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Global Food Crisis Looms as Climate Change and Fuel Shortages Bite
Soaring crop prices and demand for biofuels raise fears of political
instability
John Vidal, environment editor
The Guardian
November 3, 2007
Empty shelves in Caracas. Food riots in West Bengal and Mexico. Warnings
of hunger in Jamaica, Nepal, the Philippines and sub-Saharan Africa.
Soaring prices for basic foods are beginning to lead to political
instability, with governments being forced to step in to artificially
control the cost of bread, maize, rice and dairy products.
Record world prices for most staple foods have led to 18% food price
inflation in China, 13% in Indonesia and Pakistan, and 10% or more
in Latin America, Russia and India, according to the UN Food and Agricultural
Organisation (FAO). Wheat has doubled in price, maize is nearly 50%
higher than a year ago and rice is 20% more expensive, says the UN.
Next week the FAO is expected to say that global food reserves are
at their lowest in 25 years and that prices will remain high for years.
Last week the Kremlin forced Russian companies to freeze the price
of milk, bread and other foods until January 31, for fear of a public
backlash with a parliamentary election looming. "The price of goods
has risen sharply and that has hit the poor particularly hard," said
Oleg Savelyev, of the Levada Centre polling institute.
India, Yemen, Mexico, Burkina Faso and several other countries have
had, or been close to, food riots in the last year, something not
seen in decades of low global food commodity prices. Meanwhile, there
are shortages of beef, chicken and milk in Venezuela and other countries
as governments try to keep a lid on food price inflation.
Boycotts have become commonplace. Argentinians shunned tomatoes during
the recent presidential election campaign when they became more expensive
than meat. Italians organised a one-day boycott of pasta in protest
at rising prices. German leftwing politicians have called for an increase
in welfare benefits so that people can cope with price rises.
"If you combine the increase of the oil prices and the increase of
food prices then you have the elements of a very serious [social]
crisis in the future," said Jacques Diouf, head of the FAO, in London
last week.
The price rises are a result of record oil prices, US farmers switching
out of cereals to grow biofuel crops, extreme weather and growing
demand from countries India and China, the UN said yesterday.
"There is no one cause but a lot of things are coming together to
lead to this. It's hard to separate out the factors," said Ali Gurkan,
head of the FAO's Food Outlook programme, yesterday.
He said cereal stocks had been declining for more than a decade but
now stood at around 57 days, which made global food supplies vulnerable
to an international crisis or big natural disaster such as a drought
or flood.
"Any unforeseen flood or crisis can make prices rise very quickly.
I do not think we should panic but we should be very careful about
what may happen," he warned.
Lester Brown, president of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute
thinktank, said: "The competition for grain between the world's 800
million motorists, who want to maintain their mobility, and its 2
billion poorest people, who are simply trying to survive, is emerging
as an epic issue."
Last year, he said, US farmers distorted the world market for cereals
by growing 14m tonnes, or 20% of the whole maize crop, for ethanol
for vehicles. This took millions of hectares of land out of food production
and nearly doubled the price of maize. Mr Bush this year called for
steep rises in ethanol production as part of plans to reduce petrol
demand by 20% by 2017.
Maize is a staple food in many countries which import from the US,
including Japan, Egypt, and Mexico. US exports are 70% of the world
total, and are used widely for animal feed. The shortages have disrupted
livestock and poultry industries worldwide.
"The use of food as a source of fuel may have serious implications
for the demand for food if the expansion of biofuels continues," said
a spokesman for the International Monetary Fund last week.
The outlook is widely expected to worsen as agro-industries prepare
to switch to highly profitable biofuels. according to Grain, a Barcelona-based
food resources group. Its research suggests that the Indian government
is committed to planting 14m hectares (35m acres) of land with jatropha,
an exotic bush from which biodiesel can be manufactured. Brazil intends
to grow 120m hectares for biofuels, and Africa as much as 400m hectares
in the next few years. Much of the growth, the countries say, would
be on unproductive land, but many millions of people are expected
to be forced off the land.
This week Oxfam warned the EU that its policy of substituting 10%
of all car fuel with biofuels threatened to displace poor farmers.
The food crisis is being compounded by growing populations, extreme
weather and ecological stress, according to a number of recent reports.
This week the UN Environment Programme said the planet's water, land,
air, plants, animals and fish stocks were all in "inexorable decline".
According to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) 57 countries, including
29 in Africa, 19 in Asia and nine in Latin America, have been hit
by catastrophic floods. Harvests have been affected by drought and
heatwaves in south Asia, Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay.
This week the Australian government said drought had slashed predictions
of winter harvests by nearly 40%, or 4m tonnes. "It is likely to be
even smaller than the disastrous drought-ravaged 2006-07 harvest and
the worst in more than a decade," said the Bureau of Agricultural
and Resource Economics.
According to Josette Sheeran, director of the WFP, "There are 854
million hungry people in the world and 4 million more join their ranks
every year. We are facing the tightest food supplies in recent history.
For the world's most vulnerable, food is simply being priced out of
their reach."
Food for thought Possible scenarios
Experts describe various scenarios for the precarious food supply
balance in coming years. An optimistic version would see markets automatically
readjust to shortages, as higher prices make it more profitable once
again to grow crops for people rather than cars.
There are hopes that new crop varieties and technologies will help
crops adapt to capricious climactic conditions. And if people move
on to a path of eating less meat, more land can be freed up for human
food rather than animal feed.
A slowdown in population growth would naturally ease pressures on
the food market, while the cultivation of hitherto unproductive land
could also help supply.
But fears for even tighter conditions revolve around deepening climate
change, which generates worsening floods and droughts, diminishing
food supplies. If the price of oil rises further it will make fertilisers
and transport more expensive, and at the same time make it more profitable
to grow biofuel crops.
Supply will be further restricted if fish stocks continue to decline
due to overfishing, and if soils become exhausted and erosion decreases
the arable area.
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