Here in the United States, we grow 44 percent of the world's corn crop, and 38 percent of its soy. For the great bulk of that massive harvest, we rely on a single region: the Midwestern farm belt. And over the past couple of weeks, torrential rains have hammered that area, at a particularly sensitive time for its grand swath of corn and soybean plants.
An unusually wet spring had already pushed farmers to plant their crops late and forced them to keep some land fallow. With the recent deluge, a bad situation has turned worse. The rains have not only damaged crops, they've also washed away untold tons of fertilizer, which leach into groundwater and eventually flow through the Mississippi clear down to the Gulf of Mexico. There, the fertilizer won't feed crops; instead, in a double blow to food production, it will nourish a vast algae bloom blotting out sea life that would otherwise have contributed to a once-bountiful fishery.
As a result of this soggy situation, corn yields will plummet, the USDA reports [PDF]. And that's bad news for the billions of people who rely on the global food system for sustenance.
Back in February, a fertilizer executive was already waxing darkly about trends in food production: "If you had any major upset where you didn't have a crop in a major growing agricultural region this year, I believe you'd see famine," William Doyle, CEO of Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan, told Bloomberg News.
Mulling over depleted global grain stores, ramped-up U.S. and European mandates for turning food crops into biofuel, and rising demand for grain in Asia, Doyle declared that the global food system had no margin for error. "We keep going to the cupboard without replacing, and so there is enormous pressure on agriculture to have a record crop every year," he said. "We need to have a record crop in 2008 just to stay even with this very low inventory situation."
Since that time, we've seen images of people in places like Haiti desperately scrounging in garbage dumps for food, because they could no longer afford to buy it. And now comes news that prospects for the coming harvests of corn, soy, and wheat -- the holy trifecta of our globalized food system -- are looking grim indeed.
When It Rains, It Pours
Think food prices are high? Fasten your seatbelt -- and prepare to tighten it. The bad weather combined with dubious federal policies means we're ... well, shucked.
In the past, societies stored grain precisely because agriculture has always been such a fickle food provider. A few decades ago, the U.S. began testing a new theory: sell off grain reserves and let "market forces" ensure there's enough food for everyone. Our policymakers have become so enamored of the idea that they've managed to convince many countries in the global south to do the same -- often with the help of the International Monetary Fund and its famed "structural adjustment" packages.
More recently, our leaders have combined the no-grain-storage decree with another, deeply contradictory experiment: using heavy-handed subsidies and mandates (what happened to "market forces"?) to ensure that a large and growing chunk of our farm bounty be turned into car fuel.
Combined, those policies have brought us to the present pass: As our friend the fertilizer executive reminds us, feeding the world now requires that the weather cooperate, every year. That's a tough row to hoe, given that climate change seems set to make weather patterns increasingly erratic. And as we're seeing this summer, it doesn't take much to make things come unhinged.
In response to the rains, investors have driven up corn prices to levels never seen before. By Wednesday afternoon, corn was trading above $7 per bushel -- an astonishing 75 percent rise since last June. Just three years ago, a bushel of corn fetched less than $2. The same factors have ramped up soy prices as well.
And the worst may be yet to come. Weather reports suggest that the Midwest's wet spell may last through the month. If that happens, surviving plants will have a tough time developing deep roots, making them vulnerable to a dry spell later in the summer. If a soggy June turns into a bone-dry July and August, corn and soy prices will likely spike anew.
Meanwhile, wheat prices have held relatively steady -- most of the U.S. wheat crop lies outside the area currently under water. But the same factor that pushed global wheat prices to all-time highs last year -- a persistent drought in Australia's wheat belt -- may be rearing up again. The New York Times reported recently that a new burst of dry weather in Australia could lead to another shortfall in its wheat output -- and push prices back into the stratosphere.
And that's not all. While conditions are too dry in Australia, Chinese farmers, like their U.S. counterparts, are bracing for hard rain. According to the Times, China's agriculture ministry "issued an urgent notice to wheat and rice farmers in southern China on Sunday, telling them to harvest as much of their crop as possible immediately in the face of unseasonable torrential rains expected to rake the region for the next 10 days."
At this point, given how much there already is to worry about, it's probably best not to think about the new fungal strain that, according to The Wall Street Journal, threatens to eviscerate wheat crops in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.
No Piece of Cake
When fertilizer magnate Doyle predicted famine if global agriculture didn't hit on all cylinders this year, he probably wasn't talking about the industrial nations of North America and Western Europe. Despite our increasingly enfeebled economy, most Americans still command enough wealth to procure sufficient calories even if prices rise dramatically. Likely, Doyle meant the world's 850 million people who live in conditions of persistent hunger, mostly in the southern hemisphere. For them -- many of whom have been essentially evicted from productive farmland and pushed into cities over the past few decades -- spikes in food prices spell devastation.
But here in the United States, too, hard times seem imminent. No one can envy the 10.9 percent of U.S. families who already lacked sufficient access to food as of 2006. That number will surely grow as the economy weakens.
Bad weather and big ag are tossing shoppers around.
And you don't have to be poor to feel the pinch of higher grocery bills. "You know those complaints you've been hearing about high food prices? They've just begun," a commodity trader told The New York Times Thursday.
As the food crisis plays out, we're likely to hear more and more pitches from agribusiness giants who promise that if we simply play by their rules, everything will be just fine. Just last week, the biotech giant Monsanto -- which dominates the global seed markets for corn, soy, and cotton -- announced its intention to double yields for its "core crops" by 2030, all the while reducing "by one-third the amount of key resources" required to grow them.
To do so, Monsanto and its allies are stockpiling patents for so-called "climate ready" genes that will ostensibly equip plants to withstand severe weather. "In the face of climate chaos and a deepening world food crisis, the Gene Giants are gearing up for a PR offensive to re-brand themselves as climate saviors," writes the watchdog outfit ETC Group in a recent report. "The focus on so-called climate-ready genes is a golden opportunity to push genetically engineered crops as a silver bullet solution to climate change."
If the current crisis has taught us one thing, it's that food production needs to become more diversified and dispersed, not concentrated ever more tightly into fewer and fewer hands. Here's my alternative to Monsanto's vision: Let's end the biofuel mandates and subsidies -- currently eating up around $13 billion per year in taxpayer cash -- and invest the savings in grain storage and the infrastructure required to really revive local and regional food production.
Of course, Monsanto can lavish a cool $1.3 million on Washington lobbyists each quarter, and all I've got is this stinkin' column.
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Comments View as Flat
PermieWriter Posted 3:46 am
13 Jun 2008
A technicolor suggestion
Since this administration takes its Bible so seriously, have someone tell them the dream about the thin cow and the fat cow. It worked in that story.
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ecofriend27 Posted 4:28 am
13 Jun 2008
"One dollar, one vote"
As this title, derived from Ha-Joon Chang's seminal book, "Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism" suggests, our current capitalist system is marred by special interests. The fact that a corporation like Monsanto can procure the funds to hire expensive lobby firms is ludicrous. There is absolutely no sense of democracy in such a procedure. Monsanto's power is akin to the fact that we invest billions into the research and development of drugs that treat erectile dysfunction, yet leave a relative pittance for developing drugs that treat tuberculosis, despite the fact that tuberculosis consistently devastates millions.
That said, Mr. Philpott has it right; we need decentralized agricultural production. We need to bring crop yield to the community level again. Cuba is a prime example of such a "reverse process" and has actually thrived with regards to crop yield and overall physical well-being. Let us learn from history and reshape how we approach our most vital resources.
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MAD MAC Posted 5:27 am
13 Jun 2008
Well, you guys should have had more forsight
I moved to a part of Thailand that produces a lot of food for export. We've had a good rainy season this year, which rice just loves. The rice fields are nice and green right now......... all those price shocks affecting everyone else..... I am buying rice from my father in law (a rice farmer) at a dollar a kilo. Have big sacks of it out back. My thanks for having purchased a second rice farm for him five years ago. Fresh chicken, eggs......... all cheap.
Have you ever noticed that with environmentalists, the sky is ALWAYS falling?
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mtvyfan Posted 5:57 am
13 Jun 2008
Grow a garden and don't buy Monsanto's hype
Monsanto has lied to the US and farmer's for decades now. They promised high yields with their current line of GMO seeds and the fact is that they DO NOT increase yields, only the amount of pesticides you can spray on them without harming the plant. Monsanto is not the answer and never was. If you really want to see what their business tactics are and how little they care about your or my health go to You Tube and search for "The World According to Monsanto" and wake up with nightmares like I did.
If you really want to help your food budget, grow your own garden. Anyone can do this regardless if you have a plot of land or not. Please use organically produced seeds if you can and enjoy the fruits of your labors. Self-sufficiency really feels good!
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Pangolin Posted 3:01 pm
13 Jun 2008
The majority of people...
have either no land, no skills or no concept of how to garden their own food. They are already hard pressed by fuel prices and they aren't going to get a break from their landlords or mortgage companies. The middle class will be reduced to poverty and the poor will starve, turn to crime or riot.
This isn't going to go well.
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MAD MAC Posted 9:13 pm
13 Jun 2008
Yep, we're all going to die.....
Oh wait, that was pre-ordained before we were born, wasn't it?
The system isn't going to come crashing down. There will be some pain, but it's not as if the world economy is suddenly going to implode. People are smarter and more creative in dealing with problems than environmentalist give them credit for.
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randino Posted 10:25 pm
13 Jun 2008
You are right. People are smarter than
environmentalists give them credit for. But our current crop of leaders around the world are almost bestial in their stupidity. No take that back. I have a higher respect for beasts. Let's just say it is not only the cream that rises to the top. It is also the used condoms, empty water bottles, and things we will not even mention. And they are the problem. It is a problem we have seen all the way from the thugs of Myanmar to Congress debating (ha!)the Climate Security Act. I mean we are damn lucky to still be around with these used condoms and empty pop bottles running things. To make matters worse, I think deep down they are profoundly suicidal and have every intention of taking us with them.
Damn! I got up on the wrong side of the bed again! Sorry, I have a rain barrel to buy. Hopefully that will put me in a better mood.
Randy Cunningham
Cleveland, OH
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zenkate Posted 8:19 am
14 Jun 2008
Not to worry, if you're rich and insensitive...
The problem as I see it, is that the people who will pay for these gross ag oversights and mistakes are not the same people as the ones making them. Our politicians, and most of us can simply shift our buying dollars from products to food if we have to. But the 850 million people in the world mentioned in the article? They don't have that luxury. It is easy for me to plant some extra crops in my organic garden and sing Kumbaya to myself - or move to Thailand and buys farms with American dollars and wait it all out. But what happens if you really care about what happens to those 850 million people? Do any of us with our high speed internet and thousands of dollars of computer equipment really know what it feels like to hold a child as they slowly die of starvation? Listening to crying that goes on and on until you don't think you can bear the noise, and just then is slowly gets weaker and weaker and you'd give anything to hear that strong cry of a healthy unhappy child again? Now multiply that agony by 850 million.
This is not something we can ignore, even if our own future is safe and assured.
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MAD MAC Posted 3:08 pm
14 Jun 2008
zenkate - you can't stop it
The problem is, people are breeding beyond their capacity to sustain those lives. I lived in East Africa for two years and this subject came up often. Ask a Somali why, in a place as dry and inhospitable as Somalia is, he or she would have 8 or 10 kids, and the answer was always "Well, some of them are going to die, and I need to have someone to take care of me in my old age." This has always been an issue in marginal places, but with the advent of modern medicine (particularly immunizations and antibiotics) and the historic ability to stave off famines by delivering food from a continent away, the problem is exponentially exacerbated.
So yes, in one way it is tragic, but in another it is inevitable. Let's say that the world weasels its way out of this current food AND oil crisis without any mass death. Those overpopulated zones are going to just keep breeding. The people living there are not going to say "Wow, that was a close one. We had better do something to get our population under control." Indeed in areas with Muslim populations they continue to breed because they are seeking superior demographics. They believe that larger population gives them more power - and they are seeking it.
So yes, given that I have friends in Somalia who are barely getting by even with my help, I just don't see how this problem can be resolved until the people who can not afford to have children stop doing so.
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Kurt Michael Friese Posted 5:30 am
16 Jun 2008
numbers
Today corn went for $8.07 on the CBT, soy for $15.65. 250 miles of the Mississippi is closed, so the reserve corn we have can't be shipped. 36,000 Iowans are newly homeless. ADM and quaker cannot ship form Cedar Rapids because their rail bridge collapsed (with a traiin on it, by the way).
Farm land now sells over $6K an acre, and with several million acres under water, the remaining ones will likely be even MORE.
If we had a local/regional food system in place, this flood would still be a catastrophe, but it would only be a catastrophe for us, here; Not for all of you in the rest of the world who rely on corn and soy from the midwest grown using $140/barrel oil from the mideast.
Unsustainable.
Unsustainable.
Unsustainable.
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sairen42 Posted 11:37 pm
16 Jun 2008
What to do?
So for we rich, sensitive types - the kind who have enough money to eat beef every meal, but try to be lighter on the land than that... what can we do? Even if I buy nothing but rice, canned beans, lentils, and local vegetables all summer, does that help the 850 million people who are starving?
Donate to world hunger relief charities? Lobby our congressmen (I haven't even got a lousy column!)? Ah, please won't someone just tell me what to do? :)
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jnobianchi Posted 2:14 am
18 Jun 2008
Crisis points the way to more local food
Mac -
This is exactly what a colleague in Rwanda has seen: small farmers who grow without expensive petroleum based inputs (herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers) are doing well.
They're insulated in large degree from the current food and fuel crises, and they're actually finding new demand for their crops. Some are actually scaling up more production, opening fields they haven't used in awhile, to meet demand. This is putting more money in their pockets.
If there's a positive here, it's to show the wisdom in promoting, investing in, and buying local agriculture. I mean, who wants tasteless strawberries in December anyway?!
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MAD MAC Posted 11:24 pm
18 Jun 2008
Population, not food production, is the issue.
John
Well, Rwanda disposed of much of its excess population in 1994. Might do the same again next decade too.
If you grow without herbicides or pesticides, your crop is very vulnerable to being wiped out. Don't fool yourself, nature is trying to kill you all the time.
Those same farmers you are talking about are a drought or a flood away from going hungary. You can't just "eat local" and sustain that. Eventual, the local conditions won't be sufficient. In places like Somalia, where life is always precarious because of a lack of water, a couple of bad years and it's over unless there is connections to food sources outside the region.
In my view, the issue is not how food is produced, it's overpopulation. There are too many people in parts of the world that can't sustain them.
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Jonas Posted 10:53 am
19 Jun 2008
Very few people depend on American corn
Where do people, even editors at Gristmill, get their strange ideas from?
The reality is that "global food market" is very small. There are no "billions of people" depending on it. A few hundred thousand are.
95% of all produced rice is consumed locally. 85% of all produced maize (corn) and wheat is consumed locally.
Please, common, if you are writing about this type of sensitive topics, at least get the bottom basics right. You're making yourselves look like fools here really.
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Jonas Posted 10:57 am
19 Jun 2008
Another mistake
Mmm, another mistake.
75% of the 850 million people living in hunger are actually farmers and ruralites, not urbanites.
This is such basic knowledge from development economics... The fact that the author of this piece doesn't know this, says way too much.
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MAD MAC Posted 2:05 pm
19 Jun 2008
Jonas you are right but.........
............. 15% of millions of tons is a lot of wheat.
Same with rice. 5% of hundreds of millions of tons of rice produced in southeast Asia is still a lot of rice.
Percentages can sometimes be deceptive.
But you are absolutely correct in your notion that the people getting hammered by food shortages are subsistence farmers who just can't produce enough to subsist because of a shortage of land, shortage of water, etc. Subsistence farming has always been a lousy way to make a living. Most people who do it do so because they have to. Family farms that run at a real profit - those are rare things.
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Tom Philpott Posted 2:59 pm
19 Jun 2008
Jonas
I don't understand exactly what your agenda is, but your comments are misleading. If you are a troll, I regret spending time and space engaging you.
The US accounts for 44 percent of global corn production and 65 percent of global corn exports (see: http://www.grains.org/page.ww?section=Barley%2C+Corn+%26+ ...).
So, a shortfall in our corn crop will ripple through global grain prices -- not just for corn, but also other crops like wheat. And food-importing nations -- ie, nations that have dismantled their ag sectors -- will be hardest hit. According to FAO back in April (see: http://www.fao.org/newsroom/en/news/2008/1000826/index.ht ...
And then this:
Well, now we know that weather has let us down: floods in the US midwest, and drought in Australia.
As for the bit about the urban poor -- been to a city in the global south recently? -- I direct you to the UN's landmark study on cities that emerged in 2003. I can't find it free online, but here's how the Guardian summarized it ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/04/population.jo ...):
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Ron Steenblik Posted 7:31 pm
19 Jun 2008
Cool it, Jonas
Um, citing numbers on the percentage of food consumed in the country of production without recognizing that what matters is the effects of changes in supply and demand on international prices looks pretty foolish to me. Yes, the transmission of prices from the world market to local markets is not perfect, especially in countries that have imposed export restrictions or are trying to keep down domestic prices through subsidies. But the global economy is becoming more and more integrated, and developments that affect commodities in one country do eventually affect prices and supplies elsewhere in the world.
Your persistent remarks on the alleged ignorance of the contributors here is poorly targeted. Moreover, you yourself have been caught out expressing personal views that you have tried to pass off as hard facts, or that are at least debatable.
Tom did not say "the majority of the 850 million people most at risk of hunger" lived in cities, he said "many of whom have been essentially evicted from productive farmland and pushed into cities over the past few decades." Many does not necessarily mean most. But he is right also about the general trend of rural-urban migration, and the wretched conditions facing the millions of people now living in urban slums.
Take the high road, Jonas, and cut the gratuitous personal attacks.
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MAD MAC Posted 9:33 pm
19 Jun 2008
But Tom, why do they live in Slums?
Why don't they stay on their "ancestral" lands and continue to farm? Could it be because for centuries that way of life was precarious? Could it be that they are looking for stable work and don't want to be dependent on the outcomes of the weather for their sustenance?
There are plenty of urban poor in Africa - there are MORE rural poor. A lot more. Go live and check it out. I found it most enlightening.
Food production techniques are NOT - NOT the problem. The green revolution ensured ample food. the problem is there are too many people. Third world people continue to breed in excess of what they can support. It's that simple.
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