Sweeping up at Costco San Franciso,
after all the rice sold out |
A worldwide shortage of food looms on the horizon. In Australia, persistent drought has wiped out 90 percent of the rice crop. Kazakhstan, the sixth largest grain producer in the world, exports to Central Asia, but will not do so this year because of fears of shortages. Rice has risen about 68 percent since the start of 2008. A virulent strain of wheat rust, Ug99, first found in Africa and since spread to Iran and Asia, threatens worldwide monocrop wheat harvests. In Vietnam, monoculture and global warming have combined to bring about a rice-crop infestation that author Devlin Kuyek (Good Crop/Bad Crop: Seed Politics and the Future of Food in Canada) calls “a perfect storm” of events whose confluence was as predictable as it was avoidable.
Faced with pressure on all sides, the United Nations World Food Program says it won’t be able to feed all the starving people without special funding, leading economist Jeffrey Sachs to call this the “worst crisis of its kind in more than thirty years”. Exacerbating the problem, experts say food stockpiles are at historic lows.
Now comes news that even the bountiful U.S. is experiencing shortages. With wheat stockpiles lower than they have been in 60 years, rice and corn on the brink, and soybeans and sugar experiencing triple-digit inflation, major retailers from California to New York are limiting purchases of such staples as flour, rice and cooking oil. The shortages, likely driven by the wholesale baking industry (which rushed to buy up surpluses when the price of flour doubled between February and April), have inspired some East Coast Costco stores to restrict purchases to a single bag of flour or a container of cooking oil, while in California Costco stores are restricting customers to one bag of rice.
Experts speculate the U.S. food crisis is only just beginning. Survivalists predict a major revolution if conditions worsen, and are buying up what stockpiles they can get their hands on, leading to hoarding. At a local, low-cost grocer, the price of a 50-pound bag of rice is nearly double ($25 to $43), and our largely ethnic population is spending the money gladly, buying rice and beans against future want. There are reports of Filipinos living in Canada that are buying up sacks of rice to send to family members in their home country.
These shortages and price increases are driven by several factors, including bioethanol and hedge fund investing. These linked causes, which tie the price of a bushel of corn to a barrel of crude oil, are the result of speculation, and greatly influence costs even where no actual product is being purchased. Another significant factor is global warming, which has caused an alteration of traditional weather patterns worldwide, leaving Georgia dry as a stick and parts of the Upper Midwest and Canada too hot for vegetable crops, which decrease on average 10 percent for every 10-degree rise in summer temperature.
According to one report, weather conditions now are more variable than those of 40 years ago (PDF), with precipitation increasing the risk of flooding. In 2007 alone, the Central Plains flip-flopped from drought to flooding, severely damaging the winter wheat crop. In the Southeast (PDF), record-setting March temperatures led to early planting, crops which were subsequently devastated by a sudden April cold snap that cost farmers at least 30 percent of their fruit and nut trees. The total damage was estimated at over $1 billion, and was followed by a drought in the Southeast that reached historic proportions, greatly impacting summer vegetable crops. Corn fared well, but more than 25 percent of U.S. production was diverted to bioethanol, leaving cornmeal at its highest price (adjusted for inflation) since the Depression. To make matters worse, bees – which pollinate all fruit and most summer vegetable crops – are declining as a result of varroa mite infestation, also linked to global warming, and colony collapse disorder, linked to multiple causes.
Britain’s recently deceased chief scientific advisor, John Beddington, has warned that major climate change will be preceded by an unprecedented food shortage. Others less scientifically credentialed say the world is only 10 weeks away from running out of wheat. If this should happen, the staple foods of the Western world (bread and beer) will become unaffordable on the average person’s wage. Historical stopgaps, like rice and corn, will be equally out of reach, and potatoes, which do not require pollination, may become the new gold -- if there is land to grow them, and enough water to bring them to harvest.
At present, 37 countries are facing food crises, a situation referred to as “Peak Food”. As the American economy continues to tank, taking the UK and much of Europe, Japan and Asia with it, global warming may succeed where all else has failed, and the Ehrlich book (Betrayal of Science and Reason) which predicts just such a “Population Bomb” may become reality rather than uncomfortable science. At such time, Richard Leakey’s Sixth Great Extinction (going on now at a continent near you) may well include man.
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