John Feffer has a good article over at Asia Times Online.
It points out the deep danger we're in -- how teetery both the world and America's food and energy systems are. It is well worth a read, particularly because of its clear articulation of the bind we're in -- the strategies we've used in the past to get out of disaster will only accelerate collapse in the long-term.. The tools we're using to get more food out of the ground take food from the future.
The analogy that I've been using for some time is the comparison to the seawater used to extract oil in the Ghawar and other aging giant oilfields. Matt Simmons, the world's expert on this subject, argues that you can make the oil production levels look good for a while -- but the seawater you pump in only accelerates the day that disaster strikes. That's true of our agriculture -- at this point, we're in a losing race between expanding food production and climate change -- all the conventional strategies for growing more food push us faster and faster towards the day that the planet can produce much, much less food. Every bite of food we eat now through conventional means takes food out of the mouths of our children.
I think many people, deep in their hearts, think that ecological disasters apply mostly to other people. But, of course, as Midwesterners are finding out right now, that's not true. And it isn't over -- every image of floodwaters we see is brown -- washing precious topsoil away, and pushing artificial fertilizers into water tables. And the rest of us will be thoroughly schooled in that lesson as well, most likely.
So how do we avoid becoming North Korea? Are there personal or policy approaches that can fix this? Could you have guessed that I have some suggestions, some obvious, some perhaps not.
The first one is obvious: We need to get the oil and gas out of agriculture -- and rapidly. Farmers are already struggling to afford the fossil fueled inputs that are required for conventional agriculture, and industrial organic agriculture is almost as dependent on fossil fuels as conventional. All the fossil fuels -- especially artificial nitrogen -- that we use are preventing future generations from eating. Heck, it won't take until future generations grow up; most of us under 50 will probably live to see it.
We're seeing now just how oil and natural gas costs reverberate through the food system, and while it is possible to use wise forms of management to reduce those reverberations, the only possible way to stabilize the food supply and separate it from volatile energy prices is to end the dependency of the food supply on fossil fuels. We know that this is possible -- besides the study mentioned in the paper above, other studies, including one last year at University of Michigan and a host of others have shown that organic agriculture can match and exceed yields. Moreover, organic practices that match yields in optimal seasons often exceed conventional yields in times of plant stress -- that is organic soils rich in matter hold up better to drought, heavy rains and other difficult conditions. It isn't a panacea, but in a world where drought and flooding are inevitable, we need the best cultural practices possible.
But doing this involves replacing the oil and gas with people -- that is, when Cuba moved to organic agriculture, it matched and exceeded agricultural yields on small farms. But the large collective farms owned by the state never could match yields -- one of the agronomists concluded that "farms of this scale are not easily compatible with organic production." And that's the problem: We can get our need for fossil fuels in agriculture down quite low, but we can't do it without paying more people a living wage to grow food. And no, this isn't just me, the UNESCO report made essentially the same claims.
Which brings me to the second conclusion: Gardens are even more essential in the fossil transition than they may be overall. Think about it -- food prices are already high -- a shift in our economy towards more agricultural labor, and paying farmers better will keep food prices reasonably high, and involve large scale economic changes. That means the cheapest food out there is going to be food grown by those who are not depending on it to make a living -- who grow food for subsistence or for very small scale sales on their own land or on community land. And because they are less dependent on either hired labor or fossil fuels, gardens are the future of affordable food in the U.S. Will they meet every need? No. But they can make the difference between getting by and widespread hunger.
The next point is perhaps a bit less obvious. A few years ago, in my paper "The Ethics of Biofuels" almost no one noticed that one of my principles was that we had to shift our "biofuel" priorities from corn and soybeans for ethanol and biodiesel to ... trees. For wood. And perhaps even more importantly, for climate stabilization and for erosion control and soil repair. The home heating crisis I've been discussing for years is beginning. And there is the real danger that the U.S. will deforest itself nearly as badly trying to keep warm as North Korea did trying to grow food. The long term consequences of that would be horrifying.
Thus, instead of pushing to grow food on marginal land, moving Crop Protected soils into production (which we're seeing now), we need to use hilly and marginal lands to grow forests, ideally forests at least partly composed of edible protein, oil, and other crops. We will need the wood, as home heating moves back to biofuels. We will also need the erosion control -- Midwestern fields once had hedgerows, that could stop the flow of soil, provide space for wildlife, and wood for stoves. Bringing back the hedgerows might be a beginning strategy.
In already forested areas, the struggle is going to be for management. And that's going to have to be a big, big focus of our energies. The thing is, it gets bloody cold up here, and most of us have gotten used to "room temperature" being a heck of a lot warmer than it was in any other period of human history during northern winters. The temptation to burn just a little more is going to be vast. But we can't -- the pollution will be a disaster, and the deforestation worse.
So we're going to have to strictly self-regulate our forests -- and plant new ones as fast as we can. And since this is not likely to make it on to the public agenda anytime soon, we're going to have to do it on our own, on the small pieces of soil we tend.
It wouldn't be easy for us to turn into North Korea -- it would take a lot of bad management. But it wouldn't be so hard we couldn't do it, either. We've got to do better.
Previously posted at www.sharonastyk.com
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Comments
View as Flat
John former Marine Posted 12:25 am
25 Jun 2008
The trees are back in Vermont today. That's because it rains quite a bit there, despite the relatively short growing season. Go out west though, where trees in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico may grow at 1/8 the rate that they grow on the east coast. Extremely efficient use of forest resources out there will be absolutely essential. Of course, out there, if you just point your house in the right direction, it should heat and cool itself.
Shu pas a vende.
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MAD MAC Posted 9:06 pm
29 Jun 2008
Victory in Pattani
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MAD MAC Posted 9:24 pm
29 Jun 2008
Monday June 30, 9:35 am ET
By KEITH BRADSHER and ANDREW MARTIN
BANGKOK -- At least 29 countries have sharply curbed food exports in recent months, to ensure that their own people have enough to eat, at affordable prices.
When it comes to rice, India, Vietnam, China and 11 other countries have limited or banned exports. Fifteen countries, including Pakistan and Bolivia, have capped or halted wheat exports. More than a dozen have limited corn exports. Kazakhstan has restricted exports of sunflower seeds.
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The restrictions are making it harder for impoverished importing countries to afford the food they need. The export limits are forcing some of the most vulnerable people, those who rely on relief agencies, to go hungry.
"It's obvious that these export restrictions fuel the fire of price increases," said Pascal Lamy, the director general of the World Trade Organization.
And by increasing perceptions of shortages, the restrictions have led to hoarding around the world, by farmers, traders and consumers.
"People are in a panic, so they are buying more and more -- at least, those who have money are buying," said Conching Vasquez, a 56-year-old rice vendor who sat one recent morning among piles of rice at her large stall in Los Baños, in the Philippines, the world's largest rice importer. Her customers buy 8,000 pounds of rice a day, up from 5,500 pounds a year ago.
The new restrictions are just an acute symptom of a chronic condition. Since 1980, even as trade in services and in manufactured goods has tripled, adjusting for inflation, trade in food has barely increased. Instead, for decades, food has been a convoluted tangle of restrictive rules, in the form of tariffs, quotas and subsidies.
Now, with Australia's farm sector crippled by drought and Argentina suffering a series of strikes and other disruptions, the world is increasingly dependent on a handful of countries like Thailand, Brazil, Canada and the United States that are still exporting large quantities of food.
On a recent morning here in Bangkok, sweaty and heavily tattooed dock workers took turns grabbing 120-pound sacks of rice from a conveyor belt and carrying them on their heads to cranes that whisked the sacks deep into the hold of a freighter bound for the Philippines. Most of the one million tons of rice that leaves the dock here each year follows the same spine-crushing routine.
"I've been here 28 years," said the assistant port manager, Suchart Wuthiwaropas. "This is the busiest ever."
Powerful lobbies in affluent countries across the northern hemisphere, from Japan to Western Europe to the United States, have long protected farmers in ways factory workers in Detroit could only dream of.
The Japanese protect their rice industry by making it nearly impossible for imported rice to compete. The European Union severely limits beef and poultry imports, and Poland goes further, barring soybean imports as well.
Negotiators have been working for years to free trade in farm goods, but today's crisis actually makes that more difficult for them. Food protests in places like Haiti and Indonesia that rely heavily on imported food have convinced many nations that it is more important than ever that they grow, and keep, the food their citizens need.
"Every country must first ensure its own food security," said Kamal Nath, the minister of commerce and industry in India, which has barred exports of vegetable oils and all but the most expensive grades of rice.
But as the United States trade representative, Susan C. Schwab, noted in a telephone interview, "One country's act to promote food security is another country's food insecurity."
International relief groups are trying to help people who can no longer afford food at today's higher prices, but it is not easy. "We're having trouble buying the stocks we need for emergency operations," said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program in Rome.
Restrictions have delayed efforts to ramp up feeding programs in Somalia and Afghanistan. The food program had long purchased grain from Pakistani traders or national stocks. When Pakistan imposed a ban on most wheat exports this spring, the food program was forced to find a new supplier, creating months-long delays.
"We had to slow down the scale-up of our operation as a result of having to redesign our supply lines," said Ramiro Lopes da Silva, director of transport and procurement. "That means on the ground there were beneficiaries that went without rations or went without full rations for a portion of time. In the case of Afghanistan, some didn't get into the program."
The current dispute over food exports highlights choices that nations have confronted for centuries.
One relates directly to trade: Is it best to specialize in whatever food grows best in a country's soil, and trade it for all other food needs -- or even, perhaps, specialize in services or manufacturing, and trade those for food?
Or is it best to seek self-sufficiency in every type of food that will, weather permitting, grow within a country's borders?
The usual answer from economists, and the United States' position for decades, is that the world benefits most if every country specializes in growing (or servicing or making) what it can most efficiently, and trading for the rest.
Rainfall and other limits make it prohibitively difficult for some countries to grow all their own food. "If Egypt had to be self-sufficient in food, there would be no water left in the Nile," Mr. Lamy said in a telephone interview.
"If every country in the world decided it wanted to produce its own food for consumption," Ms. Schwab said, "there would be less food in the world, and more people would be hungry."
But relying on food imports becomes much dicier if other countries are prepared to shut off the tap.
An obscure rule of the World Trade Organization requires members to notify the agency when they restrict food exports. But there are no penalties for ignoring the rule, and not one of the countries that has imposed restrictions in the past year has complied, according to the W.T.O.
Japan and Switzerland are leading a group of food-importing nations so alarmed by restrictions that they are seeking an international agreement preventing countries from unilaterally limiting food exports. The agreement would be part of the current, already-rocky Doha round of trade talks, named for the city in Qatar where negotiations began.
But the proposal ran into a procedural snag right off: food export restrictions are such a new issue that they are only tangentially mentioned as part of the Doha round agenda, which is not easily modified.
In some of the nations concerned about shortages now, past policies have discouraged farming. From Indonesia to West Africa to the Caribbean and Central America, poor countries have frequently cut farm assistance programs and lowered tariffs to balance budgets and avoid charging high prices to urban consumers. But they have found that their farmers cannot compete with imports from rich countries -- imports that are heavily subsidized.
As a result, steps that could have taken place decades ago, resulting in more food for the world today, were abandoned. These included changes like irrigation schemes and new crop varieties.
"The subsidies given by developed countries to their farmers have led to lack of investment in agriculture in developing countries" in Africa and elsewhere, Mr. Nath said.
To make matters worse, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund frequently pressured poor countries in the 1980s and 1990s to lower tariffs and to cut farm support programs, mostly to reduce budget deficits.
Indeed, the World Bank concluded in 2006 that not enough attention had been paid to the negative effects of its policy prescriptions on farmers in developing countries.
The current export restrictions, which mainly help urban consumers in poor countries, are the latest blow to farmers in the developing world.
Arfa Tantaway Mohamed, who grows rice on three-quarters of an acre outside the bustling town of Aga in northern Egypt, is frustrated at Egypt's export ban, which is suppressing rice prices.
"For sure it has a negative impact," said Mr. Mohamed, 50, as he smoked a Cleopatra brand cigarette during a break from working his fields, while 18 members of his extended family labored nearby.
Some countries reject the notion that restricting exports has pushed up prices on the world market, and point instead to higher prices for fertilizer, diesel and other farm expenses. India takes that position, but so does Thailand, in defending sharp markups in prices set by its Rice Exporters Association.
"The main cause of rising rice prices is the rising cost of rice planting," said Surapong Suebwonglee, the finance minister of Thailand, the world's largest rice exporter.
India and other countries, as well as some nonprofit groups, are quick to point out that economic arguments -- that countries specialize in the production of whatever they can make most efficiently -- are unconvincing, as long as rich countries heavily subsidize their farmers.
In fact, negotiators have a rough framework for a possible compromise on agriculture in the Doha round talks, including deep cuts in farm subsidies.
One possible compromise not being discussed in the Doha round may be for countries to continue relying on trade for most food imports, but hold bigger reserves in case of crises. World rice reserves, for example, have plunged to 9 weeks' worth of consumption, from 19 as recently as 2001.
But United Nations officials are wary.
"I would not object to building up reserves," said Supachai Panitchpakdi, the secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. "But like foreign exchange reserves, some countries go to huge extremes."
Victory in Pattani
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