Water Shortages Could Force World Into Vegetarianism
August 27th, 2012Soy dogs and free vaccinations for all!
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The earliest, strategic decisions that Becky and I made about where we were going to live were driven by factors related to freshwater availability. If we didn’t have sufficient water for gardens and livestock, we knew that we would be buying more food, which would increase our chances of consuming genetically modified food.
If you have established that clean air, water and food are minimum baselines for your lifestyle, you have no doubt noticed how difficult this is to attain.
It’s not going to get any easier.
Via: Guardian:
Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world’s population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.
Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world’s leading water scientists.
“There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected 9 billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations,” the report by Malik Falkenmark and colleagues at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said.
“There will be just enough water if the proportion of animal-based foods is limited to 5% of total calories and considerable regional water deficits can be met by a … reliable system of food trade.”
Dire warnings of water scarcity limiting food production come as Oxfam and the UN prepare for a possible second global food crisis in five years. Prices for staples such as corn and wheat have risen nearly 50% on international markets since June, triggered by severe droughts in the US and Russia, and weak monsoon rains in Asia. More than 18 million people are already facing serious food shortages across the Sahel.
Of course, a new study shows (what plenty of old studies have shown) that Americans throw out almost half the food they buy. http://farmfutures.com/story.aspx/study-40-food-america-wasted-17/62727
Once again a distribution/usage problem is being labeled a supply problem.
Apart from the unnaturally clement Olympics, here in Wales it has rained solidly every day since February with the exceptional day of sunshine where it rained in the morning, evening, or at night. In all but one of the six or so year that we’ve been here, our 850 feet above sea level property has flooded in July and August thanks to ur proximity to a spring emerging from a gravel-capped hill just 50 feet above us on the ridge. We live in the rain shadow of this ridge and the clouds dump their load on us as they rise over the ridge as they go towards Tintern and England. No drought here. Go lower down (where most people live) into the towns and cities, and too many people in too tight a space is causing water problems, just a few miles away from where we are. The lesson? Rising population density and choosing to live in water-poor areas is accelerating the problem. Get out of the populated areas and secure your water supplies.