the US corn stocks are lower than quoted. There are some 500,000 corn stoves in the US alone burning 1-2 bushells a day in cooler months instead of natural gas or heating oil (for a third the cost). That is around 20,000 tonnes of corn burnt a DAY. The stocks accounting system cannot possibly be aware of such erosion since most of this would be farmer to consumer sales.
The Ukraine is rumoured to have placed 'export restrictions' on all its wheat. The Russians have been buying on speculation that prices are going higher. China has stopped exporting corn as its stocks are the lowest in history. And Australia is going to need to import grains this year as total grain output will be lucky to make 15 million tonnes. Are we listening yet? All key exporting regions have neglible exportable surpluses of STAPLE FOODS barring Canada.
Michael,
If it wasn't for the whiz bang marvels science has produced for the modern world, you'd not be afforded the ability to even form an opinion on this issue. The green movement was hijacked by membership driven sensationalism and short sighted ideology at some point and now geological constraints are removing our ability to live with cheap and abundant oil, these 'green' policies have left the world actually far less prepared for the future. The levels of CO2 in the atmosphere today would be significantly lower had the nuclear industry expansion that began in the 80s been allowed to continue. We are now faced with significantly less natural gas and oil also (I just love it when people think of natural gas as a green fuel??). What has this movement actually achieved? The organic model of food production would not exist if it weren't for cheap fuel and cheap labour in developing nations. Why? Because without cheap fuel you have less to spend, and the cost of flying organic lettuce from South Africa to the UK inflates the value of that commodity to end users. And without cheap labour, I can hardly imagine what an organic lettuce would cost in this country, produced with labour rates defined by Australia's resource boom and a general lack of interest in people wanting to do that work anyway. And how 'sustainable' is it to build organic models that rely of imported labour in the form of backpackers? No cheap oil = no tourists! No organic models exist for staple cereal production that are 'truly sustainable' particularly when you consider the constraints closing in from global warming.
But the original issue this thread was based on was impending food shortages. What I would call 'truly sustainable' models of food production (much more complex that a branded name like organic) will by their very nature produce far less. What the world must realise is that at some point there won't be enough to go around and the likely hyperinflated cost of food will be prohibitive to some within our own borders! This is not just a third world issue and a hungry man in Africa behaves exactly the same as a hungry man in Australia! Better to ease into the lower productivity trend than to suddenly confront an empty pantry!
Don't forget your gardening skills if indeed you ever had any. Might just need to recall them in the future 😉
Aaron,
How will maintainging/increasing the cheap, abundant human food sources, through transgenics (if it indeed would actually do so), help to improve the level of environmental and social responsibility in society that is required for a truly sustainable agriculture system?
Increasing crop yields won't save the environmentit will do the exact opposite. The classic example would be in the production of more frost or drought tolerant cultivars of cereal crops that would encourage more clearing in what is currently marginal country.
Whatever wiz-bang marvels science comes up with, farmers will over-use and abuse. The green movement (including organic agriculture) promotes the full package; social responsibility and recognition of natural limitations.
Peak Oil heralds the end of the ability to politic on many issues and environmentalism is one of them. There is not one environmental group in this world that to date has come up with a truly sustainable model of agricultural production and by that I mean reducing fossil fuel usage down to a bare minimum. The organic movement is no more sustainable than conventional agriculture because (a) it assumes that consumers will continue to be prepared to pay big premiums for the stuff (as petrol prices and inflation whittle away disposable income), (b) Low crop yields will bring on food shortages even quicker. These green groups also fail to realise that increasing the productivity of already cleared land with technology such as transgenics will reduce the need to clear more of what little remains of our precious native forests. So by constricting global food production capacity they are in fact encouraging deforestation. Talk about a confused movement! All this time the most effective policy the Green movement could have lobbied for was population reduction! But that wouldn't have got them a cent in membership money.