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http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint/Global_food_supply_crisis_emerging.html
Global food
supply crisis emerging
(The
following article is from
the July 1-31,
2007
issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles
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Projections
of world grain supply
and demand for the coming crop year 2007/07, released in May by the
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), predict supplies will
plunge to a 53-day equivalent, their lowest level in the 47-year period
for which data exists.
"The
USDA projects global
grain supplies will drop to their lowest levels on record. Further, it
is likely that, outside of wartime, global grain supplies have not been
this low in a century, perhaps longer," said National Farmers' Union
research director Darrin Qualman. Most
important, 2007/08 will
mark the seventh year out of the past eight in which global grain
production has fallen short of demand. This consistent shortfall has
cut supplies in half - down from a 115-day supply in 1999/00 to the
current level of 53 days.
"The world is
consistently
failing to produce as much grain as it uses," said Qualman. "The
current low supply levels are not the result of a transient weather
event or an isolated production problem: low supplies are the result of
a persistent drawdown trend."
Global fisheries are also faltering. Reports in the respected journals
Science and Nature state that one-third of ocean fisheries are in
collapse, two-thirds will be in collapse by 2025, and ocean fisheries
may be virtually gone by 2048. "Aquatic food systems are collapsing,
and terrestrial food systems are under tremendous stress," said Qualman.
Demand for
food is rising
rapidly. There is a worldwide push to proliferate a North American
style meat-based diet based on intensive livestock production; turning
feedgrains into meat in this way means exchanging 3 to 7 kilos of grain
protein for one kilo of meat protein.
Meanwhile,
2.5 billion people
will join the global population in the coming decades. "Every six
years, we're adding to the world the equivalent of a North American
population," said Qualman. "We're trying to feed those extra people,
feed a growing livestock herd, and now, feed our cars, all from a
static farmland base. No one should be surprised that food production
can't keep up."
Qualman said
that the converging
problems of natural gas and fertilizer constraints, intensifying water
shortages, climate change, farmland loss and degradation, population
increases, the proliferation of livestock feeding, and an increasing
push to divert food supplies into biofuels signal the opening phase of
an intensifying food shortage.
He cautioned
that there are no
easy fixes. "If we try to do more of the same, if we try to produce,
consume, and export more food while using more fertilizer, water, and
chemicals, we will only intensify our problems. Instead, we need to
rethink our relation to food, farmers, production, processing, and
distribution. We need to create a system focused on feeding people and
creating health. We need to strengthen the food production systems
around the world. Diversity, resilience, and sustainability are key."