Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Saudi plans to import wheat to save water
Nadim Kawach, Business 24/7 (United Arab Emirates)
Saudi Arabia’s plan to start importing wheat and end a massive grain self-sufficiency programme it launched more than two decades ago will weaken the Kingdom’s food security and aggravate a painful Arab farm gap.
The Gulf Kingdom, the world’s richest in oil resources and one of the poorest in terms of water, said this week it would begin importing wheat at the start of 2009 and gradually eliminate a 25-year grain programme that has allowed it to be self sufficient but drained its scarce desert water wealth.
“We have decided that the first imported shipment of wheat will enter the country at the beginning of 2009,” said Saleh bin Mohammed Al Suleiman, director-general of Saudi’s Grain Silos and Flour Mills Organization.
“We are working out arrangements for these imports and will select the best… the size of imports will initially depend on the domestic need and size of production… this year, there has been a decline in cultivated areas while wheat consumption is growing by around eight per cent annually.”
(3 April 2008)
Jeffrey J. Brown writes,
In my opinion, the primary reason for this move by Saudi Arabia to save water is their continuing shortfall in natural gas production, which is causing their petroleum liquids consumption to skyrocket-which is why the Saudis have been discussing importing coal.
On one level of course, this is just an example of comparative advantage, but it does illustrate what I expect to be a quickly developing trend of bilateral trade between food and energy exporters. I expect energy BTU’s and food calories to become the new “coin of the realm” in world trade.
Of course, this would also be true within countries, like the US. It is not a good time to be both a net food and a net energy consumer.
In Poland, ‘green’ fields besieged
Elisabeth Rosenthal, International Herald Tribune
STRYSZOW, Poland: Depending on your point of view, Szczepan Master is either an incorrigible Luddite or a visionary. A small farmer, proud of his pure, high-quality products, he works his land the way Polish farmers have for centuries.
He keeps his livestock in a straw-floored “barn” that is part of his house, entered through a kitchen door. He slaughters his own pigs. His wife milks cows by hand. He rejects genetically modified seeds. Instead of spraying his crops, he turns his fields in winter, preferring a workhorse to a tractor, to let the frost kill off pests residing there.
While traditional farms like his could be dismissed as a nostalgic throwback, they are also increasingly seen as the future – if only they can survive.
Master’s way of farming – his way of life – has been badly threatened in the two years since Poland joined the European Union, a victim of sanitary laws and mandates to encourage efficiency and competition that favor mechanized commercial farms, farmers here say.
That conflict obviously matters to Master. But it is also of broader importance, environmental groups and agriculture experts say, as worries over climate change grow and more consumers in both Europe and the United States line up for locally grown, organic produce.
(3 April 2008)
Cuba’s organic revolution – will it survive?
Ed Ewing, Guardian
The collapse of the Soviet Union forced Cuba to become self-reliant in its agricultural production. The country’s innovative solution was urban organic farming, the creation of ‘organonponicos’. But will it survive a change of government?
—
… Organiponicos are the most visible part of Cuba’s unique answer to a very serious problem – how to feed its people. But with Fidel Castro’s resignation last month, could this unique system of organic urban agriculture – the world’s largest example – be under threat?
Before the revolution nearly half the agricultural land in Cuba was owned by 1% of the people. After it, agriculture was nationalised and mechanised along Soviet lines. Trade with the once great superpower meant swapping sugarcane, which Cuba produced in industrial abundance, for cheap food and materials like machinery and petrochemical fertilisers.
But when the USSR collapsed in 1990/91, Cuba’s ability to feed itself collapsed with it.
… A success then? “In terms of improving the diet of the population it has had a beneficial effect,” says Wilkinson.
“And it has been a success in terms of meeting some of the food security needs,” he says, “but it has not resolved the problem since the island still imports a great deal of food.”
And change is on the horizon, which might be good for living standards, but not so good for Cuba’s commitment to pesticide-free food.
… General farming will “most likely” move away from organic methods says Wilkinson. Farming on a large scale after all, he says, has seen a reduction in pesticide and fertiliser use mainly due to “financial constraints, not choice”.
But, he notes: “Organoponicos fulfil a local and specific need and are unlikely to disappear.”
(4 April 2008)
