By John Vidal
A drying corn field in southern Minnesota. Bad weather has resulted in a poor harvest this year. Photograph: David I. Gross/ Corbis
Brandon Hunnicutt has had a year to remember. The young Nebraskan from Hamilton County farms 2,600 acres of the High Plains with his father and brother. What looked certain in an almost perfect May to be a "phenomenal" harvest of maize and soy beans has turned into a near disaster.
A three-month heatwave and drought with temperatures often well over 38C burned up his crops. He lost a third and was saved only by pumping irrigation water from the aquifer below his farm.
"From 1 July to 1 October we had 4ins of rain and long stretches when we didn't have any. Folk in the east had nothing at all. They've been significantly hurt. We are left wondering whether the same will happen again," he says.
On the other side of the world, Mary Banda, who lives in Mphaka village near Nambuma in Malawi, has had a year during which she has barely been able to feed her children, one of whom has just gone to hospital with malnutrition.
Government health worker Patrick Kamzitu says: "We are seeing more hunger among children. The price of maize has doubled in the last year. Families used to have one or two meals a day; now they are finding it hard to have one."
Hunnicutt and Banda are linked by food. What she must pay for her maize is determined largely by how much farmers such as Brandon grow and export. This year the US maize harvest is down 15% and nearly 40% of what is left has gone to make vehicle fuel. The result is less food than usual on to the international market, high prices and people around the world suffering.
"This situation is not going to go away," says Lester Brown, an environmental analyst and president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington. In a new book, Full Planet, Empty Plates, he predicts ever increasing food prices, leading to political instability, spreading hunger and, unless governments act, a catastrophic breakdown in food. "Food is the new oil and land is the new gold," he says. "We saw early signs of the food system unravelling in 2008 following an abrupt doubling of world grain prices. As they climbed, exporting countries [such as Russia] began restricting exports to keep their domestic prices down. In response, importing countries panicked and turned to buying or leasing land in other countries to produce food for themselves."
"The result is that a new geopolitics of food has emerged, where the competition for land and water is intensifying and each country is fending for itself."
Brown has been backed by an Oxfam report released last week. It calculated that the land sold or leased to richer countries and speculators in the last decade could have grown enough food to feed a billion people – almost exactly the number of malnourished people in the world today. Nearly 60% of global land deals in the last decade have been to grow crops that can be used for biofuels, says Oxfam.
The next danger signal, says Brown, is in rising food prices. In the last 10 years prices have doubled as demand for food has increased with a rapidly growing world population and millions have switched to animal-based diets, which require more grain and land.
Most grain prices have risen between 10% and 25% this year after droughts and heatwaves in Ukraine and Australia as well as the US and other food growing centres. The UN says prices are now close to the crisis levels of 2008. Meat and dairy prices are likely to surge in the new year as farmers find it expensive to feed cattle and poultry. Brown says: "Those who live in the United States, where 9% of income goes for food, are insulated from these price shifts.
"But how do those who live on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder cope? They were already spending 50% to 70% of their income on food. Many were down to one meal a day already before the recent price rises. What happens with the next price surge?"
Oxfam said last week it expected the price of key food staples, including wheat and rice, to double again in the next 20 years, threatening disastrous consequences for the poor.
But the surest sign, says Brown, that food supplies are precarious is seen in the amount of surplus food that countries hold in reserve, or "carry over" from one year to the next.
"Ever since agriculture began, carry-over stocks of grain have been the most basic indicator of food security. From 1986 to 2001 the annual world carry-over stocks of grain averaged 107 days of consumption. After that, world consumption exceeded production and from 2002 to 2011 they averaged just 74 days of consumption," says Brown. Last week the UN estimated US maize reserves to be at a historic low, only 6.3% below estimated consumption and the equivalent of a three-week supply. Global carry-over reserves last week stood at 20%, compared to long term averages of well above 30%.
Although there is still – theoretically – enough food for everyone to eat, global supplies have fallen this year by 2.6% with grains such as wheat declining 5.2% and only rice holding level, says the UN.
Read more at - http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/oct/14/food-climate-change-population-water
A three-month heatwave and drought with temperatures often well over 38C burned up his crops. He lost a third and was saved only by pumping irrigation water from the aquifer below his farm.
"From 1 July to 1 October we had 4ins of rain and long stretches when we didn't have any. Folk in the east had nothing at all. They've been significantly hurt. We are left wondering whether the same will happen again," he says.
On the other side of the world, Mary Banda, who lives in Mphaka village near Nambuma in Malawi, has had a year during which she has barely been able to feed her children, one of whom has just gone to hospital with malnutrition.
Government health worker Patrick Kamzitu says: "We are seeing more hunger among children. The price of maize has doubled in the last year. Families used to have one or two meals a day; now they are finding it hard to have one."
Hunnicutt and Banda are linked by food. What she must pay for her maize is determined largely by how much farmers such as Brandon grow and export. This year the US maize harvest is down 15% and nearly 40% of what is left has gone to make vehicle fuel. The result is less food than usual on to the international market, high prices and people around the world suffering.
"This situation is not going to go away," says Lester Brown, an environmental analyst and president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington. In a new book, Full Planet, Empty Plates, he predicts ever increasing food prices, leading to political instability, spreading hunger and, unless governments act, a catastrophic breakdown in food. "Food is the new oil and land is the new gold," he says. "We saw early signs of the food system unravelling in 2008 following an abrupt doubling of world grain prices. As they climbed, exporting countries [such as Russia] began restricting exports to keep their domestic prices down. In response, importing countries panicked and turned to buying or leasing land in other countries to produce food for themselves."
"The result is that a new geopolitics of food has emerged, where the competition for land and water is intensifying and each country is fending for itself."
Brown has been backed by an Oxfam report released last week. It calculated that the land sold or leased to richer countries and speculators in the last decade could have grown enough food to feed a billion people – almost exactly the number of malnourished people in the world today. Nearly 60% of global land deals in the last decade have been to grow crops that can be used for biofuels, says Oxfam.
The next danger signal, says Brown, is in rising food prices. In the last 10 years prices have doubled as demand for food has increased with a rapidly growing world population and millions have switched to animal-based diets, which require more grain and land.
Most grain prices have risen between 10% and 25% this year after droughts and heatwaves in Ukraine and Australia as well as the US and other food growing centres. The UN says prices are now close to the crisis levels of 2008. Meat and dairy prices are likely to surge in the new year as farmers find it expensive to feed cattle and poultry. Brown says: "Those who live in the United States, where 9% of income goes for food, are insulated from these price shifts.
"But how do those who live on the lower rungs of the global economic ladder cope? They were already spending 50% to 70% of their income on food. Many were down to one meal a day already before the recent price rises. What happens with the next price surge?"
Oxfam said last week it expected the price of key food staples, including wheat and rice, to double again in the next 20 years, threatening disastrous consequences for the poor.
But the surest sign, says Brown, that food supplies are precarious is seen in the amount of surplus food that countries hold in reserve, or "carry over" from one year to the next.
"Ever since agriculture began, carry-over stocks of grain have been the most basic indicator of food security. From 1986 to 2001 the annual world carry-over stocks of grain averaged 107 days of consumption. After that, world consumption exceeded production and from 2002 to 2011 they averaged just 74 days of consumption," says Brown. Last week the UN estimated US maize reserves to be at a historic low, only 6.3% below estimated consumption and the equivalent of a three-week supply. Global carry-over reserves last week stood at 20%, compared to long term averages of well above 30%.
Although there is still – theoretically – enough food for everyone to eat, global supplies have fallen this year by 2.6% with grains such as wheat declining 5.2% and only rice holding level, says the UN.
Read more at - http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/oct/14/food-climate-change-population-water
