Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

[Rajiv]

Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

“In early 2008, Saudi Arabia announced that, after being self-sufficient in wheat for over 20 years, the non-replenishable aquifer it had been pumping for irrigation was largely depleted,” writes Lester R. Brown in his new book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (W.W. Norton & Company).

“In response, officials said they would reduce their wheat harvest by one eighth each year until production would cease entirely in 2016. The Saudis then plan to use their oil wealth to import virtually all the grain consumed by their Canada-sized population of nearly 30 million people,” notes Brown, President and Founder of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based independent environmental research organization.

“The Saudis are unique in being so wholly dependent on irrigation,” says Brown in Plan B 4.0. But other, far larger, grain producers such as India and China are facing irrigation water losses and could face grain production declines.

A World Bank study of India’s water balance notes that 15 percent of its grain harvest is produced by overpumping. In human terms, 175 million Indians are being fed with grain produced from wells that will be going dry. The comparable number for China is 130 million. Among the many other countries facing harvest reductions from groundwater depletion are Pakistan, Iran, and Yemen.

“The tripling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices between mid-2006 and mid-2008 signaled our growing vulnerability to food shortages,” says Brown. “It took the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression to lower grain prices.”
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[GRG55]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

Agriculture, and the goal of self-sufficiency in food, has been one of the most durable sacred cows of government policy for eons. It manifests itself in various forms of subsidies, quotas, tariffs, non-tariff barriers, marketing boards, and so forth. It also manifests itself in the favoured position that agriculture has secured for itself over water access in so many jurisdictions.

Every time I flew over the Saudi peninsula I used to marvel at the size of the green crop circles from the huge irrigation pivots in the middle of the Saudi desert - easily visible from an airliner at altitude. I doubt anybody with a functioning brain cell ever thought it made sense for Saudi Arabia to use its groundwater to grow high water demand crops like alfalfa, which they then feed to dairy cattle in order to achieve the political goal of self sufficiency in milk production. This would be the equivalent of Canada using natural gas to heat greenhouses to grow oranges and bananas in winter, instead of trading the natural gas for imports of those foods.

In the same way that mankind has wasted significant amounts of its petroleum legacy during decades of underpricing, cheap and easy to access water has been equally squandered. The key difference is that the water is still with us, it doesn't "disappear". In the same way that it really doesn't take much behaviour change for someone in the USA or Canada to reduce their gasoline consumption by 10% [or more], there's lots we could do quite easily in the developed economies to materially reduce the demand we place on water treatment systems that source from our rivers and acquifers. Recycling bath and shower water [after recovering the heat] for toilet flushing in our homes is one relatively simple modification that would make a measurable difference.

But as long as agriculture maintains its favoured access everything else we do is just playing around the fringes.

[Rajiv]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

Here is Lester Brown giving the Ceres Keynote address in May 2009

45 min

Lester Brown (Ceres Conference 2009) from Ceres on Vimeo.

[ggirod]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

Peak Cheap - Fill in the blank -
from the article:

“Past decades have witnessed world grain price surges, but they were event-driven—a drought in the former Soviet Union, a monsoon failure in India, or a crop-withering heat wave in the U.S. Corn Belt. This most recent price surge was trend-driven, the result of our failure to reverse the environmental trends that are undermining world food production.”

Doesn't this sound like peak cheap oil?

“The world’s mountain glaciers have shrunk for 18 consecutive years. Many smaller glaciers have disappeared. Nowhere is the melting more alarming than in the Himalayas and on the Tibetan plateau where the ice melt from glaciers sustains not only the dry-season flow of the Indus, Ganges, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers but also the irrigation systems that depend on them. Without these glaciers, many Asian rivers would cease to flow during the dry season.”

Even to the point of there being a predictable decrease in supply?

China is the world’s leading wheat producer. India is second. (The United States is third.)

Surprise, huh? Ya mean the "Breadbasket of the world" won't carry the day any more? Well, if you want to sleep well, avoid downloading and reading the Climate Impacts Report because its predictions will disturb your peace of mind. Gee, it's not just China and India who will suffer? Ya mean the US corn and wheat belts will dry out and crops will be more likely to fail?

Sadly, the report teases us with two options, a high emissions scenario in which global temperatures rise dramatically and a less severe scenario in which humanity breaks with tradition, joins together in an unprecedented manner, and attacks the problem quickly, vigorously, and effectively. Depending on what you believe, the less severe scenario, based on the idea that the warming is anthropomorphic, is highly unlikely for two reasons. First of all, lots of people believe that warming is not anthropomorphic ... and second the liklihood of people attacking the problem productively while increasing portions of the world starve is highly unlikely. Draining the swamp is for forward thinking people -- the rest of humanity gets to be up to their a** in alligators.

None of the solutions to food shortages is simple. Consider in the fossil fuel content in modern food production and the added idea of peak cheap oil is just a bit disturbing.

Gazing in the crystal ball - Developed nations will do quite well because they can stop their profligate waste of both energy and food and recover some food supply to feed themselves. Livestock production will shrink because the price of meat raised with world wheat and corn prices will be prohibitive. Decreased use of grain for livestock will result in more people being able to eat. Protein rich legumes will have to replace a lot of the meat supply, and that will change the priority of crops to be raised. As oil increases in price transportation of food around the globe will decrease and people will eat much more locally produced and preserved foods and fewer fresh foods. Those blessed with year-round food production climates as well as adequate water will prosper but will still pay world prices for fresh foods. Living south of Canada it will be easy to get the grains we can no longer produce in our hot, drought infested fields by train transportation, but the US will likely not be able to feed itself alone, particularly by the end of the century.

As time goes on and food prices continue to rise greater investments in hydroponics, greenhouses, crop production centers in cooler climates heated in winter by waste heat from nuclear plants, and other solutions to food supply will start. People will raise more of their own labor intensive foods, like fresh vegetables in season, since transportation will price mass produced food out of the market. For the US with only a minor shortfall, supplementing a viable food base is relatively simple. For other nations, survival will be their focus.

In any case, like we do with oil, we will pay a high world price for food and we would be well advised to keep our currency viable.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

For those parts of the US north of the Mason-Dixon line, especially the part east of the Mississippi, it's hard to imagine we couldn't grow food, brew beer and get along quite nicely. That said, it seems to me all such broad global problems have the same root cause -too many monkeys on the rock (i.e., overpopulation).

[Rajiv]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

Tacking on one more article that is relevant to this debate -- Richard Heinberg's Dilemma and Denial

couple of weeks ago Jerry Mander and I were discussing the best word to use in the heading for the back cover copy of a new short book being co-published by International Forum on Globalization and Post Carbon Institute, Searching for a Miracle: "Net Energy" and the Fate of Industrial Societies (I wrote the main text, Jerry wrote the Foreword). Jerry liked the word "conundrum," while I argued for "dilemma." We were in basic agreement, though, about a word we didn't want: "problem." Problems can be solved; humanity's energy and environmental crises will not be "solved," in the sense that there is no realistic strategy that will enable us to continue, as we have for the past few decades, to enjoy continuous growth in population and in consumption of resources and use of energy. If we are to survive, we will have to accept profound and fundamental changes to our economies and lifestyles.
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This is not how we would like things to be. We want problems with solutions.

Problem: climate change. Solution: renewable energy.
Problem: poverty. Solution: more economic growth (a rising tide will lift all boats, we are told).
Problem: slow economic growth. Solution: more cheap energy (i.e., coal).

As should already be evident, the "problem" mindset can be maintained, in the current instance, only by narrowing our focus to just one variable. As soon as we begin to take multiple variables into account—population, economic instability and inequality, climate change, resource depletion, limits to capital investment—it quickly becomes apparent that some "solutions" just exacerbate other "problems."
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[BadJuju]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

Topsoil loss is a major concern of mine as well.

[ggirod]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

In framing the dilemma, the author finally reached this fork in the road ...
(from the article)

A more comprehensive statement of our choice might be this:

• Dead planet and dead economy (if insufficient effort is mustered toward reducing carbon emissions, population, and consumption)
• vs. crippled planet (so much climate change, and so many species extinctions are already in the pipeline and cannot now be averted, that a healthy planet is just no longer a real possibility, for at least the next many decades) and sharply downsized economy (if we do reduce carbon emissions, population, and consumption, that will constitute a form of economic contraction that will mean the end of prosperity as we have come to think of it).

I am concerned that, while the two alternatives might be realistic at some point because of inaction, I think there are possibilities that occur before that. Though the authors try to escape denial in its many forms, this alternative is disturbingly like TEOTWAWKI and it is its own form of denial.

People cannot get their heads wrapped around the problem because nobody communicates what it means in their lives. Instead it is this abstract fear-inducing catastrophe ahead that many can deny for their own reasons, and others can manipulate for theirs. Instead of focusing on prevention of a dilemma that few people really comprehend, maybe it is time, first, to deal with planning for the consequences of inaction. That is not a bad idea anyway because as things stand, inaction is the most likely response for the coming decade anyway, so it is not unrealistic to plan ahead.

When trying to understand what is wrong with their car, a repair customer will ask - "what does it take to fix it?", with the implicit understanding that it would be easier to comprehend that than the root cause in the engine. Similarly, answering "What will it take for humanity to survive?" will communicate to many people the multifaceted nature of the problem.

I think there is a serious problem with public comprehension of global warming because people are not encouraged to understand and accept the constraints. An engineer can not convert a dilemma into a series of workable problems without constraints on the solutions. Without constraints, the solution space expands forever with possibilities and no action is possible. So, instead, maybe people should start working on the problem of adaptation and means to adapt without making the problem worse.

One small element of the dilemma is that warming increases air temperature which increases water carrying capacity and humidity but reduces rainfall in many areas. So, areas that are optimally warm for raising food lack water and areas that are too cool because of northern locations get plenty of water from rain ....

So, here is one example - One problem from the dilemma is fresh produce supply

1. Scope is North America (other continents are on their own)
2. The delivery date for the solution is, let's say, 2025, which is a time by which we are going to be hurting from peak cheap oil, water will be more scarce in California, and transportation will become more expensive, not to mention the extra CO2. Droughts and high temperatures will start impacting some farmland in the central US, aquifers will be running low, and it will be clear by then that the situation will get considerably worse.
3. Requirements/Constraints are: minimum use of fossil fuels, clean ground transportation for the product to market, minimal environmental impact, modern, clean contamination free product.
4. Human labor is preferred to automation except cases in which the task is dangerous or extreme precision is required.
5. Solution should be engineered for a productive lifetime until at least 2100 or beyond and assume the worst predicted climate conditions for that year.
6. Contributions to solving other problems, such as selling excess energy, can be considered in the payback of the solution.
7. Payback for the investment should be via the revenues that once went to California and the southwest US but will then be reduced there because of limitations in irrigation and water supply.

Simple enough? Note that the requirements start educating the public concerning what life is projected to be like. They will become aware that California is running out of water and their agriculture will be reduced, that the midwest bread basket will be having trouble, that irrigation to accomodate droughts is limited, that transportation is a serious consideration, and that by 2100 things will be really gnarly. Further, as they see the solution, it becomes apparent that food will be a bit more costly.

One solution within the constraints is to develop hydroponic produce factories in the rather far north of Canada* powered by nuclear reactors designed from the outset to produce "waste" energy for consumption in producing food. In fact, the primary purpose of the reactor is fueling the production and its community of workers. A string of reactors could power huge produce production with artificial light and everything else needed while selling excess electricity in the summer to the locations, like Chicago, that would be experiencing regular deadly 100+F heat waves and would need air conditioning. Rail lines coming from the facilities to meet existing rail would provide low impact transport for the products and maybe electric trains would be justified for the steady flow of product southward.

Additional opportunity - for areas with adequate water and sunlight is it possible to use the waste heat of a reactor that is peaking to cool major cities in the US to heat water for optimum growing conditions in rice paddies? Hmmmm.

A good part of my concern is that people are not framing solutions to the huge number of problems we face in the known future ... no matter what we do the die is cast. CO2 will change our lives dramatically and there is already plenty in place to mess up the planet. If we start to describe the alligators biting our future backsides, eventually people might decide to work to drain the CO2 swamp.

*the farther north it is, the less problem it is to provide cooling for the reactors both summer and winter, so that environmental impacts of the facilities would be minimal. Also, land is readily available and uninhabited but existing and expanded populations could work there. Finally, the cooler the climate the more condensation of humidity will occur, so there should be reliable supplies of fresh water from rainfall/precipitation, if nothing else.

[GRG55]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

Agriculture, and the goal of self-sufficiency in food, has been one of the most durable sacred cows of government policy for eons. It manifests itself in various forms of subsidies, quotas, tariffs, non-tariff barriers, marketing boards, and so forth. It also manifests itself in the favoured position that agriculture has secured for itself over water access in so many jurisdictions...

...But as long as agriculture maintains its favoured access everything else we do is just playing around the fringes.

The USA goes backwards once again; but this time it's a good thing.

Agriculture's grip on water is loosened just a wee bit...but not without an extended, bitter fight first.

Dam breaching celebrated on famed Rogue River

Oct 10, 8:12 PM EDT

ROGUE RIVER, Ore. (AP) -- The wild and scenic Rogue River has become even wilder with the demolition of a dam that had hindered passage of salmon and steelhead to their spawning grounds for 88 years.

A flotilla of some 80 people in rafts, driftboats and kayaks celebrated the breaching of the Savage Rapids Dam on Saturday by floating through the remains of the concrete structure in southwest Oregon...

...The battles to restore the waterway started in 1988, when the conservation group WaterWatch, which organized the celebration, Rogue Fly Fishers and the American Fisheries Society filed a protest to stop the irrigation district from drawing more water from the Rogue.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation took a look and decided the cheapest and best solution to provide water efficiently without harming fish was to remove the dam and replace it with pumps.

The irrigation district initially went along, but later flip-flopped and fought to save the dam. Lawsuits were filed. Battles flared in the state Capitol. The Rogue's coho salmon were declared a threatened species, and more lawsuits were filed.

By 2001, after losing every lawsuit and spending more than $1 million on legal fees, the district agreed to remove the dam. The next year the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board pledged $3 million, and a year later Congress started approving funding that would eventually cover the rest of the $39.3 million cost.

"One reason this project took so long is people had to adjust their notions of what progress was," said John DeVoe of Portland, executive director of WaterWatch. "There was a lot of opposition to removing the dam because it was viewed as a symbol of progress."...

...Another old diversion dam, Gold Ray near the city of Gold Hill, is likely to join Savage Rapids soon. The NOAA has offered federal stimulus money to help with the cost. Another small diversion dam at Gold Hill has already come out. And a half-built dam on a major tributary, Elk Creek, has been notched.

"This is the greatest number of significant dam removals in the country," said WaterWatch spokesman Jim McCarthy...

[GRG55]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

The USA goes backwards once again; but this time it's a good thing.

Agriculture's grip on water is loosened just a wee bit...but not without an extended, bitter fight first.

Then again, maybe not...

Calif. lawmakers again fail to reach water deal

Oct 10, 11:25 PM EDT

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- California lawmakers met again Saturday in hopes of reaching a deal to upgrade the state's decades-old water system, but left without resolving a handful of major outstanding issues...

..."Sadly, there's little in the way of progress," Assembly Minority Leader Sam Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo, said as he left the meeting. He said the latest proposal would "create a vast new government bureaucracy."...

...Last month, Democrats presented a $12 billion package that sought to improve how water is used, delivered and stored in California. It died after Republicans complained that it failed to provide assurances that dams would be built, a key demand of the governor and GOP lawmakers...

[Starving Steve]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

The world now has to use atomic power to de-salinate and pump sea-water up into its aquifers. There is no alternative except to go against human nature and religious teaching: Stop the flocking. (We aren't birds.)

I just saw one woman in her late 20s or early 30s here in Watsonville, California. She was pushing a baby-carriage ( while crossing a busy street ) with seven children tagging along all around her, and she had "a bun in the oven" to boot. Her smallest child, on-foot, was playfully tagging along, not much more than 16 or 18 inches tall, and never-the-less, crossing in the crosswalk with the rest of its sibblings.... I think the mother came here from Baja California, so good for her!... Y !Bienvenidos!

Her husband (the father) was probably working in the local fields around Watsonville, picking berries or lettuce to support the family. But the point is: Where is the water going to come from to sustain California and Baja California unless we have atomic power and de-salinization of sea-water? Either that water plan, or less flocking, or both plans together; otherwise, we are doomed to starve and die of thirst.

[rabot10]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

Steve U should be able to get your answers from the communist manifesto, I’m sure you have a few copies.

[ggirod]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

From Starving Steve:

Where is the water going to come from to sustain California and Baja California unless we have atomic power and de-salinization of sea-water? Either that water plan, or less flocking, or both plans together; otherwise, we are doomed to starve and die of thirst.

A Very good question. The answer starts with the admission that California and a lot of the west stands to have declining water supplies going forward and they need to start planning and dealing with it. And, no, the Communist Manifesto is probably not particularly useful in this context. Nor are the "fugeddaboutit" attitudes of the ostriches whose heads are firmly in the sand.

Nukes desalinating seawater might work but filling aquifers is an excellent way to encourage people to continue using "unlimited" water while if new water were to go to developed areas with municipal water, the developed areas could quit pumping aquifer water and, incidentally, pay the actual price for their water (ahhhh. there's the rub). Then the rural areas could either conserve the remaining water, establish pipelines, infrastructure, and payments, or see their aquifer drop to the bottom. If the aquifer is just refilled the users will take as much as they want, tragedy of the commons and failure will follow, pretty much no matter how much new water is provided.

The following is my attempt to be "fair and balanced" on the topic of California agriculture ... :-) On the face of it, using scarce water reserves to create rice paddies would seem silly, bordering on stupid. But, it turns out that stupidity and maybe insanity is relative. Making a rice paddy requires only 25 gallons of water to produce a serving of rice, the same as raising oranges, while almonds take 80 gallons for a (rather small, physically) serving. Now, one needs to consider that without oranges, scurvy is just around the corner, almonds have all sorts of terribly useful nutrients hanging out in their fats and proteins, and rice (especially that whole grain basmati variety rice that smells like popcorn when cooked and tastes absolutely wonderful) that it is obvious that many products of CA are quite useful. In fact, raising rice in a seemingly water-conserving fashion seems quite amazing, not unlike nuke plants providing lots of fresh water from seawater.

Now, if everybody realized that the huge, juicy, sweet, thick skinned, and basically exquisite orange that they ate in December and January took 25 gallons of scarce water plus a good measure of jet fuel, to ship it to their NJ or OH or MI or MO supermarket, it would be a sobering thought. In fact, reasonably priced 8 pound bags of those oranges encourage people to have a two month orgasm of citrus delight.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.... I partook to excess of the pleasures of the flesh ... the pleasures of a huge juicy orange flesh that could be eaten without any apparent dietary guilt ... but the devil made me do it ... I myself, with my excess wealth and evil desires, consumed well beyond my share of the earth's plenty while others suffered in poverty. Oh, by the way, ditto for my consumption of out of local season broccoli, celery, carrots, lettuce, spinich, et. al.

Ultimately I know it will come down to my sacred oranges versus the survival of some people in California. Yes, in one sense I realize that, 50 years ago, when I was but a little sprout, a huge, succulent, thick skinned orange lay in delightful wait at the bottom of my Christmas stocking, an incredible treat once a year that Santa delivered to my bedstead. As such, the environmental impact on a California still relatively sparsely populated was minimal.

Now, fleets of aircraft fly almost continuously (they have to, I estimated the numbers) to deliver the oranges and other (ok if you don't believe -- add in the almonds, broccoli, lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, avacado, and peppers ... ) output of California to people who appreciate them once, as I did as a child, or 20 times with Costco bags of California oranges for $10.97 (not the current actual price, just a recollected estimate) as I used to as an adult. Now, I forego the pleasures of excessive (please see "Animal Farm" for definition of excessive) oranges or whole grain Basmati rice in favor of the very same worthy people Starving Steve described crossing the street.

So, I would like to emphasize that, in the opinion of this solitary mortal in the far north central states, the problem is not simple, the solutions will not be either, and somehow we have to solve the problem. I still want an orange or two ... or three? every year to remember my childhood, so eliminating orange production is not permitted. So, get to work on it! Steve - good idea, just make sure my oranges are preserved in perpetuity .

[ggirod]

Re: Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?

The impact of water shortage is already being felt .....
(sorry in advance for the sensationalism in the video)
[media][/media]