Coming this February …
OUTGROWING THE EARTH: THE FOOD SECURITY CHALLENGE IN AN AGE OF FALLING
WATER TABLES AND RISING TEMPERATURES by Lester R. Brown (W.W. Norton &
Co.)
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/Contents.htm
Order your copy today and get free shipping (U.S. and Canada only) or call
202.496.9290 x 13.
Preface from Outgrowing the Earth:
On hearing his political opponent described as a modest chap, Winston
Churchill reputedly responded that “he has much to be modest about.”
Having just completed a book dealing with the increasingly complex issue
of world food security, I too feel that I have a lot to be modest about.
Assessing the world food prospect was once rather straightforward, largely
a matter of extrapolating, with minor adjustments, historically recent
agricultural supply and demand trends. Now suddenly that is all changing.
It is no longer just a matter of trends slowing or accelerating; in some
cases they are reversing direction.
Grain harvests that were once rising everywhere are now falling in some
countries. Fish catches that were once rising are now falling. Irrigated
area, once expanding almost everywhere, is now shrinking in some key
food-producing regions.
Beyond this, some of the measures that are used to expand food production
today, such as overpumping aquifers, almost guarantee a decline in food
production tomorrow when the aquifers are depleted and the wells go dry.
The same can be said for overplowing and overgrazing. We have entered an
era of discontinuity on the food front, an era where making reliable
projections is ever more difficult.
New research shows that a 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature leads to a
decline in wheat, rice, and corn yields of 10 percent. In a century where
temperatures could rise by several degrees Celsius, harvests could be
devastated.
Although climate change is widely discussed, we are slow to grasp its full
meaning. Everyone knows the earth’s temperature is rising, but commodity
analysts often condition their projections on weather returning to
“normal,” failing to realize that with climate now in flux, there is no
normal to return to.
Falling water tables are also undermining food security. Water tables are
now falling in countries that contain more than half the world’s people.
While there is a broad realization that we are facing a future of water
shortages, not everyone has connected the dots to see that a future of
water shortages will be a future of food shortages.
Perhaps the biggest agricultural reversal in recent times has been the
precipitous decline in China’s grain production since 1998. Ten years ago,
in Who Will Feed China?, I projected that China’s grain production would
soon peak and begin to decline. But I did not anticipate that it would
drop by 50 million tons between 1998 and 2004. Since 1998 China has
covered this decline by drawing down its once massive stocks of grain. Now
stocks are largely depleted and China is turning to the world market. Its
purchase of 8 million tons of wheat to import in 2004 could signal the
beginning of a shift from a world food economy dominated by surpluses to
one dominated by scarcity.
Overnight, China has become the world’s largest wheat importer. Yet it
will almost certainly import even more wheat in the future, not to mention
vast quantities of rice and corn. It is this potential need to import 30,
40, or 50 million tons of grain a year within the next year or two and the
associated emergence of a politics of food scarcity that is likely to put
food security on the front page of newspapers.
At the other end of the spectrum is Brazil, the only country with the
potential to expand world cropland area measurably. But what will the
environmental consequences be of continuing to clear and plow Brazil’s
vast interior? Will the soils sustain cultivation over the longer term?
Will the deforestation in the Amazon disrupt the recycling of rainfall
from the Atlantic Ocean to the country’s interior? And how many plant and
animal species will Brazil sacrifice to expand its exports of soybeans?
Food security, which was once the near-exclusive province of ministries of
agriculture, now directly involves several departments of government. In
the past, ministries of transportation did not need to think about food
security when formulating transport policies. But in densely populated
developing countries today, the idea of having a car in every garage one
day means paving over a large share of their cropland. Many countries
simply do not have enough cropland to pave for cars and to grow food for
their people.
Or consider energy. Energy ministers do not attend international
conferences on food security. But they should. The decisions they make in
deciding which energy sources to develop will directly affect atmospheric
carbon dioxide levels and future changes in temperature. In fact, the
decisions made in ministries of energy may have a greater effect on
long-term food security than those made in ministries of agriculture.
Future food security now depends on the combined efforts of the ministries
of agriculture, energy, transportation, health and family planning, and
water resources. It also depends on strong leadership—leadership that is
far better informed on the complex set of interacting forces affecting
food security than most political leaders are today.
Take a look at the Table of Contents and read Chapter 1, “Pushing Beyond
the Earth’s Limits” (online now in Adobe format).
http://www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/Contents.htm
Order your copy today and get free shipping (U.S. and Canada only) or call
202.496.9290 x 13.
Earth Policy Institute
1350 Connecticut Ave., NW, Ste 403
Washington, DC 20036
T: (202) 496.9290
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