Inside the Global Food Crisis
By Erik Adams

The current world food crisis is powerfully exposing the deeply systemic vulnerability and inadequacy of the global food trade system and the unsustainability of the modern western lifestyle.
The causes of the crisis are quite complex and amount to a dramatic confluence of 5 critical factors that have caused food prices to rise dramatically across the globe leading to a situation that for the world’s poor has become increasingly dire.
In this article I will attempt to outline these factors, and importantly what if anything can we do to alleviate them

1. Rising cost of fuel as global production peaks and demand continues to accelerate. All stages of food production heavily dependent on fossil fuels including fertiliser, machinery, refrigeration, distribution.
Basically we are eating oil. It is estimated that every calorie of commercially grown food takes a calorie of oil to produce. The mechanisation and industrialisation of agriculture has seen the number of farms shrink as farm sizes grow transforming the cultivation of food into vast agribusiness monocultures heavily reliant on machinery and petrochemicals

2. The rising cost of fuel has seen a rush to convert arable food crop land to biofuel production such as palm oil and use existing crops such as corn and soy for biofuel rather than for food
This is related to the first factor yet blaming biofuels alone for the food crisis and for habitat destruction is too simplistic. In fact the destruction wrought by traditional oil exploration, processing and consumption on wilderness and habitat, is infinitely worse. For example, as the price of oil increases it becomes cost effective to extract marginal sources of oil and gas in more and more remote and pristine areas, such as the peat bogs of Northern Canada or the natural gas reserves of the Kimberley bringing untold environmental damage.
While biofuel is definitely not going to provide a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels, if you look more deeply at world land use biofuel production is currently consuming far less grain than is the massive increase in feedlot livestock production, which leads us to the next factor..3. The growing middle classes/ wealth of China and India, and their aspiration to live a modern western lifestyle is, according to the UN, seeing a surging demand for meat and dairy products (a 500% increase in last 20 years) which are far more energy, water and grain intensive than traditional plant based diets.
The emulation of our affluent, overconsuming and wasteful way of life by the world’s most populous countries is a looming disaster.
Much of the world’s edible grain is being funnelled into meat production to service this growing demand. In the US for example, 80% of all grain grown is fed to livestock. Unfortunately, as Fred Magdoff, Professor of plant and soil science at the University of Vermont puts it,
“Feeding grain to produce meat is a very inefficient way of providing people with either calories or protein.
—to yield a pound of meat, cows require eight pounds of corn; pigs, five; and chickens, three”.
Not only is meat grain intensive and wasteful it takes three times more fossil fuels to produce a meat-centered diet than a meat-free diet and the livestock industry creates more greenhouse emissions than all the world’s cars combined, contributing to nearly a fifth of total emissions. The meat industry is also a heavy user and polluter of global freshwater supplies. Pigs for example create 3 times more excrement than do humans. If you consider that every year over 10 billion farm animals are killed for human consumption and that at any given time there are more than twice as many farm animals on the planet as there are people, covering nearly a third of the total landmass of the planet that’s a lot of shit to deal with.
In fact a recent United Nations Report names livestock industry as “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.”
American nutritionist Gene Meyer estimates that if US meat eaters reduced their meat consumption by 10%, 60 million people could be fed on the resources saved yet global meat consumption is projected to double by 2050
The westernisation of the Asian diet is not only an environmental disaster it is a public health one as well, as the diseases of overconsumption - diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer etc all at epidemic levels in the West. become more and more prevalent in places where they had previously been rare.

4. Highly centralised food distribution system controlled by a shrinking number of multinationals and which at the whim of food speculation and market forces produces crops for the highest bidders ie. Western markets (while keeping prices as low as possible)

Global hunger is not a new phenomenon.
The ongoing problem of malnutrition, which UN estimates say kills 60 million people a year and affects 700-900 million more, does not exist due to a lack of food, but has more to do with the legacy of colonialism, neoliberal economics, politics, corruption and war.
Increased demand and rising prices, rather than benefiting poor farmers has actually brought the most benefit to the mega food corporations, the middlemen who control the avenues of sale and distribution in an oligopoly allowing them to dictate the terms of trade, This concentration of power has been aided and abetted by often one-sided trade liberalisation policies enforced by the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation., and sealed by the dumping of the developed world’s subsidised grain surplus into food aid programmes that cripple the ability of small local farmers in aid recipient nations to compete.
This system also means that food does not go to where it is most needed but to where the best profits and returns for shareholders may be found
Thus the big winners in the world food crisis are companies such as American giant, Cargill, which just recently reported an 86% rise in annual profits.
With this understanding recent statements such as those made by George W Bush, that restrictions on the growth and sale of GMO foods should be lifted to help feed the poor, are misguided,
would do nothing for the food sovereignty of the poor and would in fact make them more dependent on agribusiness corporations and fossil fuels.

5. The effects of climate change and extreme weather patterns that have led to drought, floods that have caused recent crop failures or reduced harvests in many countries including Australia.

The effects of climate change and extreme weather events exacerbate and are intimately linked to all of the factors above.
Basically climate change makes the whole system much more volatile and could easily bring it crashing to a halt and induce a far more extensive crisis. Crops dependent on a narrow band of climatic growing conditions or abundant water resources are now very vulnerable forcing many to consider different crops and ways of growing.

What we can do to personally ameliorate these factors?

While it may seem overwhelming there are some things we can do to minimise our role in the problem and encourage restructuring of the food system:

Support land reform, the cancellation of debt, and the development of food sovereignty, fair trade and self-sufficiency in poorer countries rather than food aid programmes that weaken local agriculture.

Eat less meat and dairy in preference for a diet of local, organic, in season, plant based whole foods (which are also cheaper) and learn how to prepare them for yourself and others to meet your nutritional needs.

Support local farmers markets and businesses, learn to grow your own food, establish community gardens, community supported agriculture, food co-operatives and support the development of alternative energy sources.

Vote with your dollar by not supporting large agribusiness corporations including the Australian oligopoly of Coles and Woolworths

Consume less, simplify your life and do whatever you can to debunk the myth that the modern western consumer lifestyle is desirable and let your Indian and Chinese friends know about it…..soon.