by frog
As food prices around the world continue to soar, a United Nations report released today says that industrial agricultural practices are exhausting land and water resources, destroying diversity and hurting poor people.
The report’s authors recommend that agricultural science place greater emphasis on safeguarding natural resources and on ‘agro-ecological’ practices, including the use of natural fertilizers, traditional seeds and intensified natural practices, and reducing the distance between production and the consumer…
In addition, the report states that 35 per cent of the Earth’s severely degraded land has been damaged by agricultural activities.
Meanwhile there have been food riots or protests in recent weeks in Haiti (4 people dead), Ivory Coast, Cameroon (40 people dead), Mauritania, Mozambique, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Bolivia, Jordan and Indonesia. Many Asian countries have limited their rice exports to ensure supplies for their own citizens.
And the World Bank says higher food prices are here to stay.
Sir John Holmes, undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and the UN’s emergency relief coordinator says in the Guardian:
“The security implications [of the food crisis] should also not be underestimated as food riots are already being reported across the globe,” Holmes said. “Current food price trends are likely to increase sharply both the incidence and depth of food insecurity.”
He added that the biggest challenge to humanitarian work is climate change, which has doubled the number of disasters from an average of 200 a year to 400 a year in the past two decades.
This issue badly needs to find its way onto New Zealand’s political agenda, both in terms of a global humanitarian issue to which we need to respond, and our own security of supply of food basics.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Society & Culture by frog on Thu, April 10th, 2008
Tags: agriculture, farming, Food, food prices, food riots, Frog, frog blog, green party, greens, new zealand, United Nations
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
The combination of our rapidly growing population and the impact of unsustainable biofuels on food prices, huh? Got to love it =/
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why are the greens still pimping bio-fuels..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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The irony of biofuels is that if and when oil finally stops being used, food will still need to be mass produced using machinery that requires fuel.
The answer seems to be biofuel, which requires crop land to produce.
So to produce the high crop yields, you still need the machinery, but to use the machinery you need to produce biofuel crops which reduce the food crops.
I think the only solution is for the the skeptics to prove that the world is actually getting bigger.
I tried to find a website that could prove that the world is getting bigger, but unfortunately this is was the best I could find
http://abcnews.go.com/International/Story?id=2315516&page=1
I’d say the skeptics will have a field day with that article though.
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When pressed on the subject, the Green Party point out they don’t support all biofuels, just some biofuels.
The problem is that the issue isn’t seen in terms that subtle, and thus it will be a big problem for the Greens sooner or later. They are seen as supporting biofuels, and when the biofuel fan gets really brown the Greens will be seen as part of the problem.
Or to put it another way, bio == “supported by the green party”…
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That’s why the greens should be pushing the issue of sustainable population too.
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‘Population’ is suddenly the issue of the day. The assumption behind the conference
is that excessive immigration might cause our population to exceed some optimal
level. In reality any such fears are groundless. If anything, we are probably an
underpopulated country. The demonstrated benefits from immigration mean we
could be absorbing a substantial inflow of immigrants for a good number of years
without any cause for concern about New Zealand becoming overpopulated.
“Over the last two decades there has been at least a partial shift in thinking on
population issues worldwide. No longer do the lazy assumptions that the world is
becoming overcrowded, and that increased population threatens food supply and
living standards, go unquestioned.”
Rodger Kerr
http://www.nzbr.org.nz/documents/speeches/speeches-97/population-and-i mmigration.pdf
Something the “redgreens” and right agree on?
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It’s very lucky that we have such a word as “probably”.
It allows us to say optimistic things like:
“If anything, we are probably an underpopulated country.”
“There will probably be new technology that fixes all the problems that we will face in the future”
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The Food Bubble:
“All over the world, food fights are breaking out. Not because there is too much food or too little, but because it has gone way up in price. Of course, you could put that another way: the paper money in which food is priced is going down faster than usual. There’s no less food than there was five years ago. But there is a lot more paper money. Modern central banking was invented so that we should have paper money – and have it in abundance. Now, we have so much that it is causing food prices to soar.”
http://www.dailyreckoning.com/
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So the Philippines has imported more rice than it exported this year because of money?
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