A World Without Food Security

This map, published in today's  Guardian, is an eye opener.   It charts how much of the world faces food insecurity.   That, by the way, is all of the world except those countries coloured green.

Get the picture?   North America (excluding Mexico), Western Europe (excluding Spain), Iceland, Japan, Australia and New Zealand - that's the lot.   This is the Maplecroft Food Security Risk Index, 2011.  This is a world of 7-billion people, racing toward 9-billion even as the ravages of climate change close in on it.

Look at the hardest hit countries - Afghanistan, Iraq, Congo, Somalia, Sudan,  North Korea, Yemen, India, Pakistan, Burma.   These are countries either in conflict or hovering on the brink of conflict.

But wait, there's more.   Who are the biggest carbon emitters?  China and the United States, of course.  And where is public concern over global warming falling markedly?   You guessed it, China and the United States.   Less than half of Americans say they're concerned about global warming which is no small comfort to the Big Carbon lobby and their bought and paid for minions, the US Congress.  And, in China, which itself faces food insecurity, concern has dropped from 77% in 2009 to 64% today.

With the United States utterly hostile to any effective global emissions control agreement and China nearing indifference, we're simply screwed.  That means us too, all the greenies in that map above.  We'll probably be the last and least impacted, barring all out war (which is a very real possibility), but we'll still be hit eventually.

What else can we expect from political leaders who, in Jared Diamond's words, "consider leaving environmental problems unsolved a money-saving device."

In his fascinating book, Collapse, Diamond wrote "...some people may reason correctly that they can advance their own interests by behavior harmful to other people. Scientists terms such behavior "rational" precisely because it employs correct reasoning, even though it may be morally reprehensible. The perpetrators know they will often get away with their bad behavior, especially if there is no law against it or if the law isn't effectively enforced. They feel safe because the perpetrators are typically concentrated (few in number) and highly motivated by the prospect of reaping big, certain, and immediate profits, while the losses are spread over large numbers of individuals."

That passage pretty much explains the Athabasca Tar Sands in a nutshell.   Our supposed leaders treat ignoring the environmental problems as a money-saving device.

The "Century of Hunger"?

The wealthiest nations are poised to condemn the peoples of the rest of the world to a "Century of Hunger" unless they agree to new rules governing food supply.   That warning was delivered by French agriculture minister, Bruno Le Maire, as the G20 AgMins gathered in Paris today.

France, which holds the G-20 presidency, wants a central database on crops, limits on export bans, international market regulation, emergency stockpiles and a plan to raise global output. 

“We don’t want to dilute the action plan,” Le Maire said. “Either the G-20 members are able to find consensus on something which would help us to fight against excessive volatility and to fight against hunger in the world,” or “it would be a failure,” he said. 

The choice is “international solidarity” or “egotism” if nations want to avert this becoming the “the century of hunger,” he told a meeting of 120 farmers groups in Paris last week. France is the European Union’s biggest farm producer. 

“People have taken food for granted, especially in the U.S., for so long that they’ve forgotten how important it is,” Carlson said. “I shudder to think what would happen, to the poorer countries especially, if we ran out of food. There would be just unrest like we can’t imagine.” 

Canada and countries that can still produce staple crops in high volume stand to gain a lot from the increasing market demand coupled with severe weather events elsewhere that sharply disrupt production and reduce competition.  In other words, their pain is our gain.

France is insisting that any G20 deal must provide for regulation of financial markets for agricultural commodities, a notion that the American congress is likely to reject.

Will Canada's Future Be Sold on the Auction Block?

With a major freshwater crisis setting in throughout South Asia, India and East Asia and warnings that already record prices for food staples may double by 2030, this is what you can expect for the future.    China is making a major land grab, this time not in Africa but in Argentina, and it's got people in the South American state nervous.

...the [Chinese] state-owned agribusiness company Beidahuang has joined the global scramble for land and water that has accelerated since food prices spiked in 2008.At the end of last year it was confirmed that the company had signed an agreement with the government of Patagonia's Rio Negro province that will provide the framework for it to acquire up to 320,000 hectares of privately owned farmland – along with irrigation rights and a concession on the big San Antonio port in the region.

Details of the deal, which are alleged to have been kept quiet until it had been completed, have been emerging in recent weeks as Chinese technicians started work. Beidahuang also reported a deal for 200,000 hectares of land in the Philippines in 2008, and has said it plans to buy substantial palm oil plantations and grain terminals this year as it pursues the Chinese government's policy of securing its food supply lines from abroad.

Argentinian environmental groups and constitutional experts are outraged. Eduardo Barcesat is a top constitutional lawyer who has been helping the federal government of the Argentinian president, Cristina Kirchner, draft legislation that would restrict foreign ownership of Argentinian land. The laws would also provide, for the first time, a full register of all landholding so that authorities can keep track of who owns what.

"Chinese and Indian people have been coming to Argentina over the last five years and would be happy to buy all our land, whatever the price. American businesses have been buying access to our water ," Barcesat said.   "We need our own people to eat well first, and after that we can feed the rest of the world. We want more small and middle-sized owners, we don't like the excessive concentration, and we want farmers who will be careful with the land, not exploit it ."

It's a smart move for the Chinese who don't need to be told about what's coming in the next decade or two.  They understand that global warming will radically transform 20th century notions of globalization.  They realize they can exploit their current liquidity in ways that will cushion the impacts they foresee coming.  Why compete on global grain markets at brutal prices forecast for our now permanent global food crisis when you can still pick up farmland abroad today for reasonable prices?

What's going on in Argentina should serve as an urgent wake up call for Canada's leaders.  Will we too allow foreign wealth to conquer by sale our own agricultural resources?  Up til now Canadians have been reasonably aware of the threats to our water resources.   But water is just one item on today's shopping lists of the emerging economic superpowers and the temporarily buoyant petro-states. 

We have to start paying attention to this.   We need a dialogue on our own future food security and our security of all other strategic resources.   Globalization will be changing over the next two decades, power and interests will be shifting.  This is no longer a matter of manufacturing Volkswagens in China.  It is about a redistribution of the very assets nations will most need to weather the rest of this century.  It is about reassessing sovereignty and how it can be bolstered to ensure that national assets, even those we may foolishly take for granted, can be preserved for the benefit of our own people.

Globalization is about to undergo seismic shifts.   We can either prepare ourselves for them or sit by and be overtaken by them.

Just In Case You Thought the World Wasn't Really Changing

We North Americans have had plenty of laughs at some of the stuff our British cousins eat - bangers & mash, bubble & squeak, spotted dick, blood pudding - maybe it's best to stop there.   Well, according to a Dutch entomologist, by 2020 - less than a decade from now - Brits will be expanding their diet to include heaping portions of bugs.   By then, animal protein - meat - is going to be in short supply and insects will be the protein of choice to make up the difference.

In an interview with Wired magazine, Prof Marcel Dicke of Wageningen University said: "The most important thing is getting people prepared, getting used to the idea. Because from 2020 onwards, there won't be much of a choice for us." He wants to persuade people to ditch prejudices about insects, and to persuade manufacturers and suppliers to come up with products that can be sold in "a reassuring and attractive manner". Dicke heads a Netherlands-based four-year programme aiming to produce a scientific and business plan to bring insects to western tables.

In the UK, the sale of insects for human consumption is part of what is still a niche food sector centred largely around novelty snacks. The specialist supplier Edible sells a range of delicacies ranging from Thai Curry crickets to BBQ worm crisps which are stocked by retailers such as Selfridges, and Harvey Nichols.

Tanya McMullen, grocery buying manager at Selfridges, said: "The Edible brand grows year after year. Our customers like it because it is so unusual. You don't find oven-baked tarantula and scorpion lollies in many places so it's a product most customers won't have seen before. It is difficult to say whether it's a current trend as it has always been a successful range for Selfridges but there is definitely an increasing number of discerning customers who are more and more willing to try something out of the ordinary. Sales are currently very strong having grown 20% in the last 12 months."

The Starvation Trade, a Crime Against Humanity

Looking for the next "crime against humanity"? Why not make it food commodity speculation? Why? Because it's mass murder, that's why. The usual suspects (can you say "gold-man-sachs"?) are gaming global grain productionl. It's a dandy source of speculation wealth. After all, everyone needs to eat, even if they can't afford to eat. This year in drought-stricken West Africa there are upwards of 10-million facing starvation as they look on a shelves stocked with food they cannot afford to buy. From The Guardian:

Starving people in drought-stricken west Africa are being forced to eat leaves and collect grain from ant hills, say aid agencies, warning that 10 million people face starvation across the region.

With food prices soaring and malnourished livestock dying, villagers were turning to any sources of food to stay alive, said Charles Bambara, Oxfam officer for the west African region.
"People are eating wild fruit and leaves, and building ant hills just to capture the tiny amount of grain that the ants collect inside."

..."Niger is at crisis point now and we need to act quickly before this crisis becomes a full-blown humanitarian disaster," said Caroline Gluck, an Oxfam representative in the country.
With food prices spiralling, people are being forced to slaughter malnourished livestock, traditionally the only form of income.

"When you walk through the markets, you can see that there is food here. The problem is that the ability to buy it has disappeared. People here depend on livestock to support themselves, but animals are being killed on the edge of exhaustion, and that means they are being sold for far less money. And on top of that, the cost of food basics has risen," explained Gluck.

Compounding the crisis, thousands of animals have starved to death as villagers use animal fodder to feed themselves.

The early onset of mass famine has aid workers fearing this year will be similar to the 1984 Ethiopia famine where a million died. If you want to learn more about the devastating effects of grain speculation, read The Food Bubbles, How Wall Street Starved Millions and Got Away With It by Frederick Kaufman in the July edition of Harper's magazine.

Food for Thought - Canada's Growing Agricultural Deficit

A lot of us think of Canada as a land of great agricultural abundance. It's not and that's entirely our own doing. Watch this badly needed wake-up call:



While domestic food production is important in its own right, it will become critical in less than a generation. We'll pay dearly if we don't wean ourselves from our dependence on cheap imported foodstuffs. Globally, agriculture is taking a beating due to a variety of ecological scourges from desertification and freshwater depletion to the migration of pests. If the warnings about Peak Oil are true that, combined with the other pressures, could land us with a dramatic and quick food crisis. We have the ability to restore Canada to agricultural self-sufficiency and now is the time to see to it. Yes it may be more expensive to produce locally but that difference could all but disappear before long.

Here's another critical policy that the Libs can run with, if only...

Don't Those Brits Know We're Not Supposed to Talk About Climate Change?

Steve knows, Mike knows, Jack knows - we don't discuss the inescapable impacts of global warming driven climate change. Mum's the word, out of sight/out of mind, nothing to see here - move along.

The Brits are screwing everything up, leaving Canada's Unholy Trio looking like total chumps. First it was their Energy Secretary releasing a "best case scenario" report on the warming that's going to be experienced in various parts of Britain based on the carbon that has already been emitted to the atmosphere. We don't want to talk about those things in Canada. The Canadian people are happier, even if not necessarily healthier or safer, if they're kept in the dark.

Now that Brit Energy Secretary has done it again. This time Hilary Benn is calling for a "radical rethink" of the way his country produces and consumes food. He wants Britons to "think"? To think about food consumption and food security? Is he mad, a complete nutter?

That damned Benn and his reports. This time the government has issued a report outlining the very real threats to Britain's food security. From The Guardian:

The assessment showed that future global food supplies could be threatened by the impacts of climate change on where crops can grow, increases in the incidence of animal diseases and water shortages.

It also issued a warning over the depletion of fish stocks around the world, as well as the impacts on the natural world of expansion of crops grown for fuels and a growing population eating more.

But with rising yields in cereals and uncropped land that can be brought into production, the UK can contribute to global food security, the assessment said.

Across the world, it has been estimated that production will have to rise by 70% by 2050 to feed a global population of 9 billion.

...Benn said he wanted British farmers to produce as much as possible, but they needed to do so in such a way that took account of a changing climate and the need to tackle global warming emissions — to which agriculture is a significant contributor.

..."We need a radical rethink of how we produce and consume our food," he said. "Globally we need to cut emissions and adapt to the changing climate that will alter what we can grow and where we can grow it. We must maintain the natural resources - soils, water, and biodiversity - on which food production depends. And we need to tackle diet-related ill health that already costs the NHS and the wider economy billions of pounds each year."

Moments like this make you proud to be a Canadian, a free people where we don't have to think about the perils to come, comfortable in the knowledge that what passes for political leadership in our country isn't thinking about them either.