Lowest Food Supplies in 50 or 100 Years: Global Food Crisis Emerging
June 16th, 2007Via: National Farmers Union Canada (PDF document):
Today, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) released its first projections of world grain supply and demand for the coming crop year: 2007/08. USDA predicts supplies will plunge to a 53-day equivalent- their lowest level in the 47-year period for which data exists. “The USDA projects global grain supplies will drop to their lowest levels on record. Further, it is likely that, outside of wartime, global grain supplies have not been this low in a century, perhaps longer,” said NFU Director of Research Darrin Qualman.
Most important, 2007/08 will mark the seventh year out of the past eight in which global grain production has fallen short of demand. This consistent shortfall has cut supplies in half-down from a 115-day supply in 1999/00 to the current level of 53 days. “The world is consistently failing to produce as much grain as it uses,” said Qualman. He continued: “The current low supply levels are not the result of a transient weather event or an isolated production problem: low supplies are the result of a persistent drawdown trend.”
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Qualman said that the converging problems of natural gas and fertilizer constraints, intensifying water shortages, climate change, farmland loss and degradation, population increases, the proliferation of livestock feeding, and an increasing push to divert food supplies into biofuels means that we are in the opening phase of an intensifying food shortage.
Of course this will mean severe competition for the food that is available, which means the prices will likely skyrocket. I’m glad we grow quite a bit of our own food, pesticide and fertilizer free! Kevin, your farmlet is a model that we should all be following, it really is in everyone’s best interest, if at all possible.
It could also mean more rising gas prices because of the diversion of the use of grain from biofuel back to food. If that actually reduced the gas price before; maybe not.
Kevin and Rebecca and my friends at wwoof.org lead the way.
We ignore their example at our peril.
It’s merely a matter of recognising nature’s superiority over humanity.
saltynick,
“Nature’s superiority over humanity”? If you believe in global warming, then I would say we’re kicking mother nature’s ass.
And if it really came down to a crisis, I’d just kill the subsistence farmers for their food instead of working all day and pondering conspiracy all night.
Or we could just eat people. The 900 million in this country should keep me fed. . . at least for a few weeks, right?
Pragmatist.
“kicking mother nature’s ass.”
Temporarily. Human beings are not the most abundant life form on the planet. Either in mass or number. Nanocytes outnumber us by volume. Which is why a food chain is a good thing. Without it we become more vunerable to parasites. You won’t be talking sh*t to mother nature then.