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It seemed to happen overnight.
One minute you were tucking into a T-bone and, if you thought about it at all, you probably figured there was food enough for everyone these days - a glut for the West, enough for the rest.
The next minute, angry food riots were breaking out in dozens of countries around the world, the scenes barely credible in the 21st century.
Hungry people desperate for bread or corn or rice, the staples of simple diets. But a shortfall in supplies has doubled and tripled the prices of these basics, shoving them far out of reach of the poorest people on Earth, the one billion who live on less than $1 a day.
The crisis was a shock, but not actually a surprise. Josette Sheeran, head of the World Food Program, likened it to a "silent tsunami" that had taken years to build.
But the unprecedented extent of it - and what that tells us about the world's two solitudes, the rich and the poor - has stunned complacent North America. Here, obesity is the concern, not chronic malnutrition.
The paradox sticks in the throat.
Millions are now being spent on emergency food distribution: short-term calamities can always be fixed. But the world's broken food system won't be repaired overnight.
Global consumption has exceeded production in seven of the last eight years. A 30-year era of cheap, limitless food is over, say economists, and high prices will likely last for years, maybe decades.
Why? Because they signal a structural meltdown in the way food is grown, traded and supplied around the world.
"This is a crisis that had to happen," says Harriet Friedmann, a leading food systems specialist at the University of Toronto. "The food and agriculture system can't go on the way it is."
Is it fixable? Analysts say yes, with enough determination and consensus on what's gone wrong and how to put it right. But there are no magic bullets. The solutions will be as complex and multi-faceted as the factors that tripped this year's disaster. Some were unexpected; many had been looming for years. Among them:
Worldwide crop shortfalls coupled with dwindling surpluses. Global wheat stocks reached a 27-year low last year, with a prairie heat wave causing Canada's harvest to fall to 18.4 million tonnes from a five-year average of 22.1 million. Australia again under-produced due to a decade-long drought.
Runaway oil prices that jacked up the cost of fertilizer, transportation and, ultimately, prices in the markets of the poor world.
The diversion of millions of hectares of food crops to biofuels in Brazil, Africa and the U.S.
Washington is spending $7 billion in conversion subsidies to meet the goal of a 20 per cent reduction in oil consumption by 2017. (Ottawa is offering farmers $200 million in loans to switch over by 2010, when gasoline must contain 5 per cent biofuel.)
The International Monetary Fund says ethanol accounts for 70 per cent of corn's price inflation. With slim to nil of the much-vaunted environmental benefits, add critics. They say filling one SUV with ethanol uses as much corn as an African family eats in a year.
The doubling of demand for meat worldwide, especially in exploding economies like China and India, where the new middle classes want the West's high-protein diet. Fields of grains once bound for humans are now used for livestock.
The flurry of export bans by countries with stocks in hand at the peak of the emergency. India and Vietnam, for example, closed the door on rice sales. Other nations hoarded to protect their own people.
Recession-fearing speculators honing in on commodities markets. Large investment funds now control up to 60 per cent of the world's wheat trade.
And all of it happening against the backdrop of climate change. In the past 20 years, the number of "extreme weather events" - heat waves, floods, droughts - has doubled to 400 a year, the UN says.
The result? Decades of rising global economic growth are now under threat; years of progress in the developing world are being undone. And another 100 million people have joined the 850 million already going to bed hungry every night.
The international food supply's current structure - so workable on paper - has to be profoundly changed, warns UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Output must double over the next 20 years, he says, or the repercussions will be worldwide: "a cascade of related crises, affecting trade, economic growth, social progress, even political security."
It took nearly all of human history for Earth's population to reach 2.5 billion. That was in 1950. Today, it's 6.7 billion and rising. The planet's resources are finite, but demand for food, water and energy will grow inexorably in the coming years. So, too, will the pressure on inept or corrupt regimes.
"Governments rise and fall on their ability to feed their people," says U of T's Friedmann, "because food is the most basic human right."
The world has seen food failures before, of course, sparked by freak weather, political turmoil or, indeed, sudden spikes in oil prices. The 1973-74 oil crisis played havoc with prices and distribution and led to a global food summit in 1976. But nothing was done to ensure it wouldn't happen again. In fact, the reverse happened.
U of T's Friedmann says from then on, the industrialization of agriculture accelerated, became increasingly privatized and much more, not less, dependent on fossil fuels.
"Food started to be in constant motion, on ships, planes, trucks," she says. "The tight link to oil was created in the last 20 years and people knew that whenever it rose in price, so would food."
The world has no choice now but to start undoing long-time policies that have led to the system's crash, says Robert Watson, Britain's chief food and environment scientist and a former White House adviser.
"We must recognize that business as usual is not an option," he told a U.S. congressional committee last month. "If a large part of the world isn't to go hungry in the 21st century, we need nothing short of a new agricultural revolution."
The last great agricultural leap forward occurred in the 1960s' Green Revolution. It was an international project aimed at helping countries in the "global South" gain food security through greater self-sufficiency.
The World Bank made it a priority, financially backing domestic marketing boards, food storage and distribution services. Packages of hybrid seeds, fertilizers and pesticides were marketed to small-scale farmers. And, indeed, between 1960 and 1970, grain yields grew by 2.6 per cent a year.
The pace wasn't sustainable. Over time, the soil was depleted, water polluted and natural growing cycles disrupted. From 1990 on, annual yields in Africa stagnated and dropped back to 1 per cent in other targeted regions.
But by then, the World Bank had changed its development policy. The new view was summed up in 1986 by a U.S. agriculture secretary: "The idea that developing countries should feed themselves is an anachronism." They were better off relying on the West's exports "available, in most cases, at much lower cost."
In order to receive IMF loans, poor countries now had to agree to end their barriers on imports, dismantle their marketing boards - and take their chance on the open market.
But the 450 million farmers of the poor world, Africa's in particular, couldn't begin to compete with the West's heavily subsidized exports.
Trade was further liberalized in the 1990s. But subsidies, especially in the U.S., remained. With food technologies concentrated in giant transnational firms like Monsanto and Dupont, highly mechanized, chemically dependent, industrial-scale farming overwhelmed any other kind of agriculture.
The neediest countries became dumping grounds for Western surpluses, often in the guise of food aid, a practice that undercuts local farmers selling the same crops. In Haiti (where food protests unseated the prime minister this spring), a sudden "import surge" of U.S. rice in 1995 devastated domestic rice farmers.
It happened repeatedly to African countries that now have to import more than 40 per cent of their food. Critics say their governments do little to help the situation by spending less than 5 per cent of their budgets on domestic farming. One result of the neglect is that a third of crops are lost after harvesting because farmers can't get them to the marketplace in time or they're pilfered en route.
Meanwhile, food producers in the rich world were letting food reserves drop. By the end of 2007, cereal reserves equalled only 54 days of emergency world consumption.
By then, priorities had changed. As an Oxfam report has noted: "If the fuel value for a crop exceeds its food value, then it will be used for fuel instead."
The tsunami was building.
The World Bank is once again calling agriculture a development goal. The head of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission insists prices in future will be set "by the fundamental forces of supply and demand, rather than abusive or manipulative practices." On July 7, G-8 leaders meet in Japan to consider (or not) trade reform.
The gears for change are being set in motion. Money will be thrown at the problem.
But as one leading U.S. analyst puts it: "Expecting solutions from the institutions that created the disaster in the first place is like calling an arsonist to put out the fire."
Economists differ on the best way to stabilize the long-term food supply. Globalization advocates argue for freer trade, allowing poor countries to increase their exports while the rich world's subsidies and tariffs finally are cut. (A hard sell in the U.S., which just passed a five-year, $307 billion farm bill once again heavy on subsidies.)
Critics counter that further liberalization, leaving the security of the food supply prey to market forces, is the wrong direction. In a changing world, it's the attitude to food growing, not just the economics of it, that needs to be transformed.
As food scientist Watson puts it: "We need a more rational use of scarce land and water resources, an equitable trade regime, as well as action on climate change ... new tools, increased investments in agricultural knowledge. We also need to care about rural livelihoods."
The future security of the food supply will hinge on myriad interventions, from the practical to the utopian. Among those under discussion:
A second Green Revolution in developing regions, with improved seeds and farming practices, that's genuinely sustainable, environmentally and economically.
Increased foreign aid specifically tied to agriculture. The present level has dropped from 20 per cent in 1986 to 4 per cent today.
Expedited research on the benefits and risks of using controversial, genetically modified crops in the global South, not just northern countries.
Though advocated by many as a solution in the Third World, a moratorium on biofuels to measure loss of farmland and the impact on the system.
"There are all sorts of experimental ideas coming through the cracks that take agriculture sustainably forward," says Friedmann. "This stuff is trying to happen."
Farmers' traditional knowledge - of how to rotate crops, interplant, control pests - should be harnessed and blended with new technologies. Those who don't know should be taught how to retrieve seeds from crops and not be forced to buy from the biotech giants: "Monsanto can't sell seeds if people don't buy them," she says.
Today, the agricultural emphasis "is on biofuels, feedstock and humans - in that order. But the system doesn't have to remain that way. We can change it; we have to."
Spurred by this year's calamity, the world's farmers were spurred to plant more seeds this spring. Weather permitting (a precarious assumption), larger harvests are expected.
The question is: Will a false sense of security be reaped along with them?
© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2008
16 Comments so far
Show AllI'm in agreement with menos_polacion.
The writer is addressing the details of the impending crisis in available world resources vis a vis the expanding population, with emphasis on the food component of the complex of resources and functional balance of the survival equation. There is an implicit understanding here that there is a limit to growth.
She wrote:
"It took nearly all of human history for Earth's population to reach 2.5 billion. That was in 1950. Today, it's 6.7 billion and rising. The planet's resources are finite, but demand for food, water and energy will grow inexorably in the coming years. So, too, will the pressure on inept or corrupt regimes."
This is a statement of facts that need to be confronted by those who control world societies. My personal response when asked what can be done to conserve resources is, "pass out condoms liberally".
Read "Collapse" by Jared Diamond and "Earth Odyssey" by Mark Hertsgaard.
One more article about the food crisis, that doesn't even mention a slowdown in population growth as something that would be helpful long-term to solve this problem. This is not "among the myriad interventions under discussion".
The article briefly mentions that population has now exceeded 6.7 billion, and continues to grow, but seems to imply that nothing can possibly be done about this.
Culicomorpha, I certainly agree that "Without cheap oil and the yield increases that oil provided, the world would have been in this situation over 50 years ago as Malthus originally predicted." I am reading "The Long Emergency" right now. We are currently witnessing the end of cheap oil. Think about what that bodes for crop yields in the coming years.
The end of cheap oil will probably drastically cut agricultural production worldwide during the next decade, at a time when about 77 million people are added to world population annually. The food riots we have seen so far in 2008 are just the tip of the iceberg. Expect them to get much worse if oil continues to stay well above 100 dollars per barrel.
This quandry now is largely the result of our failure to address population growth 15, 20, 25 years ago. Now, our ignoring of this problem years ago, during the Reagan era, is "bearing fruit" in the form of food riots and increasing hunger.
What kind of world do we want to have in 2030? We need to think ahead to life with much less oil available, we need to limit carbon emissions, AND we need to voluntarily, but agressively, encourage much lower human fertility rates everywhere. Free contraceptives for all, worldwide, ASAP. Failure to act on this is going to result in worldwide starvation levels the likes of which you cannot even imagine, a decade or 2 from now.
civil behavior-I don't get much optimism when I read the news, either. I get even less talking to folks whe expect technology to save us. As the saying goes, "Sh#t in one hand and wish in the other and see which fills up first."
how many of us know how to grow food? And how many of those who know how to grow, know how to preserve it? I'm doing what I can to teach my children and their friends and our neighbors, how to grow food. It seems to be catching on, one neighbor planted a small garden this year.
\
One person at a time. Who knows which person will be the catalyst?
Are we seeing the running theme here?
"Analysts say yes, with enough determination and consensus..."
"If the two sides cannot overcome current disagreements and work together..."
And on and on, said running theme being that "solving" the food crisis, the energy crisis, and the melting Earth crisis will require the one thing that has never happened in recorded history - the entire population of the world working together towards common goals. Really quickly.
Since that is basically an insane hope, our focus should be on Plan B: preparing to live through/with the catastrophic perfect storms heading our way.
I agree with you, Native son.
There are 6 billion of us now and it is projected that there will be 9 billion in 50 years. How many will be starving then?
One child per family, worldwide, starting now would decrease the global population by over a billion by 2050 and the rate of decrease would be accelerating rapidly by then. As the level of sustainability was approached, families of two or three children could then become the norm.
Humanity has to make the choice of controlling its own fertility or suffering all the perils that nature has in store for it. A smaller population would alleviate all of the major problems that we are facing.
Rebel Farmer, i hope to see you there!
"As food scientist Watson puts it: "We need a more rational use of scarce land and water resources, an equitable trade regime, as well as action on climate change … new tools, increased investments in agricultural knowledge. We also need to care about rural livelihoods.""
This paragraph seems to call for a redoubling of industrial efforts at agriculture. Here are some interesting facts that contradict this assessment - at least for the US:
Total lawn acreage and average size
• 27.6 million acres of turf grass in U.S.; 21 million acres in home lawns. [REF 1]
• 80% of all U.S. households have private lawns. [REF 2]
• Average American lawn is 1/3 acre. [REF 2]
• Close to 80% of homes have a lawn and account for 18 million acres. [REF 3]
• 50 million homeowners maintain residential lawns. [REF 4]
• In the U.S, alone, it is estimated that there are more than 31 million acres of grass, an area equal to the New England states. Over 80% of this grass is found in residential lawns. [REF 4]
From http://www.backyardnature.com/cgi-bin/gt/tpl.h,content=381.
In 2002, the total harvested cropland was 302.70 million acres (http://www.ers.usda.gov/StateFacts/US.htm), so all this lawn - which uses a ton of water, is small, but not insignificant as fossil fuel inputs to grow food in place of a lawn would be virtually zero. This ignores transportation costs, which add to the real cost of commercial agriculture.
So why do people depend upon industrial food production, rather than growing their own food or at least supplementing it?
The lawn itself is a sign of status, created by English nobility to symbolically demonstrate they didn't need to grow food for sustenance or income. I guess people think status is more important than food and real security.
At the end of the day though, it is interesting that neither the article, nor any poster mentioned Thomas Malthus. Without cheap oil and the yield increases that oil provided, the world would have been in this situation over 50 years ago as Malthus originally predicted. I think a better article title would have been: Malthus' Revenge.
Rebel Farmer,
Thanks for a lovely post full of practical good common sense. It really is a temptation for those of us who are "fixers" to feel that we have an obligation to keep trying to "fix" all of the things on your list that are so terribly important. But you are right - at this point a citizen really can't fix the problems emanating from our government and economy. The power is too concentrated and the masses too fast asleep. I've tried to work with government at the federal, state, county and city level. All my lifelong efforts have led to dead ends. So now I am working with a local non-government coalition of youth, Native Americans, elders, and environmentalists to grow our own food and learn inexpensive sustainable building techniques such as the use of straw bale, adobe, etc. I've a new found joy in realizing how much we can do together with a small group of enlightened individuals. I know that much terrible suffering lies ahead because our world is not preparing for the great changes to come, and so they will come with violence and chaos. But I am trying to stay focused on what I CAN do, as you eloquently reminded us to do. I do believe that this is the way forward.
If you can find a copy of "The World According to Monsanto," (quickly yanked off the net when it was called to attention recently) you will get an idea of what is in store for us. Monsanto and a few other biogenetic chemical companies want to control all agricultural food production. They are spreading their Roundup dependent seeds worldwide, killing off native stocks wherever they can. The goal is that farmers must buy their seed from Monsanto each year. The harvests are taxed so heavily by royalty payments that, in India, farmers often commit suicide as they just go deeper in debt every year, with no salvation in sight.
As always, follow the money. It is greed that causes most of our problems. Inexpensive solutions get swept under the rug in favor of those which cost the people the most money.
Start small. Look for community gardens if you lack a place at home to put in a garden to feed yourself. Support local farmer's markets and locally grown agriculture. Stop the rampant loss of farmland to development of energy sucking McMansions. Support anti-suburban sprawl movements. Read Barbara Kingsolver's excellent book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life", as well as Michael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma". Learn to grow a Victory Garden and can your own food like they did in the Depression.
We don't have to be slaves to agri-businesses. We can, in a good old fashioned American "pull yourselves up by your own bootstraps" take control of our own lives and our own food supplies. It's all a matter of how badly you want to do that and in the process, save money on food as well.
Civil Behavior - You are not alone. Most of us out here in cyberland that are informed, are feeling and doing the same things you are.
Joe 6 Pack is not going to wake up to the reality of this mess until the shelves at WalMart are empty or he/she can no longer afford the necessities of life. Let alone the unneccessary widgets. And that day is going to come real soon. Maybe in less than 3 months.
So be prepared. Not just for survival, but with a plan for your neighbors and your community. We are going to have to act collectively to get through this one. The "powers that be" have no answers. And they don't care. We are on our own. There is not going to be a big "fix". No savior. Set aside your denial. Plan now for a future that is going to look nothing like the past.
This collapse of life as we have known it could actually be a good thing. Mother Nature will be pleased if we learn how to live sustainably and at peace with the planet's diversity and its gifts.
I'm trying to stay focused on the things I have control over and can actually do. I'm trying very hard to stop thinking as if I can actually stop this horror. Invade Iran? Can't stop that. America finishing off the final touches to fascism? Can't do anything about that. Gutting our democracy and our Constitution? Really can't do much about that either. Climate change and peak oil? All I can do is try to change my own life and the way I do things. I'm almost there.
Instead of being angry or depressed, I'm almost ready to let go and accept that everything has to fall apart before we can have a chance to put things back together. Collectively we will not change our path to mutual destruction until that path blows up. I'm hoping that that is when we will look at each other and decide on a new path that most of us will follow together for our mutual benefit and happiness.
We are not alone. It just seems that way right now. I'll be looking for you on the other side of this collapse. We will tough it out together. We might even be able to have a few laughs along the way. And a hug or two.
Keep in touch.............
annabelle,
Don't kid yourself.
The obvious remedy is simple.
When Human beings do not control their own numbers-nature will.
For the true optimists out there-----
the future looks bright for those Cannibals for awhile anyway.
I don't know what else to do but try to stock up on extras of flour, pastas, oats and the like and hope that in six months or so I can still afford to eat.
This fall we will put in a garden (Florida here, too hot now) and give our abundance to neighbors.
In the meantime what is happening does not bode well for the future stability of the worlds populous. WalMart is not the solution.
I feel so alone in this mess. My spouse and I read daily and cannot derive much optimism from the news. Where will we be this winter when the North gets cold again? I fear for our future as a civilization. And I think it is progressing much faster than we think.
We can produce for profit or for human need. That's our choice.
Unfortunately those who call the shots wrongly choose the first option, to their benefit and the detriment of so many others.
Too many of the rest of us who benefit in no way from the exploitative system in place, go along, for various reasons.
Not much left for us to complicate or screw up.