Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilisation?

[Beet]

WASHINGTON, Sep 29, 2009 (IPS) - In early 2008, Saudi Arabia announced that, after being self-sufficient in wheat for over 20 years, the non-replenishable aquifer it had been pumping for irrigation was largely depleted.

In response, officials said they would reduce their wheat harvest by one-eighth each year until production would cease entirely in 2016. The Saudis would then import virtually all the grain consumed by their Canada-sized population of nearly 30 million people.

The Saudis are unique in being so wholly dependent on irrigation. But other, far larger, grain producers such as India and China are facing irrigation water losses and could face grain production declines.

Emerging Trends Threaten Food Security

Fifteen percent of India's grain harvest is produced by overpumping its groundwater. In human terms, 175 million Indians are being fed with grain produced from wells that will be going dry. The comparable number for China is 130 million. Among the many other countries facing harvest reductions from groundwater depletion are Pakistan, Iran, and Yemen.

The tripling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices between mid-2006 and mid-2008 signaled our growing vulnerability to food shortages. It took the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression to lower grain prices.

Past decades have witnessed world grain price surges, but they were event-driven - a drought in the former Soviet Union, a monsoon failure in India, or a crop-withering heat wave in the U.S. Corn Belt. This most recent price surge was trend-driven, the result of our failure to reverse the environmental trends that are undermining world food production.

These trends include - in addition to falling water tables - eroding soils and rising temperatures from increasing greenhouse gas emissions. Rising temperatures bring crop-shrinking heat waves, melting ice sheets, rising sea level, and shrinking mountain glaciers.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=48650

[opebo]

To be honest, who would ever have thought Saudi Arabia produced any wheat?  Or for that matter any foodstuffs outside of perhaps dates?

I think civilisation is quite adept at exacting sacrifices from the lower orders.. whether starving to death is a sacrifice they'll bear without a bit of fuss is hard to say, but machine guns can shoot a lot of poors.

[Јas]

Bring civilisation down? No

But there are ominous signs about the impact food politics will have in the near future. The FAO's food price index has just surpassed its 2008 high. While we haven't seen a 2008 like food crisis re-emerge yet, it must be a distinct possibility.

This past week alone, we've seen rioting in Algeria, restrictions on grain sales in Argentina, and forecasts of record corn/soybean prices in the US. If oil prices rise in the short-term to anything like 2008 levels, then who knows what happens.

[Silent Hunter]

There is enough food for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed.

[opebo]

It will be interesting to see just how many poors have to die before there is any general questioning of the ethanol boondoggle, and whether or not it is possible for a body count to be high enough to cause a rethinking of this corruption.

I think it goes like this - no amount of poor-killing would be motivate giving up overall privilege ('private property'), but do specific con-games like the ethanol one, which benefit only some of the elite, still have the political power to kill poors with impunity?  Or is there some limit?

This same question applies to defense spending as well, though somewhat less obviously directly.

[Smid]

I've heard it suggested that water could be the next big international commodity, rather like how oil has been for the 20th Century, and there could potentially be pipelines and tankers carrying supplies of fresh water (assuming that this would be cheaper than desalination), and that nations with large supplies of fresh water/high rainfall could potentially export their water to other countries with less. Don't know if that will end up being the case or not - it would be a long way off, surely, but I guess it's possible.

[afleitch]

I've heard it suggested that water could be the next big international commodity, rather like how oil has been for the 20th Century, and there could potentially be pipelines and tankers carrying supplies of fresh water (assuming that this would be cheaper than desalination), and that nations with large supplies of fresh water/high rainfall could potentially export their water to other countries with less. Don't know if that will end up being the case or not - it would be a long way off, surely, but I guess it's possible.

Which in itself is a recent argument for Scottish independence.

[John Dibble]

Not by itself, no. Food shortage would be a symptom of almost any civilization destroying event, but human civilization as a whole isn't likely to run out of food without such an event occurring first. However, large enough food shortages by themselves could cause the collapse of individual nations.

[minionofmidas]

To be honest, who would ever have thought Saudi Arabia produced any wheat?  Or for that matter any foodstuffs outside of perhaps dates?

(raises hand)

[opebo]

To be honest, who would ever have thought Saudi Arabia produced any wheat?  Or for that matter any foodstuffs outside of perhaps dates?

(raises hand)

Well you're very knowledgeable then, Lewis.

One wonders if the Saudis will someday regret having used up all that nice aquifer water on this wasteful practice when they could have just imported the wheat and saved the water for future consumption. 

[minionofmidas]

The 'Asir - the area of Saudi Arabia bordering Yemen - is not like your mental image of Saudi Arabia, Ope. That's sparse, mountainous dry-farming country, not desert.

[Јas]

Seeds of a fresh food crisis - Financial Times

The article suggests that we're seeing, in many respects, a repeat of the 2007-08 food crisis - with panic buying by developing economies the latest development.