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<p class=MsoNormal>From: <span class=name>Lester Brown, Earth Policy Institute </span><br>
Published <span class=date>April 18, 2008 09:13 AM</span> <o:p></o:p></p>
<h1><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>World Facing
Huge New Challenge on Food Front: Business as Usual Not a Viable Option<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='display:none'><img border=0 width=200
height=156 id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image001.jpg@01C8A13C.3E6957E0"
alt="http://www.enn.com/image_for_articles/34922-1.jpg/medium"></span><span
style='display:none'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='display:none'>/top_stories/article/34922/print</span>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>A fast-unfolding food
shortage is engulfing the entire world, driving food prices to record highs.
Over the past half-century grain prices have spiked from time to time because
of <a href="http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/34922/print" target="_top"
id=KonaLink0><span class=klink><span style='color:green'>weather</span></span></a>-related
events, such as the 1972 Soviet crop failure that led to a doubling of world
wheat, rice, and corn prices. The situation today is entirely different,
however. The current doubling of grain prices is trend-driven, the cumulative
effect of some trends that are accelerating growth in demand and other trends
that are slowing the growth in supply.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>The world has not
experienced anything quite like this before. In the face of rising food prices
and spreading hunger, the social order is beginning to break down in some
countries. In several provinces in <a
href="http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/34922/print" target="_top"
id=KonaLink1><span class=klink><span style='color:green'>Thailand</span></span></a>,
for instance, rustlers steal rice by harvesting fields during the night. In
response, Thai villagers with distant fields have taken to guarding ripe rice
fields at night with loaded shotguns.<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>In Sudan, the U.N. World
Food Programme (WFP), which is responsible for supplying grain to 2 million
people in Darfur refugee camps, is facing a difficult mission to say the least.
During the first three months of this year, 56 grain-laden trucks were
hijacked. Thus far, only 20 of the trucks have been recovered and some 24
drivers are still unaccounted for. This threat to U.N.-supplied food to the
Darfur camps has reduced the flow of food into the region by half, raising the
specter of starvation if supply lines cannot be secured.<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>In Pakistan, where flour
prices have doubled, food insecurity is a national concern. Thousands of armed
Pakistani troops have been assigned to guard grain elevators and to accompany
the trucks that transport grain.<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Food riots are now becoming
commonplace. In Egypt, the bread lines at bakeries that distribute
state-subsidized bread are often the scene of fights. In Morocco, 34 food
rioters were jailed. In Yemen, food riots turned deadly, taking at least a
dozen lives. In Cameroon, dozens of people have died in food riots and hundreds
have been arrested. Other countries with food riots include Ethiopia, Haiti, <a
href="http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/34922/print" target="_top"
id=KonaLink2><span class=klink><span style='color:green'>Indonesia</span></span></a>,
Mexico, the Philippines, and Senegal. (<a
href="http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2008/Update72_data.htm#table1">See
additional examples of food price unrest</a>.)<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>The doubling of world
wheat, rice, and corn prices has sharply reduced the availability of food aid,
putting the 37 countries that depend on the WFP’s emergency food
assistance at risk. In March, the WFP issued an urgent appeal for $500 million
of additional funds.<br>
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Around the world, a
politics of food scarcity is emerging. Most fundamentally, it involves the
restriction of grain exports by countries that want to check the rise in their
domestic food prices. <a
href="http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/34922/print" target="_top"
id=KonaLink3><span class=klink><span style='color:green'>Russia</span></span></a>,
the Ukraine, and Argentina are among the governments that are currently
restricting wheat exports. Countries restricting rice exports include Viet Nam,
Cambodia, and Egypt. These export restrictions simply drive prices higher in
the world market.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<h4><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";display:none'>ADVERTISEMENT<o:p></o:p></span></h4>
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<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>The chronically tight food
supply the world is now facing is driven by the cumulative effect of several
well established trends that are affecting both global demand and supply. On
the demand side, the trends include the continuing addition of 70 million
people per year to the earth’s population, the desire of some 4 billion
people to move up the food chain and consume more grain-intensive livestock
products, and the recent sharp acceleration in the U.S. use of grain to produce
<a href="http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/34922/print" target="_top"
id=KonaLink4><span class=klink><span style='color:green'>ethanol</span></span></a>
for cars. Since 2005, this last source of demand has raised the annual growth
in world grain consumption from roughly 20 million tons to 50 million tons.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Meanwhile, on the supply
side, there is little new land to be brought under the plow unless it comes
from clearing tropical rainforests in the Amazon and Congo basins and in
Indonesia, or from clearing land in the Brazilian <em><span style='font-family:
"Calibri","sans-serif"'>cerrado</span></em>, a savannah-like region south of
the Amazon rainforest. Unfortunately, this has heavy <a
href="http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/34922/print" target="_top"
id=KonaLink5><span class=klink><span style='color:green'>environmental</span></span></a>
costs: the release of sequestered carbon, the loss of plant and animal species,
and increased rainfall runoff and soil erosion. And in scores of countries
prime cropland is being lost to both industrial and residential construction
and to the paving of land for roads, highways, and parking lots for
fast-growing automobile fleets.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>New sources of irrigation
water are even more scarce than new land to plow. During the last half of the
twentieth century, world irrigated area nearly tripled, expanding from 94
million hectares in 1950 to 276 million hectares in 2000. In the years since
then there has been little, if any, growth. As a result, irrigated area per
person is shrinking by 1 percent a year.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Meanwhile, the backlog of
agricultural technology that can be used to raise cropland productivity is
dwindling. Between 1950 and 1990 the world’s <a
href="http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/34922/print" target="_top"
id=KonaLink6><span class=klink><span style='color:green'>farmers</span></span></a>
raised grainland productivity by 2.1 percent a year, but from 1990 until 2007
this growth rate slowed to 1.2 percent a year. And the rising price of oil is
boosting the costs of both food production and transport while at the same time
making it more profitable to convert grain into fuel for cars.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Beyond this, climate change
presents new risks. Crop-withering heat waves, more-destructive storms, and the
melting of the Asian mountain <a
href="http://www.enn.com/top_stories/article/34922/print" target="_top"
id=KonaLink7><span class=klink><span style='color:green'>glaciers</span></span></a>
that sustain the dry-season flow of that region’s major rivers, are
combining to make harvest expansion more difficult. In the past the negative
effect of unusual weather events was always temporary; within a year or two
things would return to normal. But with climate in flux, there is no norm to
return to.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>The collective effect of
these trends makes it more and more difficult for farmers to keep pace with the
growth in demand. During seven of the last eight years, grain consumption
exceeded production. After seven years of drawing down stocks, world grain
carryover stocks in 2008 have fallen to 55 days of world consumption, the
lowest on record. The result is a new era of tightening food supplies, rising
food prices, and political instability. With grain stocks at an all-time low,
the world is only one poor harvest away from total chaos in world grain
markets.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>Business-as-usual is no
longer a viable option. Food security will deteriorate further unless leading
countries can collectively mobilize to stabilize population, restrict the use
of grain to produce automotive fuel, stabilize climate, stabilize water tables
and aquifers, protect cropland, and conserve soils. Stabilizing population is
not simply a matter of providing reproductive health care and family planning
services. It requires a worldwide effort to eradicate poverty. Eliminating
water shortages depends on a global attempt to raise water productivity similar
to the effort launched a half-century ago to raise land productivity, an initiative
that has nearly tripled the world grain yield per hectare. None of these goals
can be achieved quickly, but progress toward all is essential to restoring a
semblance of food security.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"'>This troubling situation is
unlike any the world has faced before. The challenge is not simply to deal with
a temporary rise in grain prices, as in the past, but rather to quickly alter
those trends whose cumulative effects collectively threaten the food security
that is a hallmark of civilization. If food security cannot be restored
quickly, social unrest and political instability will spread and the number of
failing states will likely increase dramatically, threatening the very
stability of civilization itself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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