Earth Day, 2008 and We see global food shortage

Ironic isn't it. On Earth Day, the day we have celebrated for years, suggesting that if we don't protect our environment, our environment would die, we see a special summit in London trying to deal with emergency food shortages around the world. If we can see the trees for the forest, we might see that these shortages are largely caused by environmental issues, not the least being global warming, climate change, and massive droughts in food production areas.

London experts called this a disaster, "unexpected". How could anyone not expect this. Those of us interested in the environment have been predicting this for over 30 years. Now over 28 nations around the world are experiencing huge food price increases, as food shortages surface, and in some nations violence and demonstrations in the streets occur.

Prime Minister, of England, Gordon Brown called the global food crisis a "Silent Tsunami" and said that rising food prices pose "as great a risk to world prosperity as the global credit crunch".

In London, at the World Food Program, it was said that 100,000,000 people are facing hunger and starvation.

The last time the world faced food shortages combined with uncertain economic factors, there was a trend toward localization of food production. Every farmer set aside a portion of his land for "food production". Many economists are looking at the logic and sanity of flying a tomatoe from Columbia, to Dubai so that a wealthy person can have it in a salad. Or flying fruits from California to Amsterdam, so that someone can eat an apple. Or flying shrimp from Ecuador, to the USA. So many are predicting that we will see more food production localized, more green houses, more "food farms", more advanced forms of irrigation and farming to make even dry or cold, or unhospitable areas able to produce food.

We recently visited Dubai, of the UAE. This area is located in a massive sandy desert. 95% of the food for this huge city must be imported. In the future, we will see cities encircled by food production plots, many of them in artificial green house, high tech and high production facillities. The global economy and global demands for food are pressing this trend forward. And it is possible that the "Jet set tomatoes" that have more frequent flyer miles than you or I will gradually become domesticated.

Note these statistics:

• More than 840 million people in the world are malnourished — 799 million of them live in the developing world.
• More than 153 million of the world's malnourished people are children under the age of 5.
• Six million children under the age of 5 die every year as a result of hunger.
• Malnutrition can severely affect a child's intellectual development. Malnourished children often have stunted growth and score significantly lower on math and language achievement tests than do well-nourished children.
• Lack of dietary diversity and essential minerals and vitamins also contributes to increased child and adult mortality. Vitamin A deficiency impairs the immune system, increasing the annual death toll from measles and other diseases by an estimated 1.3 million-2.5 million children.
• While every country in the world has the potential of growing enough food to feed itself, 54 nations currently do not produce enough food to feed their populations, nor can they afford to import the necessary commodities to make up the gap. Most of these countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.
• Most of the widespread hunger in a world of plenty results from grinding, deeply rooted poverty. In any given year, however, between 5 and 10 percent of the total can be traced to specific events: droughts or floods, armed conflict, political, social and economic disruptions.

Now these statistics don't even reflect the most recent surge in food prices and food shortages that are hitting radar screens throughout the world. There is a basic logic that all sociologists will admit. A man who is short on money, will work harder. A man who cannot feed his children, will resort to anything, theft, even violence to feed a starving family. The world is in danger of great instability, if we do not find solutions to deal with the food problem.

Traditional excuses such as those coming from the IMF or World Bank that "There is plenty of food, the problem is just in distribution" simply won't work this time. Of course in, say, for example, California, there is going to be a huge crop of melons, or strawberries. In Old Mexico, tomatoes are growing by the tons. But, that is the point. We have relied on long distance distribution to take food long distances, and with the current higher cost of energy, it makes less sense than ever. In truth, what logic tells us that it makes sense to take an apple grown in Washington state, put it on an airplane and fly it to Ethiopia. That .15 cent apple, suddenly has value added packaging, transportation, distribution costs of an additonal .50 cents! Then add on profits for the growers and distributors, and it becomes a 90 cent apple. When a nation is filled with people making $1 per day, is it logical to "fly" him a .90 cent apple?

Of greater importance to us all, is not the dramatic quotes of politicians, but the implications of climate change and global food shortages. Australia suffered drought, and hundreds of tons of grain never made production. Nations in Asia, Africa, and even Europe are impacted. In the USA food prices are rising dramatically.

Today, I met a Texas cattle rancher who told me: "It was so dry last month that I sold off my entire herd. There was no grass. I've seen this happen before, and it was when we had food lines and shortages."

All one has to do is walk through a food market. Beef in Texas food stores is selling for $12 per pound. Chicken has more than doubled in price. Other food products are rising steadily.Now if we see a global environment where rain is declining in agricultural areas, and floods are increasing in areas of urban development, ocean levels are rising, and in general, the agricultural markets are facing huge changes. The people of the earth are paying the price for our pollution, for our abuse of the environmental system, and it will get worse, much worse before it gets better.

Politicians, have been slow to react. Some such as the Bush Administration have simply denied that there is a problem. Others have spoken out, like Gordon Brown, but little action has resulted. Now, they wag their heads and say we have an immediate risk of 100,000 people dying of starvation.

It would seem that global leaders of the world, such as the USA, instead of paying 800 billion dollars on wars in Iraq and Afganistan, would instead focus on spending an equal investment to help eliminate the causes of global warming and find ways to increase world food production, at a local level,throughout the world.