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How Long Can the World Feed Itself?
Gwynne Dyer, GwynneDyer.net
We are still living off the proceeds of the Green Revolution, but that hit diminishing returns twenty years ago. Now we live in a finely balanced situation where world food supply just about meets demand, with no reserve to cover further population growth. But the population will grow anyway, and the world’s existing grain supply for human consumption is being eroded by three different factors: meat, heat and biofuels.
For the sixth time in the past seven years, the human race will grow less food than it eats this year. We closed the gap by eating into food stocks accumulated in better times, but there is no doubt that the situation is getting serious. The world’s food stocks have shrunk by half since 1999, from a reserve big enough to feed the entire world for 116 days then to a predicted low of only 57 days by the end of this year.
That is well below the official safety level, and there is no sign that the downward trend is going to reverse. If it doesn’t, then at some point not too far down the road we reach the point of absolute food shortages, and rationing by price kicks in. In other words, grain prices soar, and the poorest start to starve.
(10 Oct 2006)
Contributor Rick Dworsky writes:
Succinct overview of our food situation. While the question of bio-fuels vs. food is well debated, little attention is paid to how our dietary choices massively affect energy and ecology. Clearly the ecological law of trophic levels which indicates that as (solar) energy passes from plant to herbivore to carnivore only about 10% is passed on while 90% is lost as heat — also applies to our consumption of grain fed animals. And make no mistake, the vast majority of the flesh being consumed by human beings is not raised in some idyllic Norman Rockwell farm scene, with cows placidly grazing otherwise useless land. They exist on factory farm raised grain. By passing that grain through animals, we waste 90% of it’s original energy. Other factors, like vastly increased water consumption to provide meat, should make all of us take a second look at our dietary choices, paying special attention to energy and environmental considerations, as well as health and psycho-social aspects.
Time to become a “locavore”
Neal Peirce, Seattle Times
The first OK to buy spinach after the big E. coli scare was for crops shipped out of Colorado or Canada. Then the Food and Drug Administration cleared California spinach – except the suspect packages sent out by Natural Selection Foods.
Great. But why is three-quarters of all U.S. spinach grown in California, then shipped to markets as far distant as 3,500 highway miles? And especially at this time of year, when spinach can be grown successfully almost anywhere?
Agribusiness – that’s why. Supermarket chains, grocery wholesalers and fast-food producers all calculate that it is easier to maximize sales and profits by buying from big factory farms with reliable yields. Why fool with thousands of small farms or co-ops when you can get a standardized crop, packaged to precise specifications, priced at negotiated levels, trucked and delivered by known shippers? And when planes, ships and instant communications make it easy to import seasonal products from virtually anywhere on the globe?
…Food policy can be a powerful connective issue, too. Many of us are already trying to burn less fossil fuel, to conserve energy to help avert global warming and its potentially calamitous consequences. Becoming “locavores” (people whose instinctive first choice is local foods) is a logical complement.
(9 Oct 2006)
Locavores in Willits?
Jason Bradford, Relocalizaton Network
Have you seen what Jason Bradford of Willits Economic LocaLization is doing??
www.relocalize.net/blog/42
Here’s his initial post about it:
www.relocalize.net/node/4441
And here’s an interview he did with the cofounder of the Locavore movement:
www.globalpublicmedia.com/interviews/745
I’m finding his daily update fascinating, Talk about a reality show!
– submitted by Andi Hazelwood
(Oct 2006)
Breakfast of Chumps
Steven Lagavulin, Deconsumption
I think I’ve mentioned before how it appears to me that all our problems and crises can in some way be traced back to our dysfunctional relationship with food. Food (and drink, of course) has always been the axis around which human societies and cultures have been constructed, and it’s no different for us today. If we take a clear, unflinching look at our exceedingly bizarre contemporary connections to food, we’ll see in microcosm how very far we have fallen as a species–and how very unsustainable and unstable modern “civilization” truly is.
Indeed, if you ever find yourself questioning how American society can be so very blessed and yet so very messed-up, you probably need gaze no further than into your bowl of Wheaties…
(30 Sept 2006)
Green is the New Black in Ethical Britain
Rachel Sanderson, Planet Ark
Britain’s ethical food market will hit 2 billion pounds (US$3.7 billion) this year as the conscientious consumer moves into the mainstream.
(13 Oct 2006)
