|
December 16,
2003-11
Copyright © 2003 Earth Policy Institute
Wakeup Call on the Food Front
Lester R. Brown
While Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and
President Bush discussed Taiwan, currency rates and North Korea
on December 9, a more important and far-reaching development in
U.S.-China relations was going on far from the White House.
Under the North China Plain, which produces half of China's wheat
and a third of its corn, water tables are falling by 3 to 10 feet
per year. Along with rising temperatures and the loss of cropland
to non-farm uses, this trend is shrinking the Chinese grain harvest,
which has fallen in four of the past five years. To get an idea
of the magnitude, the harvest dropped by 66 million tons during
that period, an amount that exceeds the total annual grain harvest
of Canada, one of the world's leading grain exporters.
Thus far China has covered its growing grain shortfall by drawing
down its once-massive stocks. It can do this for perhaps one more
year before those stocks are depleted. Then it will have to turn
to the world market for major purchases. The odds are that within
the next few years the United States will be loading two or three
ships per day with grain destined for China. This long line of ships
stretching across the Pacific will function like a huge umbilical
cord between the two countries.
This isn't only a question of U.S.-China relations, but also one
of the relationship between the Earth's 6.3 billion people and its
natural resources, especially water. Food production is a water-intensive
process. Producing a ton of grain requires a thousand tons of water,
which helps explain why 70 percent of all water diverted from rivers
or pumped from underground goes for irrigation.
The tripling of world water demand over the past half-century, combined
with the advent of diesel and electrically driven pumps, has led
to extensive overpumping of aquifers. As a result, more than half
the world's people now live in countries where water tables are
falling and wells are going dry. Among these countries are the three
that account for half of the world grain harvest: China, India and
the United States. In India, water tables are falling in most states,
including the Punjab, that nation's breadbasket. In the United States,
aquifers are being depleted under the southern Great Plains and
throughout the Southwest, including California.
If the world is facing a future of water shortages, then it is also
facing a future of food shortages.
To be sure, it is difficult to trace long-term trends in food production,
which fluctuates with weather, prices and the spread of farm technology
to developing countries. In one of the major economic achievements
of the last half-century, China raised its grain output from 90
million tons in 1950 to 392 million tons in 1998. Since then, though,
China's production appears to have peaked, dropping by 66 million
tons, or 17 percent. (See .)
As a result, it seems likely that China will ultimately need to
buy 30, 40 or 50 million tons of grain a year, and then it will
have to turn to the United States, which accounts for nearly half
of the world's grain exports. Imports on this unprecedented scale
will create a fascinating geopolitical situation: China, with 1.3
billion consumers and foreign exchange reserves of $384 billion—enough
to buy the entire U.S. grain harvest eight times over—will
suddenly be competing with American consumers for U.S. grain, in
all likelihood driving up food prices.
For the first time in their history, the Chinese will be dependent
on the outside world for food supplies. And U.S. consumers will
realize that, like it or not, they will be sharing their food with
Chinese consumers.
Managing the flow of grain to satisfy the needs of both countries
simultaneously will not be easy because it could come amid a shift
from a world of chronic food surpluses to one of food scarcity.
Exporters will be tempted to restrict the flow of grain in order
to maintain price stability at home, as the United States did 30
years ago when world grain stocks were at record lows and wheat
and rice prices doubled. But today the United States has a major
stake in a stable China because China is a major trading partner
whose large economy is the locomotive of Asia.
The pressure on world food markets may alter the relationship between
exporting and importing countries, changing the focus of international
trade negotiations from greater access to markets for exporting
countries such as the United States to assured access to food supplies
for China and the 100 or so countries that already import grain.
The prospect of food and water scarcity emerges against a backdrop
of concern about global warming. New research by crop ecologists
at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines
and at the U.S. Department of Agriculture indicates that a 1-degree-Celsius
rise in temperature (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above the optimum during
the growing season leads to a 10 percent decline in yields of rice,
wheat and corn. With four of the past six years being the warmest
on record, grain harvests are suffering. High temperatures lowered
harvests last year in India and the United States and scorched crops
this year from France to Ukraine.
The new combination of falling water tables and rising temperatures,
along with trends such as soil erosion, has led to four consecutive
shortfalls in the world grain harvest. This year production fell
short of consumption by a record 92 million tons. These shortages
have reduced world grain stocks to their lowest levels in 30 years.
If we have a shortfall in 2004 that is even half the size of this
year's, food prices will be rising worldwide by this time next year.
You won't have to read about it in the commodity pages. It will
be evident at the supermarket checkout counter. During the fall
of 2003, wheat and rice prices rose 10 percent to 30 percent in
world markets, and even more in some parts of China. These rises
may only be the warning tremors before the earthquake.
We can, however, take measures to improve world food security. We
could recognize that population growth and environmental trends
threaten economic progress and political stability just as terrorism
does. Since the overwhelming majority of the nearly 3 billion people
expected to be born during this half-century will be in countries
where water tables are already falling and wells are running dry,
filling the family planning gap and creating a social environment
to foster smaller families is urgent.
The situation with water today is new, but similar to that with
land a half-century ago. Coming out of World War II, we looked toward
the end of the century and saw enormous projected growth in population
but little new land to plow. The result was a concentrated international
effort to raise land productivity; boosting the world grain yields
from just over one ton per hectare in 1950 to nearly three tons
today. We now need a similar global full-court press to raise water
productivity, by shifting to more water-efficient crops, improving
irrigation and recycling urban water supplies.
As it becomes apparent that higher temperatures are shrinking harvests
and raising food prices, a powerful new consumer lobby could emerge
in support of cutting carbon emissions by moving to a hydrogen-based
economy. It is a commentary on the complexity of our time that decisions
made in ministries of energy may have a greater effect on future
food security than those made in ministries of agriculture.
Copyright
© 2003 Earth Policy Institute
View Data
Email this Update to a friend
Printer friendly format
|
|
Email this Update to a friend
Printer friendly format
View Data
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
From Earth Policy Institute
Lester R. Brown, Plan
B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble
(New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003).
Lester R. Brown, Janet Larsen, and Bernie Fischlowitz-Roberts,
The
Earth Policy Reader (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002).
Lester R. Brown, Eco-Economy:
Building an Economy for the Earth (New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 2001).
Lester R. Brown, "World Facing Fourth Consecutive
Grain Harvest Shortfall," Eco-Economy
Update, 13 September 17 2003.
Lester R. Brown, "Record Temperatures Shrinking World Grain Harvest,"
Eco-Economy Update, 27
August 2003.
Lester R. Brown, "World Creating Food Bubble Economy
Based on the Unsustainable Use of Water," Eco-Economy
Update, 13 March 2003.
Lester R. Brown, "Rising Temperatures and Falling
Water Tables Raising Food Prices," Eco-Economy
Update, 21 August 2002.
From Other Sources
U.S. Department of Agriculture, World
Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates, 11 December 2003.
World Bank, China: Agenda for Water Sector Strategy
for North China (Washington, DC: April 2001).
LINKS
AQUASTAT, global information system of water and agriculture
from the Land and Water Development Division of the U.N. Food and
Agriculture Organization
http:/www.fao.org/ag/agl/
aglw/aquastat/main/index.stm
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Surface Temperature
Analysis
http:/data.giss.nasa.gov/
gisstemp/tabledata/GLB.Tx.txt
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
http:/www.ipcc.ch
International Water Management Institute
http:/www.iwmi.cgiar.org/
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)
http:/www.usda.gov
|
