AlterNet: Is Famine Inevitable?

[marmar]

Is Famine Inevitable?

By Scott Thill, AlterNet. Posted June 6, 2008.

The fate of global food production has now become the chief terror of the future.



Paul Krugman's "Grains Gone Wild" column may have boasted one of the most hilarious titles ever in the annals of agrichemical economic analysis, but the situation is far from funny: Our food situation is on the precipice of failure. And all it's going to take to get past the tipping point is the slightest of mistakes -- or manipulations.

Much of our current recessionary intrigue has been aided and abetted by market speculation, from the oil and food sector all the way to the White House itself. For the last seven years, the Bush administration has placed climate crisis on the back burner in existential pursuit of resource wars and an "American way of life" that has turned from a dream of Hummers, housing and bling into a nightmare of price hikes, foreclosures and layoffs. Mission accomplished.

But someone will have to pick up the pieces, which are going viral fast. In that chaos, food has stopped being our other energy problem and become a chief terror of the future. And considering increasing prices, decreasing dollars and a world that will soon house many more people but feed even less of them, we're probably in for a famine or two before all is said and done.

Price Hikes

"Rising food prices do not have one simple cause," explains Bettina Luescher, chief spokesperson for North America's chapter of the United Nations World Food Programme. "They are caused by several factors, all combining to a perfect storm. But they are rooted in increased energy prices, competition between biofuels and food, rising demand from economic growth in emerging economies, and increasing climatic shocks such as droughts and floods."

"The majority of the increase in the cost of food is tied to the rising cost of petroleum used to produce agrochemicals and fuel to produce food staples," adds Patrick Woodall, senior food policy analyst at Food and Water Watch. "Additionally, the rising demand for ethanol energy crops, primarily corn in the United States, has tightened up the supply of arable land, which has contributed to the increasing price of all food commodities. The increased commodity prices mean that each food aid dollar buys less food than in previous years, not including the cost of transporting the food from the American heartland to international hot spots like Darfur, Afghanistan and The Congo." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/87071/

[mainegreen]

1. No, it's not.

HOWEVER, more people will have to farm, even if it means coming home from work to farm the personal veggie garden.
It means that proper farming techniques must be implemented: sorry folks, but that means farms MUST bring back the cows, pigs and chickens. Families not in farming full time may still need to raise a small number of animals personally, like rabbit or chicken. Land must be properly managed. Each plot of land much have a unique management plan: no two plots are the same.
People, including many farmers today, will need to be re-educated on how to actually farm for the long term.