Climatic destabilization of food security accelerating

[Billhook]

A site called Market Oracle shows an article including a pair of world map graphics
juxtaposing countries' normal food production by $ value and the current incidence of drought, extreme drought, and historic drought .
While a destabilized climate is plainly at the root of the crisis, and the article lists its impacts per country,
it also covers secondary issues impacting food production,
and has some interesting speculation on the foreseeable consequences of a rapid loss of food security,
including the rising incentive for nations' competitive currency appreciation - by means of offloading the dollar.

www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article8768.html

Quote:

Catastrophic Fall in 2009 Global Food Production

The countries that make up two thirds of the world's agricultural output are experiencing drought conditions.
Whether you watch a video of the drought in China, Australia, Africa, South America, or the US , the scene will be the same:
misery, ruined crop, and dying cattle.

China

The drought in Northern China, the worst in 50 years, is worsening, and summer harvest is now threatened.
The area of affected crops has expanded to 161 million mu (was 141 million last week), and 4.37 million people and 2.1 million livestock
are facing drinking water shortage. The scarcity of rain in some parts of the north and central provinces is the worst in recorded history.

The drought which started in November threatens over half the wheat crop in eight provinces -
Hebei, Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Henan, Shandong, Shaanxi and Gansu.

Australia

Australia has been experiencing an unrelenting drought since 2004, and 41 percent of Australia's agriculture
continues to suffer from the worst drought in 117 years of record-keeping.
The drought has been so severe that rivers stopped flowing, lakes turned toxic, and farmers abandoned their land in frustration:

A) The Murray River stopped flowing at its terminal point, and its mouth has closed up.
B) Australia's lower lakes are evaporating, and they are now a meter (3.2 feet) below sea level.
If these lakes evaporate any further, the soil and the mud system below the water is going to be exposed to the air.
The mud will then acidify, releasing sulfuric acid and a whole range of heavy metals.
After this occurs, those lower lake systems will essentially become a toxic swamp which will never be able to be recovered.
The Australian government's only options to prevent this are to allow salt water in, creating a dead sea, or to pray for rain.

For some reason, the debate over climate change is essentially over in Australia.

The United States

California
California is facing its worst drought in recorded history . The drought is predicted to be the most severe in modern times,
worse than those in 1977 and 1991. Thousands of acres of row crops already have been fallowed, with more to follow.
The snowpack in the Northern Sierra, home to some of the state's most important reservoirs, proved to be just 49 percent of average.
Water agencies throughout the state are scrambling to adopt conservation mandates.

Texas
The Texan drought is reaching historic proportion . Dry conditions near Austin and San Antonio have been exceeded only once before—
the drought of 1917-18. 88 percent of Texas is experiencing abnormally dry conditions, and 18 percent of the state
is in either extreme or exceptional drought conditions. The drought areas have been expanding almost every month.
Conditions in Texas are so bad cattle are keeling over in parched pastures and dying. Lack of rainfall has left pastures barren,
and cattle producers have resorted to feeding animals hay. Irreversible damage has been done to winter wheat crops in Texas.
Both short and long-term forecasts don't call for much rain at all, which means the Texas drought is set to get worse.
________________________________________

Stocks of foodstuff are dangerously low

Low stocks of foodstuff make the world's falling agriculture output particularly worrisome.
The combined averaged of the ending stock levels of the major trading countries of Australia, Canada, United States,
and the European Union have been declining steadily in the last few years:

2002-2005: 47.4 million tons
2007: 37.6 million tons
2008: 27.4 million tons

These inventory numbers are dangerously low, especially considering the horrifying possibility
that China's 60 million tons of grain reserves doesn't actually exist. .
______________________________________________

If any kind soul can get the two graphics showing up on this thread it would be much appreciated.

Regards,

Billhook

[2 As and a B]

To understand the depth of the food Catastrophe that faces the world this year, consider the graphic below depicting countries by USD value of their agricultural output, as of 2006.

Now, consider the same graphic with the countries experiencing droughts highlighted.

There is also a link to videos of the droughts described above in Billhook's quote from the website, plus droughts in other parts of the world.

[Billhook]

Foodinistar -

many thanks - my computer skills are primitive at best -

OTOH if you ever need a lamb skinned, do let me know .

Regards,

Billhook

[DominicJ]

http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/forum/vie ... hp?t=10607

Good to see others spotted and were equaly worried.

Re showing pics
Right click on the picture, properties
A properties screen will pop up wiyth a link, copy the link and paste it into the comment.

Highlight it and click the img button

[trimnut2]

Bilhook thanks for this.

Food security has been of concern for some time. Seeing this summation raises my concern further.

This article focuses primarily on grains. Does anyone know if grains are a good "indicator" of food security. I don't want to appear naive in asking that. Of course grains are important. Rather I wonder if in stressed situations other food sources may be more productive/ more used. In many eras in the past tree crops provided sustenance when all else was in short supply. Where are those trees/alternative food sources now?

[Totally_Baffled]

Can I also ask a dumb question?

In the case of the US, why not pipe water from north to south? (even Canada if needs be)

If we can pipe oil and gas thousands of miles, why not water?

[biffvernon]

Despite what some people pay for it in small plastic bottles, water is really not worth much. Piping it long distances would make it too expensive for agricutural use.

[RenewableCandy]

This article focuses primarily on grains. Does anyone know if grains are a good "indicator" of food security. I don't want to appear naive in asking that. Of course grains are important. Rather I wonder if in stressed situations other food sources may be more productive/ more used. In many eras in the past tree crops provided sustenance when all else was in short supply. Where are those trees/alternative food sources now?

This is true but I think you'll find that a large contribution to today's "higher yields" on farms was made by getting rid of all the useful peripheral activity (kitchen gardens, mini-orchards, chicken runs, that kind o'thing) that provided the emergency fall-back, not to mention the protein and vits, for each small farm in the olde days. Someone correct me if that's tosh, but I seem to remember seeing that issue raised in a lot of different writings about food.

[Billhook]

Trimnut2 -
as far as I understand it, the UN and its FAO (food & agriculture organization) consider the cerials to be the measure of food security
owing to their capacity to endure in storage for years -
meaning that they can be held as quantified reserves -

Fruit & veg can of course be preseverved, and quite some volume gets dried these days,
but the additional costs of doing so, alongside their general lack of protien, makes them poor candidates for food reserves.

Nuts & wild foods are of course of greater relevance during times of scarcity, and on poor land may be well worth encouraging.
There's a steep little curving bank here, probably less than half an acre, that catches the sun from noon onward,
that I dream of terracing with blackberries one day -

Totally Baffled -
the irrigation issue is not only about the inordinate cost of piping agricultural water long distances,
it's also about the need to deliver large enough quantities to actually flush the build up of salts out of the soil.

Given the inflation of infrastructure costs I suspect we are somewhere near the peak of high tech irrigation.
More traditional methods go back for millenia and include some extraordinary engineering feats - which, given time to restore skills, we may yet choose to copy.

One example was the response to a need for better water in North London, in about 1670.
Surveyors found a very good spring 16 miles north, and the engineers of the day piped it, in bored elm trunks,
employing a fall of just 11 feet.

This is small beer compared with a tradition in Iran and other parts of the Middle East of installing culverts deep underground through sand,
running for over 40 miles to carry water from the mountains out to the parched lowlands.
The pipes are just very short terra cotta sections, large enough to crouch in while digging, and egg-shaped in section for strength
and to allow them to be easily moved along the culvert from the nearest air-shaft to the workface.

Sadly, few places in Britain have 40 miles of sand.

Regards,

Billhook

PS - Elm was used because it hardly rots if it remains wet - viz Roman elm water pipes dug up under Marelebone Rd, still flowing, just.