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Environmental factors to blame for rising food crisis
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Grain is the new gold, climate change is causing food inflation
All over the world, food is getting scarcer and scarcer. Rising food prices reflect the decreased crop yields the world's producing countries have been experiencing since early 2008. That year the USDA predicted 2009 food prices to increase by 5%. A press report in July 2008 stated an increase in the price of grain products like cereals and bread by 9.5%. Authorities like the USDA and the Farm Foundation say these increases are based on the inflated prices of base foods such as rice, soybeans, corn, wheat. A January 2009 Farm Foundation report stated that the price of these products had increased by hundreds of percents since 2002, the highest being rice, which increased by 312%.
Among many complex factors that influence the recent changes,expert economists have begun to link inflated food prices with climate change. Accredited author and global environmentalist Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute outlines some of the most basic contributing factors in his May article for Scientific American.
Global warming, top soil degradation, and water mis-appropriation can all be linked to the decreases in production that in turn lead to food inflation. One Stanford study stated that rice and corn harvest has decreased 20-40% as global temperatures continue to rise. Lester Brown states that for every degree C the earth warms above normal, production yields decrease by 10%.
Top soil is a healthy ecosystem of inorganic and organic material supplies moisture to crops. It takes centuries to make even half an inch and without it, thousands of acres of land are becoming infertile. This non- renewable resource is being lost to rain, wind, and development.
Aquifers used to irrigate crops are being depleted before they can be replenished by rainfall. In China, grain production has decreased by 8% as a result of over-pumping irrigation wells fed by the Northern China Plain Aquifer. In India, where half of the country's energy is used to pump water form underground aquifers, 175 million people eat grain produced with irrigation water that is running out.
Food shortages caused by decreased crop yields are causing the world's main producers to limit exports. This makes importing countries have to pay even more for staple foods, make food agreements with producing countries, and even lease foreign farm land in order to secure food for their people. The Philippines made a deal with Vietnam for a guaranteed 1.5 million tons of rice. Saudi Arabia leases farmland in Sudan, South Africa, and the Middle East. The UN's World Food Program spent billions on food commodities for struggling countries such as Niger and Zambia, staving off violence for now. However, spreading hunger still threatens to cause panic in the world's poorest countries, sending them further into chaos.
for more info check out: spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,606937,00.html and latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-efron12-mar12,0,420942.story
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