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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Earth Policy news: Wakeup Call on the Food Front
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 16:47:26 -0500
From: Reah Janise Kauffman rjkauffman@earth-policy.org
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Eco-Economy Update 2003-11 Please share with a friend!
For Immediate Release
Copyright Earth Policy Institute 2003
December 16, 2003

WAKEUP CALL ON THE FOOD FRONT
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update31.htm

Lester R. Brown
(This piece first appeared in the Washington Post on Sunday, December 15,
2003, entitled "Dry, With a Chance of a Grain Shortage.")


While Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and President Bush discussed Taiwan,
currency rates and North Korea on December 9, a more important and
far-reaching development in U.S.-China relations was going on far from the
White House.

Under the North China Plain, which produces half of China's wheat and a
third of its corn, water tables are falling by 3 to 10 feet per year. Along
with rising temperatures and the loss of cropland to non-farm uses, this
trend is shrinking the Chinese grain harvest, which has fallen in four of
the past five years. To get an idea of the magnitude, the harvest dropped by
66 million tons during that period, an amount that exceeds the total annual
grain harvest of Canada, one of the world's leading grain exporters.

Thus far China has covered its growing grain shortfall by drawing down its
once-massive stocks. It can do this for perhaps one more year before those
stocks are depleted. Then it will have to turn to the world market for major
purchases. The odds are that within the next few years the United States
will be loading two or three ships per day with grain destined for China.
This long line of ships stretching across the Pacific will function like a
huge umbilical cord between the two countries.

This isn't only a question of U.S.-China relations, but also one of the
relationship between the Earth's 6.3 billion people and its natural
resources, especially water. Food production is a water-intensive process.
Producing a ton of grain requires a thousand tons of water, which helps
explain why 70 percent of all water diverted from rivers or pumped from
underground goes for irrigation.

The tripling of world water demand over the past half-century, combined with
the advent of diesel and electrically driven pumps, has led to extensive
overpumping of aquifers. As a result, more than half the world's people now
live in countries where water tables are falling and wells are going dry.
Among these countries are the three that account for half of the world grain
harvest: China, India and the United States. In India, water tables are
falling in most states, including the Punjab, that nation's breadbasket. In
the United States, aquifers are being depleted under the southern Great
Plains and throughout the Southwest, including California.

If the world is facing a future of water shortages, then it is also facing a
future of food shortages.

To be sure, it is difficult to trace long-term trends in food production,
which fluctuates with weather, prices and the spread of farm technology to
developing countries. In one of the major economic achievements of the last
half-century, China raised its grain output from 90 million tons in 1950 to
392 million tons in 1998. Since then, though, China's production appears to
have peaked, dropping by 66 million tons, or 17 percent. (See data
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update31_data.htm.)

As a result, it seems likely that China will ultimately need to buy 30, 40
or 50 million tons of grain a year, and then it will have to turn to the
United States, which accounts for nearly half of the world's grain exports.
Imports on this unprecedented scale will create a fascinating geopolitical
situation: China, with 1.3 billion consumers and foreign exchange reserves
of $384 billion-enough to buy the entire U.S. grain harvest eight times
over-will suddenly be competing with American consumers for U.S. grain, in
all likelihood driving up food prices.

For the first time in their history, the Chinese will be dependent on the
outside world for food supplies. And U.S. consumers will realize that, like
it or not, they will be sharing their food with Chinese consumers.

Managing the flow of grain to satisfy the needs of both countries
simultaneously will not be easy because it could come amid a shift from a
world of chronic food surpluses to one of food scarcity. Exporters will be
tempted to restrict the flow of grain in order to maintain price stability
at home, as the United States did 30 years ago when world grain stocks were
at record lows and wheat and rice prices doubled. But today the United
States has a major stake in a stable China because China is a major trading
partner whose large economy is the locomotive of Asia.

The pressure on world food markets may alter the relationship between
exporting and importing countries, changing the focus of international trade
negotiations from greater access to markets for exporting countries such as
the United States to assured access to food supplies for China and the 100
or so countries that already import grain.

The prospect of food and water scarcity emerges against a backdrop of
concern about global warming. New research by crop ecologists at the
International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and at the U.S.
Department of Agriculture indicates that a 1-degree-Celsius rise in
temperature (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above the optimum during the growing
season leads to a 10 percent decline in yields of rice, wheat and corn. With
four of the past six years being the warmest on record, grain harvests are
suffering. High temperatures lowered harvests last year in India and the
United States and scorched crops this year from France to Ukraine.

The new combination of falling water tables and rising temperatures, along
with trends such as soil erosion, has led to four consecutive shortfalls in
the world grain harvest. This year production fell short of consumption by a
record 92 million tons. These shortages have reduced world grain stocks to
their lowest levels in 30 years.

If we have a shortfall in 2004 that is even half the size of this year's,
food prices will be rising worldwide by this time next year. You won't have
to read about it in the commodity pages. It will be evident at the
supermarket checkout counter. During the fall of 2003, wheat and rice prices
rose 10 percent to 30 percent in world markets, and even more in some parts
of China. These rises may only be the warning tremors before the earthquake.

We can, however, take measures to improve world food security. We could
recognize that population growth and environmental trends threaten economic
progress and political stability just as terrorism does. Since the
overwhelming majority of the nearly 3 billion people expected to be born
during this half-century will be in countries where water tables are already
falling and wells are running dry, filling the family planning gap and
creating a social environment to foster smaller families is urgent.

The situation with water today is new, but similar to that with land a
half-century ago. Coming out of World War II, we looked toward the end of
the century and saw enormous projected growth in population but little new
land to plow. The result was a concentrated international effort to raise
land productivity; boosting the world grain yields from just over one ton
per hectare in 1950 to nearly three tons today. We now need a similar global
full-court press to raise water productivity, by shifting to more
water-efficient crops, improving irrigation and recycling urban water
supplies.

As it becomes apparent that higher temperatures are shrinking harvests and
raising food prices, a powerful new consumer lobby could emerge in support
of cutting carbon emissions by moving to a hydrogen-based economy. It is a
commentary on the complexity of our time that decisions made in ministries
of energy may have a greater effect on future food security than those made
in ministries of agriculture.

# # #

For a more detailed discussion see Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress
and a Civilization in Trouble.

Additional data and information sources at www.earth-policy.org
or contact jlarsen@earth-policy.org
For reprint permission contact rjkauffman@earth-policy.org