Mr Posting Robot
3/7/2011 12:00:00 PM
Climate Change and the Growing Food Crisis
Richard Titelius
Source: The Guardian (Australia)
March 4 2011
Australia in recent y has witnessed several extreme weather events from the
droughts and floods in Queensland, Victoria, New S Wales, S Australia and
in the Gascoyne and Murchison regions of Western Australia and the unrelenting
drought in south-western Australia. While the extreme weather events have
disrupted the lives of individuals and their communities, the effects on the
agricultural sector which is responsible for the production of food for
domestic and international markets has been devastating.
One crop after another has had to downgrade its yield as droughts and flooding
rains take their toll. Wheat crops on the E coast which were almost ready to
harvest in Queensland and New S Wales fell victim to unseasonable rains which
caused them to become moist and rot. Other fresh produce farmers in southern
Queensland and northern News S Wales that until recently were driven
almost to the brink of bankruptcy by drought were pushed over the edge by
flooding rains which saturated their land and caused their crops to fail.
In Western Australia the food bowls in the S W have taken a hammering from
drought as cereal harvests are their lowest in years. Another silent killer
also stalks the land and reduces yields in the form rising water tables
increasing the salinity of the soil as a consequence of poor vegetation
clearing practices.
However, these incidences of weather extremes and changing climates are
happening not just in Australia, but the world over - on every continent.
Climate change is a global phenomenon
If one were to Google the daily newspaper of any country in the world one
would find a report of extreme weather happening somewhere in that country.
The US has recently had snow storms across its Midwest and northeast but in
the southern state of Florida has experienced a sustained period of
drought. It then had to contend with record winter rainfalls when usually it
is cool and dry and instead it became cool and wet. It is cooler in Florida
say some scientists because it is warmer in the Arctic - helped along by less
ice and snow cover in the Arctic region which includes Russian Siberia. This
has also lead to forest fires in Russia, loss of harvests, and an increase in
the sea ice melt. Fidel Castro in a recent Reflection titled, "The serious
food crisis" hinted strongly at the economic and political consequences of
climate change.
Two growing dustbowls are forming - one in N western China and Mongolia and
another in Central Africa. There have been unprecedented rains in Colombia,
Venezuela and Brazil. Irrigated land area is shrinking across the Middle East,
particularly in Saudi Arabia which was totally dependent on a now depleted
fossil aquifer for its wheat self-sufficiency, production fell by more than 2
thirds. India, the United States and China are also being fed with grain that
is produced by mining rather than harvesting water. Rising temperatures and
melting ice and glaciers are also impacting on food production.
"For each 1? Celsius rise in temperature above the optimum during the growing
season, we can expect a 10% decline in grain yields," continued Fidel.
The rising temperatures caused by an increase in carbon in the atmosphere also
contribute to another change in the natural order of the world as the ice at
both polar extremes of the world is melting at a rate beyond predictions made
20-30 y ago, causing the sea levels to rise. This will have the effect of
depriving many people who live in river deltas and islands, of land on which
they live and grow food.
However beyond the effects which increased levels of carbon in the atmosphere
and rising sea levels will have on food production, are the less publicised
effects, including plants bred for a particular level of rainfall or a
particular range of temperatures. This will cause a dramatic change in yields
in hotter drier, cooler, and wetter weather.
Most climate models envision more extreme weather events of all kinds,
droughts of course, but also severe rainstorms, hurricanes, cyclones and flash
flooding which can be just as damaging to yields. This was born out with the
extreme rain conditions which have occurred across Australia. The Gascoyne
River in WA's mid-west has flooded 3 times in the past 2 m when normally it
would do so once every 5 years. It is bracing itself for a 4th time.
In addition, as noted by Paul Roberts, author of The End of Food published in
2008, higher temperatures also boost pest populations and allow insects,
fungi, weeds and other pests to migrate into farming regions that were
previously uninfected, leading to substantial crop damage.
Higher temperatures will also stimulate soil bacteria and fungi which
accelerate the decay of soil organic matter and thus reduce the capacity of
the soil to store and transport nutrients and water. Such soils will not only
erode more easily, but will also need more fertilisers to maintain yields; yet
because they have less organic matter to retain those fertilisers, will simply
yield more of that nitrogen into the groundwater.
Climate change and food security
The changes to the planet's climate will have a devastating effect on food
security in the less developed countries of the world, especially in the
marginal food growing areas of sub-Saharan Africa. However, the changes to the
world's climate have also begun to have an impact on the crop yields of such
agricultural powerhouses of the USA, Russia, Australia, Argentina and
Brazil. All these food growing areas have had extremes of hot and cold, dry
and wet in the past 3 y which have resulted in significant reductions in crop
yields causing scarcity and rises in the cost of food production.
The answer to increasing food security is to diversify the type of crops grown
so that when a weather extreme occurs only one or 2 crops have been wiped out
from a dozen or so, rather than the entire crops of one or 2 monocrops.
The droughts and floods over the Australian summer of 2010 and 2011 had been a
timely reminder of a future of rising food scarcity and increasing food prices
which are on the way.
However, farmers are also facing the increases in the cost of food production
as well as declining yields and therefore revenues and many are leaving the
land altogether after a succession of crop failures - as happened in southern
Queensland after drought followed by rains. Roberts also points out in The
End of Food that the solution to saving our food production and the soil that
it grows in is to intensify the amount of effort and care that we put into
food production because, as he sees it, we are using up its inputs at an
alarming rate, degrading its assets and creating new opportunities for
pathogens - (Avian bird flu, e-Coli bacteria, malaria, dengue fever and others).
It is time to have more people employed in the food production industry to
ensure all the activities necessary to look after the soil and crops are able
to be carried out. An example was Cuba during its Special Period from 1989 to
1993, following the collapse of the Soviet Union when the country had to turn
to its own resources which it did with spectacular success.
Politicians and acknowledgment of climate change
Floods also wash topsoil out to sea and droughts and strong winds turn
previously rich topsoil to dust which is blown away in the wind.
Many of our politicians including Anna Bligh, the Queensland premier who has
overseen that state's summer of climate upheaval, are reluctant to make the
connection between human induced changes to the earth's atmosphere and climate
change which is contributing to more acute and more frequent weather events
occurring in Queensland and around the world. The ten terms of references of
that states flood inquiry do not include climate change as one of the causes
worthy of examination.
But this is not surprising as this would mean engaging with the concept that
somehow the wasteful and rapacious capitalist mode of production and
consumption is a prime contributor to the problem.
Suddenly we would have to look at the coal mining industry, land development,
and some agricultural land practices in a different and unfavourable light.
Climate change and the looming food crisis
In recent years, governments of countries have fallen or experienced
instability due to food (and water) security issues. Haiti, Tunisia, Egypt,
Nigeria, Thailand, Russia are all countries that have experienced turmoil due
to sharp rises in the price of food brought on in turn by scarcity brought on
by climate change.
Fidel Castro in his Reflection, concluded, "The unrest of these past few wk is
just the beginning. It is no longer conflict between heavily armed
superpowers, but rather spreading food shortages and rising food prices - and
the political turmoil this would lead to - that threatens our global future.
"Unless governments quickly redefine security and shift expenditures from
military uses to investing in climate change mitigation, water efficiency,
soil conservation, and population stabilisation, the world will in all
likelihood be facing a future with both more climate instability and food
price volatility. If business as usual continues, food prices will only trend up
ward."
As will social and political instability which will flow from failing to
address the causes rather than some of the symptoms.
MYREF: 20110307230002 msg2011030725830
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[On knowing your constituents:]
I always thought faremers were a gullible bunch!
-- BONZO@27-32-240-172 [86 nyms and counting], 9 Feb 2011 12:09 +1100