This has been a bad year for grain production and reserve stocks are low. Prices have increased about 35% (so far). How short the shortage will be depends entirely on weather patterns in the grain producing countries. China is already reporting problems. msnbc.msn.com/id/41471032/ns … nvironment It would appear that this year could offer a preview of food shortage problems in the future as world population continues to increase. The added burden of the high cost of transporting grains has wrecked the budgets of most of the world food relief organizations. While not quite a “perfect storm” (yet), the pattern of high food costs looks to get worse, not better. Even if grain stocks rebound, transportation costs will continue to put pressure on rising food prices.
Without some doom and gloom prediction of not enough food to fill all the empty bellies of the world, scarcity still seems assured. Scarcity isn’t necessarily the lack of food production, but the economic inability of much of the world population to pay the high prices that are here and will continue.
So the questions are, who get’s to starve? Which governments will be destabilized by the inability to buy food for their people? How does the world plan for what appears to be an inevitable crisis situation?
The population of the planet has been increasing pretty steadily. A decrease seems unlikely, but that happens with every other species.
The poor, or the politically disadvantaged, get screwed, of course. Best it should happen now - the more often it happens, the less trouble when it does.
I’m not sure you plan - as you intimated, tent, production isn’t usually the issue - distribution is. In the US, we just need to make sure that the hungriest have the least ability to take anything away from us. Should be easy. Canada has enough food - surely enough grain. Mexico will be okay.
I’m not too worried, but then again, I’m a soulless bastard.
The disturbing thing in all of this is the die-back you and I have discussed a few times. I was convinced that it was 50-100 years out, but what I’m seeing is that we are way more vulnerable than I thought we were. Here is what I’m seeing:
Food shortages = malnutrition = a good chance of some fom of pandemic. The pandemic can be short-lived and not kill a large population by itself. If it takes more than two months to come up with a cure (like swine flu) then quarantines begin to appear. This just makes the starvation pictue worse plus it starts world-wide economic collapse and the whole mess spirals in on itself. This could all happen within a six month period. Given the glacial reaction time of world governments, the damage could be done and all you would see is too late reaction. The die-back won’t come from some exotic super killer bug. It will be starvation - even if there is enough food because we won’t have the ability to distribute food to those in need.
I used to think that it would take a lot of dominoes falling to create the doomsday scenario, but it is now fairly obvious that the right combination of crop failures and high energy costs could trigger a major die back within a few months. We are so un-prepared for such a scenario that it could be over almost as fast as it started.
Trouble is I suppose the world pop has doubled so quickly, and in that same time, technologically - food-production/energy-wise - all we’ve really done is scale up existant methods to the nth degree. Perhaps we are beginning to hit the limits of them or perhaps we already hit them a while ago and have been living on borrowed time.
Dominoes in networks aren’t linear, they are like the web - most of the nodes can be knocked over and not effect overall performance that much - but if a ‘central’ heavily connected node gets taken out, or a critical threshold is passed, you get a sudden and catastrophic collapse.
To be sure, the temperate zone countries will have less problems. It is the net food importers that will suffer the most. But even here in the states we will be vulnerable. Even if we remove a pandemic catalyst starting the ball rolling, the economic crash is almost a sure thing as governments default and are destabilized by the demand for food that can’t be supplied. If the world economy starts getting jittery, then we begin to see massive unemployment - even here. So there may be food, but if you aren’t capable of paying for it, what then? You want to wait for the government to bail you out? There isn’t any large urban area in this country that could survive a week without the steady supply of transported food. If the urban folks suddenly haven’t the ability to buy food, then distribution slows and the results become predictable. You’ve been in the food business. What would happen if the trucks stop pulling up to the back door? So there could be all kinds of food available, but people either starving or malnourished or a breakdown in civil order - all in the space of a month or two. I’m not doing the chicken little routine, but I’m seeing things one hell of a lot more delicate than I believed not too long ago.
Well, tent - if importing countries can’t buy our food, then that means that the demand for it drops. So would the price. Food is relatively cheap here. So the price goes up, foreign demand falls and the price follows. Too late for many overseas, but why is that a catastrophe here?
I mean, do we really care if subsaharan africa teeters? We haven’t been, so far. Most of the food they eat that we make is given to them. Why can’t we just keep giving it to them? And if we can’t, it shouldn’t be the first time the US government has either destroyed produce or paid farmers not to grow it.
That said, my bugout bag is fully stocked, and I may just jump through the hoops I need to to get my firearms out of Maine.
I hope this doesn’t seem too trivial, relative to the scope of the problems at hand, but I’m a big fan of Ecology Action. You know, the whole “teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” thing…
I see nothing to suggest that the demand or the prices would drop. Sure, if it’s a few small countries with no purchase power or military muscle to force a solution, but what about a large country? Say… China. Back in the early 70’s, Russia bought the whole grain production of one year because of weather-related crop failures. A lack of money can always be supplemented with war given military strength. Either way, people are going to eat or die trying.
You’re right. Africa has neither the money or the military might to force issues. Let 'em starve. But what about a country like Pakistan sitting there with nukes? Is North Korea going to starve while Japan is busy feeding it’s people?
As Tab pointed out, our solutions have simply been to ratchet up existing technologies instead of reining in unsupportable populations.We’ve increased food yields with heavy doses of fertilizers and guess where those fertilizers come from - natural gas conversions.
I’m not trying to preach some apocalyptic scenario. I think there are answers out there, I just don’t see world governments addressing the issues and planning ahead. What is startling to me is the rapidity of events that could force us into a catastrophic scenario. The right combination of severe weather conditions (like this year) plus the steady rise in energy costs could tip us into a mess any time - not just the slow degradation that seems inevitable over the next 50 years.
I see movements as in the link you provided as being a big part of the solution, but unfortunately, only after the fact. Consider: How much of the world’s population is actually involved in food production? The answer varies depending on geographical location, but urbanization has created a large group ( millions) depending on relatively few food producers. Unless governments begin taking pro-active steps to control population growth and insuring local food production, what you are suggesting will only happen after a population crash.