Posts
Climate
Change Pushing World to Brink of Food Crisis as FAO Price Index Jumps
to 208.1 in February
7
March, 2014
Food…
Along
with water and energy, which are related to its production, it is one
of the key commodities necessary to keep the world’s 7.1 billion
people alive, healthy and happy. Its price and availability can
determine the fate of nations and the stability of the world’s
economic system. Rising prices mean risk of increasing poverty, risk
of political instability and, in the worst instances, a creeping
spread of hunger and malnutrition about the globe.
And
ever since the year 2000 world food prices have been steadily and
inexorably rising.
The
UN FAO Index — An Indicator for Global Crisis
The
United Nations provides a valuable index that comprehensively
assesses the overall cost of food in both real and nominal terms.
Managed by the Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO),
the food price index has been tracking global indicators for this
valuable commodity since 1961.
The
FAO Index emerged in a world that hosted 3 billion people. A world
that was just beginning to realize the strengths and limitations of
its new, mechanized, fossil fuel-dependent, civilization. A world
where new fossil water resources and slow to recharge groundwater
were being tapped through drilling. A world where farming was
expanding into even the most marginal and vulnerable of regions even
as forests continued to be converted into farmland at a stunning
rate.
From
a period of the 1960s on into the first years of the 1970s, the
nascent FAO price index recorded stable if moderately high global
food prices. By the 1970s, food prices spiked along with the cost of
energy during an oil crisis related to a Growth
Shock
as US and western energy production encountered a series of difficult
to cross boundary limits.
The
First Test — 1970s Energy and Climate Crisis
The
FAO also emerged in a world where agriculture was heavily dependent
on fossil material and energy inputs — for machinery, pesticides,
and for fertilizer. This single commodity dependence meant that any
spike in oil prices also had a deleterious effect on food access. And
energy price spike after energy price spike occurred throughout the
1970s. A first warning that such a high level of reliance on just one
commodity — oil — was a clear and critical weakness for the
global economic and food distribution system.
At
the same time, an intense drought swept over Africa. The rains that
annually drenched the Sahel region faded and, then, for a period of
about a decade, simply failed. The energy crisis combined with severe
decadal climate shifts in Africa to further stress world food markets
already reeling under oil price shocks. Higher prices, political
instability and widespread hunger soon followed.
During
this time, the link between human fossil fuel emissions and a
potential to radically alter the climate in a way that was far more
hostile to traditional agriculture was mostly unexplored. But despite
this general lack of awareness, changes were already lining up that
would have severe consequences for human agriculture within only a
few decades. A then less visible, but no less important, weakness
resulting from industrial agriculture’s, and much of modern
civilization’s, reliance on oil, gas and coal. Fuels whose
endlessly ramping use created long-term and ever increasing damage to
environments in which human agriculture could be reasonably expected
to exist.
Rise
From Crisis Without Addressing Underlying Vulnerability
Political
pressure was put on the Middle East to make energy more cheaply and
readily available. Forests were cut down in South America to make
room for more farmland. Saudi Arabia mined fossil water to farm its
deserts. Meanwhile, the rains eventually returned to Africa and so
prices again fell to far more affordable levels during the 1980s and
1990s. But the key weaknesses — reliance on fossil fuels for
agriculture, an immense world population that jumped to 4, 5 and then
6 billion, a host of problems and vulnerabilities emerging from big
industrial farms, and increasing agricultural vulnerability to water
scarcity and related climate shifts were not addressed.
So
as the world entered the first decade of the new millennium and signs
of crisis began to again emerge, it found itself radically unprepared
to deal with what was shaping up to be a more vicious repeat of the
shocks experienced during the 1970s.
Energy
Shocks, Extreme Weather, Consumption Changes, 7 Billion People
Entering
the first decade of a new millennium, food prices were again on the
rise. Oil shocks were starting to once more ramp up and strange
changes to the world’s climate were starting to spur extreme
drought and rainfall events that were outside of the typical context
of human agriculture. Meanwhile, emerging economies in Asia such as
India and China were
beginning to demand more meat thereby putting additional stress on
the world’s farmland — as meat-based agriculture is about 1/50 as
efficient on a calorie comparison basis when compared to simply
farming grains, legumes and vegetables.
By
the middle of the decade, a series of crisis points had been reached.
Worldwide demand for both food and energy was raging. Populations
were nearing 7 billion souls. Oil price increases were leading more
nations to use farmland for biofuels production creating a
competition for land use between fuels and food. Australia was
suffering its worst drought in 1,000 years and many other regions of
the world were likewise sporadically hit. But the big, severe,
widespread droughts would wait for next decade to emerge with even
greater force and rapacity.
By
2007, world oil prices were screaming toward record levels and an
already climate and demand stressed food market rapidly followed. By
2008, the FAO index had surged to a record level of 201. Such a large
jump had numerous and far-reaching effects. Hunger again became an
issue of serious concern in Africa and, sporadically, various
countries began to see food riots as the distribution system
painfully rebalanced to reflect new levels of increased demand and
struggling output. Global economic recession immediately ensued and
prices were drawn down through the economically vicious process of
demand destruction.
(Satellite
shot of smoke from massive wildfires raging across Russia during
2010. The largest smoke plume in this image is 3,000 kilometers in
length, about the distance between Los Angeles and Chicago. Image
source: Lance-Modis.)
As
2010 opened a new decade, a weak El Nino combined with human caused
climate change to produce a powerful and persistent heat dome over
Russia and the Ukraine. As
spring continued into summer, the heat intensified and massive
wildfires began to break out.
A pallor of smoke covered millions of square miles as millions upon
millions of acres burned. The fires and coincident droughts brought
Russian, Eastern European and Ukrainian grain production to its
knees. The
situation was so severe that Russia cut off grain exports,
keeping all its production to feed its own citizens.
The
effect to global food markets was apocalyptic. Food prices surged
through 2010 and by 2011 peaked at an FAO index value of 229.9, the
highest level yet on record. High food prices swiftly rippled through
a number of the world’s most vulnerable regions and food riots,
which had been sporadic, became national phenomena. Hardest hit were
teetering nations in the Middle East that lacked the economic muscle
to provide their populations with adequate food supplies. Egypt,
Libya and Syria faced outright civil war and/or regime change due, in
large share, to social stresses sparked by food scarcity.
Rising
Threats for the Current Day
The
world’s primary response to this major price spike was to simply
plant more land. But as this new rush occurred, extreme weather got a
radical boost. Sea ice losses, by end of summer 2012, had totaled
more than 50% in area and extent values since 1979 while volume
measures had brutally fallen by over 80%. As
a result, the Arctic had lost about 4% of its albedo and was
undergoing a period of rapid heat amplification.
These changes would result in more persistent and severe Jet Stream
patterns that would deliver an increasingly extreme battery of
droughts and deluges to the Northern Hemisphere. Meanwhile, warming
had now resulted in an amplification of the global hydrological cycle
by 6%. This amplification meant drying of the land came on more
rapidly, setting the stage for intense drought initiation even in
regions that weren’t seeing more stuck weather patterns.
As
2013 rolled into 2014 drought
was widespread and severe in large zones from California to Brazil
and Argentina, to Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, to Vietnam,
Singapore and Malaysia, to China and Australia.
Many of these droughts are among the worst and most widespread on
record. Meanwhile,
severe rainfall and wind events over Britain and Western Europe are
also disrupting agriculture and causing direct damage or inundation
of crops.
And though the world was planting a massive number of acres during
2013-2014, the effects of these various and wide-ranging weather
emergencies were again starting to take hold.
For
by February of this year the world FAO index had risen to 208.1 — a
level very close to 210 which is considered to be the point that high
food prices begin to result in the potential for major social unrest
worldwide.
High
Risk Outlook for 2014
With
so many regions experiencing drought, with human-caused climate
change playing havoc with the world’s weather, and
with the rising risk of a moderate-to-strong El Nino emerging in the
Eastern Pacific,
the world appears to be entering yet one more period of high risk for
another major food shock. El Nino is traditionally known to produce
drought in Australia and Southeast Asia. And while it is has not
historically tended to coincide with drought in Russia and Eastern
Europe, it does tend to shift weather patterns toward hot in those
regions. With the hydrological cycle amped up by human-caused climate
change and with ridges/blocking patterns more prevalent due to added
atmospheric heat content and sea ice loss, it might be wise to
consider the 2010 spate of extreme drought and fires in this region a
potential risk as the year and a likely El Nino progresses.
Links:
Hat
Tip to Colorado Bob
It's 2014 and yet still only a few isolated agencies are aware of the threat to food production from air pollution, although it has been well known to agronomists for decades. In fact the US Dept. of Ag. has ongoing experiments trying to develop ozone-resistent genetic varieties for major crops, to no avail. From 2011: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/06/05/236805/research-climate-change-destabilize-food-system/
ReplyDeleteThe following information comes from an article about the United Nations Environment Programme. Tropospheric ozone including near-surface ozone is a major greenhouse gas, harms human health and is linked to significant damage to crops and ecosystems.
A regional assessment report by the UNEP Project Atmospheric Brown Cloud cited annual losses from the wheat, rice, corn and soya bean crop in China, Japan and the Republic of Korea alone-linked with ground level ozone-may be $5 billion a year. Another study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that five per cent of cereal production in the United States is lost to ground level ozone and that by 2100 crop yields globally could be cut by 40 per cent.
Up to a fifth of all summer-time hospital visits in the north-eastern United States related to respiratory problems are linked to low level ozone, sometimes referred to as smog. Researchers at the University of Illinois are suggesting that tree growth in the United States is some seven per cent less and that this will climb to up to 17 per cent less by 2100 as a result of low level ozone pollution.
Tropospheric ozone, which occurs from the ground up to 15 kilometres in altitude, is generated by substances such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides mixing with emissions of petroleum products like volatile organic compounds and solvents in the presence of sunlight.
Researchers estimate that the contribution of tropospheric ozone to the greenhouse effect could range from 15 per cent to 20 per cent, of the CO2 warming.