One in six countries facing food shortage
by karma432The chairman of the UN food and agriculture oragnization’s climate change group, Wulf Killman said yesterday that an emerging pattern of drought has devastated crops across Africa, central America and south-east Asia.
“Africa is our greatest worry,” he said. “Many countries are already in difficulties … and we see a pattern emerging. Southern Africa is definitely becoming drier and everyone agrees that the climate there is changing. We would expect areas which are already prone to drought to become drier with climate change.”
34 countries are now experiencing droughts and food shortages. Up to 30 million people will need food assistance this year.
The worst affected countries include Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Eritrea and Zambia, a group of countries where at least 15 million people will go hungry without aid. The situation in Niger, Djibouti and Sudan is reported to be deteriorating rapidly.
Severe droughts have also badly affected crops in Cuba, Cambodia, Australia, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Morocco, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. According to the UN’s famine early warning system, 16 countries, including Peru, Ecuador and Lesotho, face “unfavourable prospects” with current crops.
In Europe, one of the worst droughts on record has hit Spain and Portugal and halved some crop yields. In Morocco the same regional drought has devastated farming and the government fears an influx of people into the cities.
Climate change, driven by greenhouse gases and global warming is changing weather patterns and contributing to the growth of deserts. World food production has been flat for the last four or five years; food stocks have been drawn down to make up for the shortfall. If climate change worstens then a major crisis is unavoidable.
And, again, the only answers that I can see are Green answers.
5 Responses to “One in six countries facing food shortage”
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July 1st, 2005 at 9:36 am
Okay, Tim, I’ll bite. What are the Green answers?
I know there are general answers about energy choices for halting and reversing the increase of greenhouse gases and, hopefully, global warming. But I want to know if the GP has real, political answers for the real political situation in, say, Zimbabwe?
Being from a farming and ranching family, I have to say that U.S. farmers (real farmers, not corporate giants) could use real poltical answers to address food production issues here. Farmers based miles from city centers would love to hear from the GP or anyone else about how they could produce food more efficiently, protect their crops from the pollination by GM crops, use less energy and fertilizers and pesticides, and still be competitive in the marketplace.
I believe that the GP may have some good ideas, stemming from adherence to our key values, but I’m not convinced that those ideas have been “cultivated” into working solutions for people trying to make a living from farming and ranching.
If I’m wrong, please tell me so.
July 1st, 2005 at 12:34 pm
I’m not sure if the Green Party has a well defined agricultural program qua agricultural program (see, I have to break out the fancy words when I get asked the hard questions) but there are a number of elements of our platform that would help farmers.
The whole bottom up orientation of our philosophy would emphasize local farm products being sold to local markets. The New Urbanism approach would lessen urban sprawl which is eating up farmland.
We have three specific planks in the working draft of the Maryland GP platform on agriculture; one to phase out synthetic agrochemicals, genetically engineered food, and encourage low till farming, crop rotation and non chemical pest and weed control; a second to promote Community Supported Agriculture (an idea that originated in Japan and has spread to Europe that creates direct selling from local farmers to urban and suburban consumers–see Brian Milani, “Designing the Green Economy”); and a third plank that urges the expansion of the functions of the University of Maryland Extension Service and Agriculture Development Commission.
There is little that can be done immediately about droughts in places like Zimbabwe, but sustainable farming practices are being used in places like Senegal to benefit small farmers. The New Farm is running a series of articles on these efforts.
Finally, I would say that the free trade treaties NAFTA and GATT have hurt small farmers in other countries because the U.S. and Europe have kept their farm subsidies intact (mostly to the benefit of agribusiness), lowering the price of our exports and driving small farmers in other countries out of business. (Then when they show up as illegal immigrants here, everybody screams!)
I don’t know if we can solve the problems of world hunger but I do believe that a Green approach is the best first step.
July 1st, 2005 at 1:18 pm
A small reply of some of what I know, and I’m no expert. There’s a lot of info out there to be found, and this isn’t even one of my pet issues:
1) Swedish researchers found that when the entire net energy gain used by conventional crops is added up (including fertilizers, tractor fuel, and subsidies on these things, etc.), the end price is higher than organic produce. I looked for this article, but I can’t find it specifically, there’s a lot written on the topic. So organic is cheaper for the economy as a whole, let’s get rid of the market distorting subsidies, in America at least, and let’s stop exporting expensive high tech solutions to poor countries that would do better with low tech (rich countries would do better, too). Lots of information on sustainability is available. Just one.
And you can eat organic at home for about the same amount of money.
2) Also, GM foods aren’t the panacea that has been suggested.
July 5th, 2005 at 6:38 pm
I saw an article (somewhere) that organic farming techniques gave just a high a yield as the corporate farmers. I agree about getting rid of subsidies, especially for the corporate farmers who don’t need them but who are getting most of them.
February 22nd, 2006 at 2:17 am
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