World’s poorest hit by food shortages
The United Nations is warning that food supply around the world is rapidly and unexpectedly dwindling and that those who go hungry as a result are most likely to live in poor underdeveloped countries. Food costs have risen dramatically, as I noted last week, while supply and reserves are down all around the world.
Diouf blamed a confluence of recent supply and demand factors for the crisis, and he predicted that those factors were here to stay. On the supply side, these include the early effects of global warming, which has decreased crop yields in some crucial places, and a shift away from farming for human consumption toward crops for biofuels and cattle feed. Demand for grain is increasing with the world population, and more is diverted to feed cattle as the population of upwardly mobile meat-eaters grows.
Maybe we are being sent a cruel, early warning sign that our current oil-powered system of growing, producing and exporting food is failing us.
“We’re concerned that we are facing the perfect storm for the world’s hungry,” said Josette Sheeran, executive director of the World Food Program, in a telephone interview. She said that her agency’s food procurement costs had gone up 50 percent in the past 5 years and that some poor people are being “priced out of the food market.”
The United Nations points to a success story in Malawi though, where small scale, sustainable farms have increased their production for local consumption. All of which allows me to segue nicely into the story of Malawi’s William Kamkwamba, who taught himself to build power generating windmills out of blue-gum trees and bicycle parts after seeing a picture of one in a textbook.
December 19th, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Hmm. No one is interested in a conversation about Peak Food? Maybe it’s just me.
December 19th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Energy Bulletin has a round up about post-peak food issues today as well …
http://www.energybulletin.net/38461.html
Thanks for the William Kamkwamba links, that was heart-warming.
December 19th, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Sorry frog, but some of us get frowned on when we access sites like this from our work computers
In addition, while I’m interested and concerned about food production (or lack of it), I’m not sure what I can actually say about it. However one side effect of Ocean Thermal Power Systems (using the temperature difference between the warm upper layers and the cold bottom layers to generate power) is more fish, so this could be useful. (The cold water is brought up to the surface to cool the power system and is nutrient-rich.) Unfortunately I don’t have a link.
Trevor.
December 25th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
Sorry Frog,
I’ve been outta town, offline, and then a ’slow corner’ once I got back.
The preponderance of ‘economic vegetarians’ amongst beneficiaries I know has been something I’ve ranted about on and off for about 5 years now, once even fronting the Hon Ms Dyson on this at a People’s Centre workshop on poverty issues for women.
Food security is a major cause of concern for those working with the 1 in 10 (or so) children being raised in households whose income is under the official poverty-line. Some of these children have parents who are beneficiaries, some have parents who are students. I’ve met both kinds.
Student Welfare officers in charge of University Foodbanks are in no doubt about the extent of poverty and food security issues on campuses around the country - much of it due to the ‘lifestyle choice’ of studying while working up to 30 hours a week in order to pay constantly rising fees, while the means-testing threshholds have not altered since 1992, when the Student Loans Act came in.
Many students are denied a basic student allowance because an estranged parent is earning very nicely, thank-you, whilst supporting another family of step-parent and step-siblings to the student being means-tested.
Of course, as our Family Support legislation doesn’t oblige liable parents to contribute for dependants over 18 years old, most of them heave a sigh of relief, and don’t offer a bean to their newly emancipated ‘adult’ offspring embarking on tertiary study, who are penalised for their blood relationship to this irresponsible adult.
Of course, this is my own personal, feminist, political analysis of the current legislation.
Feel free to spend the rest of the holidays flaming this comment and defending a man’s right to spend money on himself whenever possible, to the detriment of the survival of an intelligent, educated generation of the human race.
I’m willing to bet that those who feel that way, also drive a gas-guzzling SUV, and will be amongst the first to fry when energy sustainability becomes an imperitive, not a debating topic… but I digress
Cy’all in 2008!
December 26th, 2007 at 12:59 am
katie,
I find your honesty in admitting that your feminist perspective may bias your comments both refreshing and helpful. I find that knowing where someone is coming from makes it so much easier to modify my own filters and set aside my own biases and appreciate the information in your comments. Hopefully some of the holier than thou visitors to frogblog will follow your example in 2008.
I’ve never understood why the student allowance has a differnt qualifying age than the unemployment benefit. I guess its further proof that the collective political mind will always gravitate towards the dumbest way of doing things.
December 26th, 2007 at 2:01 pm
katie wrote:
“while the means-testing threshholds have not altered since 1992, when the Student Loans Act came in.”
This appears to be a straight-forward unjustifiable position, and both major parties would appear to be at fault, since they have both been in power over the last 15 years. It shouldn’t take much to adjust the thresholds for the CPI change, and I doubt that it would cost that much either.
How much has the CPI shifted over the last 15 years anyway?
Statistics NZ has recent information, but looking back 15 years takes a bit more digging:
http://www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/info-releases/cpi-info- releases.htm
Trevor.
December 26th, 2007 at 4:16 pm
Trevor, the CPI was just under 800 in 1992, 900 in 2000, 1000 last year.
December 26th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Thanks Kevyn
That would justify an immediate increase in the thresholds of at least 25%.
Trevor.
January 13th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Ocean Thermal Power Systems or Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion
These have been in development for a while - the wikipedia article says the first units were built in 1930 & 1935, although significant progress has only been made in the last 3 decades.
Significant byproducts of OTEC systems include desalinated water, cold water (for cooling, raising cold water fish, etc), and nutrient rich water.
Unfortunately these systems are not suitable for temperate climates such as New Zealand.
Trevor.
January 13th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Trevor
Low temperature differential. The thermal difference is small therefore a lot of water must be moved to generate significant amounts of power. That in itself isn’t as worrisome as the potential secondary effect of warming / disrupting the thermohaline circulation if there is large scale extraction of that thermal energy.
I am not saying it could not work on a larger scale, just that I would want to do the energy equations very carefully. Cold water that does not reach the Antarctic can have effects on the global climate. An OTEC plant would reduce surface water temperature around it as well. How much I don’t know without doing a detailed energy budget (and nobody is paying me to do that).
I’ve no particular axe for this… just pointing out that large scale use of that temperature differential may have unintended consequences. Smaller scale use for power generation for island communities might be supportable. Effective use as an alternate energy source is viable but not unlimited.
respectfully
BJ
January 13th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I agree with you fully BJ. However the large scale use of OTEC systems may have positive side-effects as well as potential negative side effects. In particular, the CO2-absorbing potential is increased (because algae don’t like the tropical heat), as well other potential food production increases, on land as well as in the water.
Trevor.
January 14th, 2008 at 12:23 am
It ought to be unconstitutional to write ANY bill that places any fixed number as a means test or a tax threshold. 1992?
BJ