Blog 4- Food Scarcity: An Environmental Wakeup Call

The author of this article, Lester Brown a farmer from New Jersey, is known for being one of the world's most influencial thinkers of global environmental movement. In this selection Brown warns of economic and social disruptions due to food scarcity. He predicts environmental degradation, such as, deforestation, water population, greenhouse gas emissions, will lead to global decline of the food supply. Brown's opinion about obtaining a sustainable development is to stabilize population and climate.

The extensive extraction of resources has affected the world's food economy substantially. The consequences are clear with regards to deforestation leading to more rainfall runoff, and discharging excessive amounts of carbon will eventually lead to economical disruptive climate change. These consequences are also caused by overfishing, overgrazing, soil erosion, loss of plants and animals species, all will eventually lead to a ecosystem collapse.

Agriculture

The food system will be the sector where environmental degradation will lead to economy downfall. With rising grain prices due to commodity prices, this will affect 1.3 billion people to a point where it is life-threatening. Environmental damage will affect fishers and farmers in keeping up with growth and demand will will all lead to political instability.

Heads of household who are unable to feed their families will blame their governments resulting in riots. If food prices keep going up this will negatively affect multinational corporations, stock markets, and the international monetary system.

The consequences that scientists have warned about can be seen everywhere:

In Europe, allowable fish catch has reduced 20%. In Saudi Arabia, there's a 62% grain harvest drop. The burning of the Amazon rainforest has lead to soil degradation resulting in crop abandonment. These situations will multiply, making it more difficult to feed our world population resulting in 800 million people being too poor to buy enough food for hunger satisfaction.

In Search of Land

As the world's population expands, both the area of cropland and amount of irrigation water decline. Drainage of wetlands has opened fertile areas for cultivation. The growth area to plant grain has peaked in 1981 and is since quite slow compared to that of population. The population growth rate is at some 80 million per year, if this goes on the amount of cropland will continue to decline.

In Search of Water

The world's farmers are facing water scarcity. Among China, India, and United States; they are facing extensive aquifer depletion, they collectively account for half of the world's grain supply.

During 1950-1990 the grain harvest has tripled causing the expansion of irrigation methods which intensified production in low-rainfall areas. Most of the world's rice and wheat are produced on irrigated land. The countryside has no competition with the cities when it comes to water supply. Water scarcity is becoming a prevailing issue as was land scarcity.

The Onset of Food Scarcity

Evidence of earth's degradation has accumulated for many years. Our food security is moving from surplus to scarcity, our buffer zones are minimizing. Food scarcity will provide an environmental wake up call the world needs.

An Unprecedented Challenge

Achieving a sustainable future for future generations to have enough food is as much dependant on family planning as on farmers. The two most difficult components in achieving a sustainable economy are stabilizing population and climate. It may be time to reasess population policy restraining families to having 2 children simply to replace themselves. There are 32 countries, all in Europe, who have already taken a small step in the right direction.

Stabilizing our climate means reducing carbon emissions and supporting the efficient technologies emerging. Adoption of a carbon tax would be another step in the right direction.

In a world where food scarcity is the main issue, land scarcity emerges as a central issue. Like land, water is being diverted to nonfarm uses. Providing water free of charge leads to water waste.

Feeding the Future

Securing the food future will affect every part of human existance- from land use, to water use, to how we spend our leisure time. The grain prices growing will result in people eating less grain-intensive livestock products. The world's politicians need to take a current path away from environmental deterioration and economic disruption but toward an economic and demographic path that is environmentally sustainable.