[Vision2020] Fwd: Earth Policy news: Wakeup Call on the Food Front

[Tom Trail]

>Visionaries:


The following article by Lester Brown outlines the impact of the water table
in Northern China which is falling by 3 -10 feet per year.

Rep. Tom Trail

>WAKEUP CALL ON THE FOOD FRONT
>http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update31.htm
>
>Lester R. Brown
>(This piece first appeared in the Washington Post on Sunday, December 15,
>2003, entitled "Dry, With a Chance of a Grain Shortage.")
>
>
>While Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and President Bush discussed Taiwan,
>currency rates and North Korea on December 9, a more important and
>far-reaching development in U.S.-China relations was going on far from the
>White House.
>
>Under the North China Plain, which produces half of China's wheat and a
>third of its corn, water tables are falling by 3 to 10 feet per year. Along
>with rising temperatures and the loss of cropland to non-farm uses, this
>trend is shrinking the Chinese grain harvest, which has fallen in four of
>the past five years. To get an idea of the magnitude, the harvest dropped by
>66 million tons during that period, an amount that exceeds the total annual
>grain harvest of Canada, one of the world's leading grain exporters.
>
>Thus far China has covered its growing grain shortfall by drawing down its
>once-massive stocks. It can do this for perhaps one more year before those
>stocks are depleted. Then it will have to turn to the world market for major
>purchases. The odds are that within the next few years the United States
>will be loading two or three ships per day with grain destined for China.
>This long line of ships stretching across the Pacific will function like a
>huge umbilical cord between the two countries.
>
>This isn't only a question of U.S.-China relations, but also one of the
>relationship between the Earth's 6.3 billion people and its natural
>resources, especially water. Food production is a water-intensive process.
>Producing a ton of grain requires a thousand tons of water, which helps
>explain why 70 percent of all water diverted from rivers or pumped from
>underground goes for irrigation.
>
>The tripling of world water demand over the past half-century, combined with
>the advent of diesel and electrically driven pumps, has led to extensive
>overpumping of aquifers. As a result, more than half the world's people now
>live in countries where water tables are falling and wells are going dry.
>Among these countries are the three that account for half of the world grain
>harvest: China, India and the United States. In India, water tables are
>falling in most states, including the Punjab, that nation's breadbasket. In
>the United States, aquifers are being depleted under the southern Great
>Plains and throughout the Southwest, including California.
>
>If the world is facing a future of water shortages, then it is also facing a
>future of food shortages.
>
>To be sure, it is difficult to trace long-term trends in food production,
>which fluctuates with weather, prices and the spread of farm technology to
>developing countries. In one of the major economic achievements of the last
>half-century, China raised its grain output from 90 million tons in 1950 to
>392 million tons in 1998. Since then, though, China's production appears to
>have peaked, dropping by 66 million tons, or 17 percent.  (See data
>http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update31_data.htm.)
>
>As a result, it seems likely that China will ultimately need to buy 30, 40
>or 50 million tons of grain a year, and then it will have to turn to the
>United States, which accounts for nearly half of the world's grain exports.
>Imports on this unprecedented scale will create a fascinating geopolitical
>situation: China, with 1.3 billion consumers and foreign exchange reserves
>of $384 billion-enough to buy the entire U.S. grain harvest eight times
>over-will suddenly be competing with American consumers for U.S. grain, in
>all likelihood driving up food prices.
>
>For the first time in their history, the Chinese will be dependent on the
>outside world for food supplies. And U.S. consumers will realize that, like
>it or not, they will be sharing their food with Chinese consumers.
>
>Managing the flow of grain to satisfy the needs of both countries
>simultaneously will not be easy because it could come amid a shift from a
>world of chronic food surpluses to one of food scarcity. Exporters will be
>tempted to restrict the flow of grain in order to maintain price stability
>at home, as the United States did 30 years ago when world grain stocks were
>at record lows and wheat and rice prices doubled. But today the United
>States has a major stake in a stable China because China is a major trading
>partner whose large economy is the locomotive of Asia.
>
>The pressure on world food markets may alter the relationship between
>exporting and importing countries, changing the focus of international trade
>negotiations from greater access to markets for exporting countries such as
>the United States to assured access to food supplies for China and the 100
>or so countries that already import grain.
>
>The prospect of food and water scarcity emerges against a backdrop of
>concern about global warming. New research by crop ecologists at the
>International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and at the U.S.
>Department of Agriculture indicates that a 1-degree-Celsius rise in
>temperature (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above the optimum during the growing
>season leads to a 10 percent decline in yields of rice, wheat and corn. With
>four of the past six years being the warmest on record, grain harvests are
>suffering. High temperatures lowered harvests last year in India and the
>United States and scorched crops this year from France to Ukraine.
>
>The new combination of falling water tables and rising temperatures, along
>with trends such as soil erosion, has led to four consecutive shortfalls in
>the world grain harvest. This year production fell short of consumption by a
>record 92 million tons. These shortages have reduced world grain stocks to
>their lowest levels in 30 years.
>
>If we have a shortfall in 2004 that is even half the size of this year's,
>food prices will be rising worldwide by this time next year. You won't have
>to read about it in the commodity pages. It will be evident at the
>supermarket checkout counter. During the fall of 2003, wheat and rice prices
>rose 10 percent to 30 percent in world markets, and even more in some parts
>of China. These rises may only be the warning tremors before the earthquake.
>
>We can, however, take measures to improve world food security. We could
>recognize that population growth and environmental trends threaten economic
>progress and political stability just as terrorism does. Since the
>overwhelming majority of the nearly 3 billion people expected to be born
>during this half-century will be in countries where water tables are already
>falling and wells are running dry, filling the family planning gap and
>creating a social environment to foster smaller families is urgent.
>
>The situation with water today is new, but similar to that with land a
>half-century ago. Coming out of World War II, we looked toward the end of
>the century and saw enormous projected growth in population but little new
>land to plow. The result was a concentrated international effort to raise
>land productivity; boosting the world grain yields from just over one ton
>per hectare in 1950 to nearly three tons today. We now need a similar global
>full-court press to raise water productivity, by shifting to more
>water-efficient crops, improving irrigation and recycling urban water
>supplies.
>
>As it becomes apparent that higher temperatures are shrinking harvests and
>raising food prices, a powerful new consumer lobby could emerge in support
>of cutting carbon emissions by moving to a hydrogen-based economy. It is a
>commentary on the complexity of our time that decisions made in ministries
>of energy may have a greater effect on future food security than those made
>in ministries of agriculture.
>
>#      #      #
>
>For a more detailed discussion see Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress
>and a Civilization in Trouble.
>
>Additional data and information sources at www.earth-policy.org
>or contact jlarsen@earth-policy.org
>For reprint permission contact rjkauffman@earth-policy.org
>
>To remove your name, send email to <public-request@earth-policy.org> with
>unsubscribe as the message.

-- 
Dr. Tom Trail
International Trails
1375 Mt. View Rd.
Moscow, Id. 83843
Tel:  (208) 882-6077
Fax:  (208) 882-0896
e mail ttrail@moscow.com