Food scarcity: the timebomb setting nation against nation

“Evan Fraser, author of Empires of Food and a geography lecturer at Guelph University in Ontario, Canada, says: “For six of the last 11 years the world has consumed more food than it has grown. We do not have any buffer and are running down reserves. Our stocks are very low and if we have a dry winter and a poor rice harvest we could see a major food crisis across the board.”

“Even if things do not boil over this year, by next summer we’ll have used up this buffer and consumers in the poorer parts of the world will once again be exposed to the effects of anything that hurts production.”

Brown says: “An unprecedented period of world food security has come to an end. The world has lost its safety cushions and is living from year to year. This is the new politics of food scarcity. We are moving into a new food era, one in which it is every country for itself.”

“What in the past would have been a relatively simple question of developing better seeds, or opening up new land to grow more food, cannot work now because the challenge of growing food without destroying the environment is deepening.”

Brown adds: “New trends such as falling water tables, plateauing grain yields and rising temperatures join soil erosion and climate change to make it difficult, if not impossible, to expand production fast enough.”

Four pressing needs must be addressed together, he says. Instead of better seeds, tractors or pumps to raise water, he claims, feeding the world now depends on new population, energy, and water policies. Water scarcity, especially, concerns him.”