Global food crisis looms as climate change and fuel shortages bite
Pastor Dale Morgan
Global food crisis looms as climate change and fuel shortages bite*
Soaring crop prices and demand for biofuels raise fears of political
instability
* John Vidal, environment editor
* The Guardian
* Saturday November 3 2007
Empty shelves in Caracas. Food riots in West Bengal and Mexico. Warnings
of hunger in Jamaica, Nepal, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa.
Soaring prices for basic foods are beginning to lead to political
instability, with governments being forced to step in to artificially
control the cost of bread, maize, rice and dairy products.
Record world prices for most staple foods have led to 18% food price
inflation in China, 13% in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10% or more in
Latin America, Russia and India, according to the UN Food and
Agricultural Organisation (FAO). Wheat has doubled in price, maize is
nearly 50% higher than a year ago and rice is 20% more expensive, says
the UN. Next week the FAO is expected to say that global food reserves
are at their lowest in 25 years and that prices will remain high for years.
Last week the Kremlin forced Russian companies to freeze the price of
milk, bread and other foods until January 31, for fear of a public
backlash with a parliamentary election looming. "The price of goods has
risen sharply and that has hit the poor particularly hard," said Oleg
Savelyev, of the Levada Centre polling institute.
India, Yemen, Mexico, Burkina Faso and several other countries have had,
or been close to, food riots in the last year, something not seen in
decades of low global food commodity prices. Meanwhile, there are
shortages of beef, chicken and milk in Venezuela and other countries as
governments try to keep a lid on food price inflation.
Boycotts have become commonplace. Argentinians shunned tomatoes during
the recent presidential election campaign when they became more
expensive than meat. Italians organised a one-day boycott of pasta in
protest at rising prices. German leftwing politicians have called for an
increase in welfare benefits so that people can cope with price rises.
"If you combine the increase of the oil prices and the increase of food
prices then you have the elements of a very serious [social] crisis in
the future," said Jacques Diouf, head of the FAO, in London last week.
The price rises are a result of record oil prices, US farmers switching
out of cereals to grow biofuel crops, extreme weather and growing demand
from countries India and China, the UN said yesterday.
"There is no one cause but a lot of things are coming together to lead
to this. It's hard to separate out the factors," said Ali Gurkan, head
of the FAO's Food Outlook programme, yesterday.
He said cereal stocks had been declining for more than a decade but now
stood at around 57 days, which made global food supplies vulnerable to
an international crisis or big natural disaster such as a drought or flood.
"Any unforeseen flood or crisis can make prices rise very quickly. I do
not think we should panic but we should be very careful about what may
happen," he warned.
Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute
thinktank, said: "The competition for grain between the world's 800
million motorists, who want to maintain their mobility, and its 2
billion poorest people, who are simply trying to survive, is emerging as
an epic issue."
Last year, he said, US farmers distorted the world market for cereals by
growing 14m tonnes, or 20% of the whole maize crop, for ethanol for
vehicles. This took millions of hectares of land out of food production
and nearly doubled the price of maize. Mr Bush this year called for
steep rises in ethanol production as part of plans to reduce petrol
demand by 20% by 2017.
Maize is a staple food in many countries which import from the US,
including Japan, Egypt, and Mexico. US exports are 70% of the world
total, and are used widely for animal feed. The shortages have disrupted
livestock and poultry industries worldwide.
"The use of food as a source of fuel may have serious implications for
the demand for food if the expansion of biofuels continues," said a
spokesman for the International Monetary Fund last week.
The outlook is widely expected to worsen as agro-industries prepare to
switch to highly profitable biofuels. according to Grain, a
Barcelona-based food resources group. Its research suggests that the
Indian government is committed to planting 14m hectares (35m acres) of
land with jatropha, an exotic bush from which biodiesel can be
manufactured. Brazil intends to grow 120m hectares for biofuels, and
Africa as much as 400m hectares in the next few years. Much of the
growth, the countries say, would be on unproductive land, but many
millions of people are expected to be forced off the land.
This week Oxfam warned the EU that its policy of substituting 10% of all
car fuel with biofuels threatened to displace poor farmers.
The food crisis is being compounded by growing populations, extreme
weather and ecological stress, according to a number of recent reports.
This week the UN Environment Programme said the planet's water, land,
air, plants, animals and fish stocks were all in "inexorable decline".
According to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) 57 countries, including
29 in Africa, 19 in Asia and nine in Latin America, have been hit by
catastrophic floods. Harvests have been affected by drought and
heatwaves in south Asia, Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay.
This week the Australian government said drought had slashed predictions
of winter harvests by nearly 40%, or 4m tonnes. "It is likely to be even
smaller than the disastrous drought-ravaged 2006-07 harvest and the
worst in more than a decade," said the Bureau of Agricultural and
Resource Economics.
According to Josette Sheeran, director of the WFP, "There are 854
million hungry people in the world and 4 million more join their ranks
every year. We are facing the tightest food supplies in recent history.
For the world's most vulnerable, food is simply being priced out of
their reach."
Food for thought Possible scenarios
Experts describe various scenarios for the precarious food supply
balance in coming years. An optimistic version would see markets
automatically readjust to shortages, as higher prices make it more
profitable once again to grow crops for people rather than cars.
There are hopes that new crop varieties and technologies will help crops
adapt to capricious climactic conditions. And if people move on to a
path of eating less meat, more land can be freed up for human food
rather than animal feed.
A slowdown in population growth would naturally ease pressures on the
food market, while the cultivation of hitherto unproductive land could
also help supply.
But fears for even tighter conditions revolve around deepening climate
change, which generates worsening floods and droughts, diminishing food
supplies. If the price of oil rises further it will make fertilisers and
transport more expensive, and at the same time make it more profitable
to grow biofuel crops.
Supply will be further restricted if fish stocks continue to decline due
to overfishing, and if soils become exhausted and erosion decreases the
arable area.