Lo que separa la civilización de la anarquía son solo siete comidas. (Civilization and anarchy are only seven meals apart.)
—Spanish proverb

Seeing a Time (Soon) When We’ll All Be Dieting

By MARK BITTMAN

Published: August 24, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/books/excerpt-the-coming-famine.html

Fifty years ago, a billion people were undernourished or starving; the number is about the same today. That’s actually progress, since a billion represented a third of the human race then, and “only” a sixth now.


J. Carl Ganter/Circleofblue.Org
julian Cribb
By Julian Cribb
248 pages. University of California Press. $24.95.
Related

Excerpt: ‘The Coming Famine’ (August 25, 2010)

Today we have another worry: roughly the same number of people eat too much. But, says Julian Cribb, a veteran science journalist from Australia, “The era of cheap, abundant food is over.”

Like many other experts, he argues that we have passed the peak of oil production, and it’s all downhill from now on. He then presents evidence that we have passed the peaks for water, fertilizer and land, and that we will all soon be made painfully aware that we have passed it for food, as wealthy nations experience shortages and rising prices, and poorer ones starve.

Much of “The Coming Famine” builds an argument that we’ve jumped off a cliff and that global chaos — a tidal wave of people fleeing their own countries for wherever they can find food — is all but guaranteed. The rest of the book concentrates on catching an outcropping of rock with a finger and scrambling back up. The writing is neither personality-filled nor especially fluid, but the sheer number of terrifying facts makes the book gripping.

Arguments that overpopulation will lead to famine or worse are nothing new, of course; in the early 19th century the Rev. Thomas Malthus contended that the human march toward progress would be derailed by a cycle of overpopulation that led to shortages and misery. And of the many who’ve followed in the Malthusian tradition, none have been correct: overpopulation has caused problems, but, as noted above, the percentage of people starving has actually declined.

Mr. Cribb is reporting on the fate of a planet whose resources have, in the last 200 years, been carelessly, even ruthlessly exploited for the benefit of the minority. Now that the majority is beginning to demand — or at least crave — the same kind of existence, it’s clear that, population boom or not, there simply isn’t enough of the Euro-American way of life to go around.

And while there is a sky-is-falling tone to his relatively brief (just over 200 pages) thesis — if it doesn’t make you restock your survivalist shelter with another hundred pounds of rice and beans — the book does offer sensible ways to help alleviate the “global feeding frenzy.”

Climate change, of course, is an important piece of Mr. Cribb’s puzzle, as are overexploitation of the sea and natural resources, overuse of chemical fertilizer, reliance on fossil fuels, protectionism, subsidies, biofuels, waste and other factors.

Most important are what he calls “the two elephants in the kitchen”: population growth and overconsumption. A projected 33 percent growth in population in the next 20 years, combined with increased consumption of meat as the global middle class grows larger, means that food production must grow by at least 50 percent in that same period.

Livestock is a major problem: the grain fed to American animals alone is enough to feed those billion hungry people. But what about the next couple of billion? Production, says Mr. Cribb, is headed in the wrong direction. Grain stockpiles shrank in the last decade, and the amount of available water for each human is plummeting. Yet to produce more food, we need more water; to produce more meat, we need much more water.

We also need more land, as much as “two more North Americas” to produce the fodder needed to meet projected demand. Yet existing land is being degraded by a variety of factors. (Mr. Cribb provides a nicely horrifying quote from some older Chinese farmers: “When we were young, we had trouble seeing the cattle in the grassland. Now we can see the mice.”)

In the decades following World War II, new technologies helped to increase sharply the worldwide agricultural yield. Mr. Cribb contends that were research adequately financed, a second such Green Revolution, with its own amazing discoveries, might be right around the corner. But the current meager financing picture diminishes that likelihood.

One of the book’s more interesting discussions is a comparison of organic and industrial farming. Mr. Cribb sees this as “a philosophical divide the world, in its present state, can ill afford,” and suggests that each camp draw lessons from the other to form a new kind of agriculture. Yet for the most part he comes down on the side of organic, or at least small-share farming, pointing out that entire countries support themselves without resorting to industrial farming.

If there is a way out of the morass, rationality and fairness will be its basis, and here Mr. Cribb is impassioned, even inspiring. He would have society mandate food and waste composting (waste should not be wasted); eliminate subsidies to the biggest agriculture companies; and finance research for new technology. (Big Food, he believes, should be compelled to contribute to this. Bravo.)

He proposes subsidizing small farms for their stewardship of the earth, and paying them fairer prices for production; taxing food to reflect its true costs to the environment; regulating practices that counter sustainability and rewarding those that promote it; and educating the public about the true costs of food. “An entire year of primary schooling” should be devoted to the importance of growing and eating food, he suggests.

Few experts without vested interests in corporate agriculture would disagree with any of this, though little progress is being made. Individuals, however, can make helpful changes more quickly. Dietary change is primary, and can be as simple as eating a salad instead of a cheeseburger and an apple instead of a bag of chips. Waste less food. Compost. Garden, even if (or especially if) you live in a city. Choose sustainable food, including fish. And so on.

None of these practices will matter much unless they’re adopted worldwide. “Even if North Americans and Europeans halved their meat and dairy consumption,” Mr. Cribb writes, “the saving could be completely swamped by the demand from six hundred million newly affluent Indian and Chinese consumers.”

Yet Mr. Cribb is not hopeless; he predicts that we’ll eventually “unlock new insights capable of making profound gains in food production and sustainability on a par with those of the Green Revolution.”

But finding a sustainable farming system is “perhaps the greatest challenge ever faced in the ten thousand years since agriculture began,” he writes. If the challenge is not met, we’re going to be reading scarier books than this one.

Mark Bittman, who writes “The Minimalist” column for The Times, is the author of the forthcoming “Food Matters Cookbook.”

"The coming famine is planetary because it involves both the immediate effects of hunger on directly affected populations in heavily populated regions of the world in the next forty years — and also the impacts of war, government failure, refugee crises, shortages, and food price spikes that will affect all human beings, no matter who they are or where they live. It is an emergency because unless it is solved, billions will experience great hardship, and not only in the poorer regions. Mike Murphy, one of the world’s most progressive dairy farmers, with operations in Ireland, New Zealand, and North and South America, succinctly summed it all up: “Global warming gets all the publicity but the real imminent threat to the human race is starvation on a massive scale. Taking a 10–30 year view, I believe that food shortages, famine and huge social unrest are probably the greatest threat the human race has ever faced. I believe future food shortages are a far bigger world threat than global warming.”

The coming famine is also complex, because it is driven not by one or two, or even a half dozen, factors but rather by the confluence of many large and profoundly intractable causes that tend to amplify one another. This means that it cannot easily be remedied by “silver bullets” in the form of technology, subsidies, or single-country policy changes, because of the synergetic character of the things that power it.

To see where the answers may lie, we need to explore each of the main drivers. On the demand side the chief drivers are:

Population. Although the rate of growth in human numbers is slowing, the present upward trend of 1.5 percent (one hundred million more people) per year points to a population of around 9.2 billion in 2050 — 3 billion more than in 2000. Most of this expansion will take place in poorer countries and in tropical/subtropical regions. In countries where birth rates are falling, governments are bribing their citizens with subsidies to have more babies in an effort to address the age imbalance.

Consumer demand. The first thing people do as they climb out of poverty is to improve their diet. Demand for protein foods such as meat, milk, fish, and eggs from consumers with better incomes, mainly in India and China but also in Southeast Asia and Latin America, is rising rapidly. This in turn requires vastly more grain to feed the animals and fish. Overfed rich societies continue to gain weight. The average citizen of Planet Earth eats one-fifth more calories than he or she did in the 1960s — a “food footprint” growing larger by the day.

Population and demand. This combination of population growth with expansion in consumer demand indicates a global requirement for food by 2050 that will be around 70–100 percent larger than it is today. Population and demand are together rising at about 2 percent a year, whereas food output is now increasing at only about 1 percent a year.

These demand-side factors could probably be satisfied by the world adopting tactics similar to those of the 1960s, when the Green Revolution in farming technology was launched, were it not for the many constraints on the supply side that are now emerging to hinder or prevent such a solution:

Water crisis. Put simply, civilization is running out of freshwater. Farmers presently use about 70 percent of the world’s readily available freshwater to grow food. However, increasingly megacities, with their huge thirst for water for use in homes, industry, and waste disposal, are competing with farmers for this finite resource and, by 2050, these uses could swallow half or more of the world’s available freshwater at a time when many rivers, lakes, and aquifers will be drying up. Unless major new sources or savings are found, farmers will have about half of the world’s currently available freshwater with which to grow twice the food.

Land scarcity. The world is running out of good farmland. A quarter of all land is now so degraded that it is scarcely capable of yielding food. At the same time, cities are sprawling, smothering the world’s most fertile soil in concrete and asphalt, while their occupants fan out in search of cheap land for recreation that diverts the best food-producing areas from agriculture. A third category of land is poisoned by toxic industrial pollution. Much former urban food production has now ceased. The emerging global dearth of good farmland represents another severe limit on increasing food production.

Nutrient losses. Civilization is hemorrhaging nutrients — substances essential to all life. Annual losses in soil erosion alone probably exceed all the nutrients applied as fertilizer worldwide. The world’s finite nutrient supplies may already have peaked. Half the fertilizer being used is wasted. In most societies, up to half the food produced is trashed or lost; so too are most of the nutrients in urban waste streams. The global nutrient cycle, which has sustained humanity throughout our history, has broken down.

Energy dilemma. Advanced farming depends entirely on fossil fuels, which are likely to become very scarce and costly within a generation. At present farmers have few alternative means of producing food other than to grow fuel on their farms — which will reduce food output by 10–20 percent. Many farmers respond to higher costs simply by using less fertilizer or fuel — and so cutting yields. Driven by high energy prices and concerns about climate change, the world is likely to burn around 400 million tonnes (441 million U.S. tons) of grain as biofuels by 2020 — the equivalent of the entire global rice harvest.

Oceans. Marine scientists have warned that ocean fish catches could collapse by the 2040s due to overexploitation of wild stocks. Coral reefs — whose fish help feed about five hundred million people — face decimation under global warming. The world’s oceans are slowly acidifying as carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels dissolves out of the atmosphere, threatening ocean food chains. Fish farms are struggling with pollution and sediment runoff from the land. The inability of the fish sector to meet its share of a doubling in world food demand will throw a heavier burden onto land-based meat industries.

Technology. For three de cades the main engine of the modern food miracle, the international scientific research that boosted crop yields, has been neglected, leading to a decline in productivity gains. Farmers worldwide are heading into a major technology pothole, with less new knowledge available in the medium run to help them to increase output.

Climate. The climate is changing: up to half the planet may face regular drought by the end of the century. “Unnatural disasters” — storms, floods, droughts, and sea-level rise — are predicted to become more frequent and intense, with adventitious impacts on food security, refugee waves, and conflict.

Economics, politics, and trade. Trade barriers and farm subsidies continue to distort world markets, sending the wrong price signals to farmers and discouraging investment in agriculture and its science. The globalization of food has helped drive down prices received by farmers. Speculators have destabilized commodity markets, making it riskier for farmers to make production decisions. Some countries discourage or ban food exports and others tax them, adding to food insecurity. Others pay their farmers to grow fuel instead of food. A sprawling web of health, labor, and environmental regulation is limiting farmers’ freedom to farm.

The collapse in world economic conditions in late 2008 and 2009 has changed the prices of many things, including land, food, fuel, and fertilizer — but has not altered the fact that demand for food continues to grow while limits on its production multiply. Indeed, the economic crash exacerbated hunger among the world’s poor, and has not altered the fundamentals of climate change, water scarcity, population growth, land degradation, or nutrient or oil depletion.

In early 2009 a report by Chatham House, a think tank focused on international affairs, observed that a lower food price “does not mean that policy-makers around the world can start to breathe a sigh of relief. . . . [E]ven at their somewhat diminished levels current prices remain acutely problematic for low-income import-dependent countries and for poor people all over the world. The World Bank estimates that higher food prices have increased the number of undernourished people by as much as 100 million from its pre-price-spike level of 850 million.”

In the medium and longer term, the report warned, food prices were poised to rise again. “Although many policy-makers have taken a degree of comfort from a recent OECD-FAO report on the world’s agricultural outlook to 2017 . . . the report largely overlooked the potential impact of long-term resource scarcity trends, notably climate change, energy security and falling water availability.”

To sum it all up, the challenge facing the world’s 1.8 billion women and men who grow our food is to double their output of food — using far less water, less land, less energy, and less fertilizer. They must accomplish this on low and uncertain returns, with less new technology available, amid more red tape, economic disincentives, and corrupted markets, and in the teeth of spreading drought. Achieving this will require something not far short of a miracle.

Yet humans have done it before and, resilient species that we are, we can do it again. This time, however, it won’t just be a problem for farmers, scientists, and policy makers. It will be a challenge involving every single one of us, in our daily lives, our habits, and our influence at the ballot box and at the supermarket.

It will be the greatest test of our global humanity and our wisdom we have yet faced.

Very sensible - but it does not mention the corrupt organisations such as McDonalds , Coca Cola, Burger King that are the criminals in the ring - heavy advertising to change eating of people so more people are near starving!
SA,

Simple solution to increase food production and to feed the masses.


Adopt free market economics.

Here are the 50 poorest countries in the world guess what they all have in common?


All are either socialist economies are struggling to repair the damage that socialism has caused.

Nobody is starving in a country that has embraced capitalism over a length of time. Population has nothing to do with poverty as some of the most densly populated areas are some of the richest. Hong Kong, Macao, NY,,,,ect

Since when was Haiti ever socialist. The rhum factory has been privately owned for centuries and the land is in private hands.
More aC rubbish - ditto with many other countries.
Haiti has had its democracy undermined by the US
Haiti's "socialist" front organizations funded by Republican groups in USA
FOIAs Reveal IRI working with OPL to facilitate the creation of an anti-Lavalas socialist coalition. FOIAs also reveal USAID $3m program with UNOPS to "even the playing field".

by Jeb Sprague

Recent FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests to USAID show that the International Republican Insitute (IRI) facilitated the creation of a socialist coalition between OPL, PANPRA, KONAKOM, and Ayiti Kapab. Research also shows that Marc Bazin's "moderate lavalas" candidacy has also been facilitated and supported by the IRI.

As recently admitted by their officials, the IRI had a large hand in constructing Marc Bazin's candidacy for presidency. His campaign bringing together "moderate members of Lavalas" has been cited, often as an example in press reports, as showing that Fanmi Lavalas has splintered following the Feb. 2004 ousting of the democratically elected government. IRI has worked continously, to undermine the political process in Haiti.

FOIA research also now shows that the IRI facilitated the creation of a socialist coalition, which includes Paul Denis' OPL. These two factors combined show that the IRI is working to destabilize Lavalas (and I would argue the candidacy of Rene Preval) by strengthening and constructing rival factions. Is this democracy, when neo-conservative political operatives funded by the world's foremost super power, work to undermine the political process of the poorest country in the western hemisphere?

With elections not even underway yet, OPL's Paul Denis has already begun his work to discredit the election (which Rene Preval will most likely win). AHP reports, Paul Denis, "candidate of OPL (Organization of the People in Struggle) on Wednesday again denounced what he termed the lack of determination by the Provisional Electoral Council to make corrections to the electoral process before February 7,006, the date of the first round of the presidential and legislative elections.
(snip/...)
reported 2005!
S,

S.

Good news.


Scientists: We've cracked wheat's genetic code
AP



A close up view of wheat crop, in a field in Acomb, northeast England, Friday, Aug. 27, 2010. British scientists have decoded the genetic sequence of AP – A close up view of wheat crop, in a field in Acomb, northeast England, Friday, Aug. 27, 2010. British …

* Sowing the Seeds of Growth Play Video Climate Change Video:Sowing the Seeds of Growth CNBC

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer Raphael G. Satter, Associated Press Writer – 7 mins ago

LONDON – British scientists have decoded the genetic sequence of wheat — one of the world's oldest and most important crops — a development they hope could help the global staple meet the challenges of climate change, disease and population growth.

Wheat is grown across more of the world's farmland than any other cereal, and researchers said Fridy they're posting its genetic code to the Internet in the hope that farmers can use it as a tool to improve their harvests. One academic in the field called the discovery "a landmark."

"The wheat genome is the holy grail of plant genomes," said Nick Talbot, a professor of biosciences at the University of Exeter who wasn't involved in the research. "It's going to really revolutionize how we breed it."

University of Liverpool scientist Neil Hall, whose team cracked the code, said the information could eventually help farmers better identify genetic variations responsible for disease resistance, drought tolerance and yield. Although the genetic sequence remains a rough draft, and additional strains of wheat need to be analyzed for the work to be truly useful, Hall predicted it wouldn't take long for his work to make an impact in the field.

"Hopefully the benefit of this work will come through in the next five years," he said.

Among the potential benefits of tougher strains of wheat: Lower prices for bread and greater food security for the world's poor.

Wheat is a relative latecomer to the world of DNA mapping. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the date the human genome was laid bare. Other crops have had their genetic codes unscrambled within the past few years — rice in 2005, corn in 2009, and soybeans earlier this year.

The reason for the delay in analyzing wheat's genetic code, Hall said, was that the code is massive — far larger than corn or rice and five times the length of the one carried by humans. One reason for the outsize genome is that strains such as the Chinese spring wheat analyzed by Hall's team carry six copies of the same gene (most creatures carry two.) Another is that wheat has a tangled ancestry, tracing its descent from three different species of wild grass.

But sequencing techniques have improved dramatically over the past decade, and scientists were able to draw up their draft of the code in about a year.

Although the code may yet see use by genetic engineers hoping to craft artificial strains of wheat, Hall was at pains to stress the conventional applications of his work. Until now, breeders seeking to combine the best traits of two strains of wheat would cross pollinate the pair, grow the hybrid crop and hope for the best.

Although the process has been used by farmers since wheat was first cultivated 10,000 years ago, Talbot described it as laborious and inefficient.

"Very often we were talking about 10-15 years of intensive breeding programs," he said. "We're talking now about doing things in less than five."

Talbot noted that rice cultivation had already benefited from the publication of its genetic code — and led to the development of vitamin-enriched and drought-resistant strains. He said that his own field of specialty, the study of the destructive rice blast fungus, had been revolutionized as a result of having the genome sequence.

The cracking of wheat's code comes at a time when prices have shot up in the wake of crop failures in Russia, highlighting how the vagaries of world food production can hit import-dependent countries such as Egypt.

Concerns over climate change, water shortages and population growth have loomed in the background for years. New risks include a mutant form of stem rust. The reddish, wind-borne fungus — known to scientists as Ug99 — has devastated wheat crops in places such as Kenya, where up to 80 percent of the wheat in afflicted farmers' fields have been ruined.

Alexander Evans, an expert in resource scarcity issues at New York University, welcomed the announcement as something that would "very helpful" in getting farmers to grow "food that will meet those challenges."

But, as one British paper hailed the announcement as the most significant breakthrough in wheat farming for 10,000 years, Evans warned against putting too much faith in genetics, saying that reforming the politics and economics of food distribution was easily as important.

"We have to be very careful about saying that science will feed the world," he said.

It is of course greedy fat cats that have led to crisis in food!

Greedy Capitalist Fat
Cats of Goldman Sachs
Translated By Adelina Wan

23 April 2010



Edited by Amy Wong


China - China Daily - Original Article (Chinese)

Story Highlights

Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs recently reported a second quarter profit of $3.44 billion, almost double the amount from last year. Western countries are now slamming the investment banking giant of Wall Street. Can they really make the greedy capitalist firm pay the price for its misdeeds and answer to the suffering masses? The answer is still a big question mark.

Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs recently reported a second quarter profit of $3.44 billion, almost double the amount from last year. The tremendous profit figure cannot chase away the looming shadows, however. Last Friday, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Goldman Sachs of fraud, alleging that the bank misled its clients in financial derivative investments. Other countries like England and Germany also launched investigations into Goldman Sachs. It seems like the U.S. and its European counterparts are pursuing the culprits of the financial crisis.

Goldman Sachs asked for it. The investigation as a means to eliminate Wall Street “criminals” is only the tip of the iceberg. The instigators of the financial crisis caused great damage to global economic development and to the livelihoods of ordinary citizens, but they have never shown any remorse, as exhibited by their attitude since the onset of the crisis. They have even tried to blame others and shift responsibility to other countries. Nonetheless, under strong internal and external economic and moral pressure, financial regulators have been forced to investigate one of the giants.

The performance of Wall Street during the financial crisis warns us that we need to deepen our knowledge of capitalism. On one hand, capitalism has a positive function in regulating markets and allocating resources. On the other hand, the motivation of profit may lead to economic imbalances, possibly resulting in a serious crisis. In the past, we have had a negative impression of capitalism and have even resisted it. This is not the right attitude. In recent years, however, more and more people have blindly followed and cherished the power of capitalism; this is also an unacceptable attitude. We must benefit from the positives and avoid the negatives. It is necessary to create conditions so that capitalism can function properly, but regulations are also required to minimize the negative impact of motivation by profit.

A capitalist system, bent on fame and fortune, can never shed its greedy nature. The United States’ financial structure allows for unrestricted capital investment and profiting from other people’s wealth. Last year, Bernie Madoff was sent to prison as a scapegoat. No one would have questioned his investment strategies or his integrity were it not for the outbreak of the financial crisis, and it is nearly impossible to investigate Goldman Sachs to the fullest extent. It is still an unanswered question as to whether the Western countries’ populist revolt against Wall Street can effectively force the greedy capitalists to pay for its misdeeds and appease the suffering masses.


Translated from China Today.

http://watchingamerica.com/News/53633/greedy-capitalist-fat-cats-of-goldman-sachs/

S.

abc eat less think of the others

Sure thing - and only buy local food!
S.