FOOD SCARCITY
30 April 2013
I saw with open eyes singing birds sweet
Sold in the shops for people to eat
Sold in the shops of stupidity street
I saw in vision the worm in the wheat
And in the shops nothing for people to eat
Nothing for sale in stupidity street
(by Ralph Hodgson)
Most have all but forgotten what shopping was like before the advent of supermarkets. Now we expect the shelves to be groaning with every variety of food imaginable, much presented to us which has been grown on the other side of the world, and imported into theUK. We expect this variety all year round – not just to be available in season.
We throw about 30% of it away, while each year 2 million people in the world die from malnutrition; we have an epidemic of obesity while two to three food banks are being opened every week to feed the poor.
Every time a customer buys a packet of cornflakes, the cashier’s computer connects to the vast distribution depots and registers the transaction, so that the shelves can be replenished. If there is an electricity cut, supermarkets close their doors to maintain the integrity of their vulnerable computer systems.
Unlike our ancestors, or even the elderly alive today, we expect food security, and hardly consider it to be a problem compared to all the other pressing issues in our obsession with economic growth.
Before the second World War, food production was much more localised. Local growers and farmers supplied local abbatoirs, markets and shops. Today, many of the food chains are so international and convoluted, that sourcing the product, let alone the ingredients, grows evermore difficult and the supply chains evermore extensive.
Compared to 1925, when there were approximately 2 billion people on the planet, we in the so-called developed world eat like kings. Naturally, those in the developing world aspire to the sort of food security and diet that we have grown used to. But there are now over 7 billion of us. Can the corporate, capitalist economic model continue to deliver – dependent as it is on oil for transport, plastics, fertilisers etc?
Is it possible to continue to grow the amount of barley, wheat and maize needed, when 55% of what is grown is used to fatten livestock – and the climate is changing rapidly. Yes it is changing, and is effecting food security.
When next you engage with a climate change denier, ask them to do the following.
Firstly – take a physical map of the world printed circa 1850, and compare it to one printed circa 2000. Compare the amount of forest and jungle (the lungs of the planet) and the amount of desert. In 1880,Ethiopiafor instance was about 78% forested: it is now about 11%. Compare also the amount of land now covered in concrete. Since 2002, for the first time in human history, more people on the planet now live in expanding cities, and thus rely on being fed from the diminishing areas of fertile land around them.
Secondly – point out that if every African, Indian, Chinese and South American were to enjoy the sort of lifestyle and diet that we do in the UK, we would need the resources of three planet earths – today!
Thirdly – encourage them to watch films such as ‘The Age of Stupid’, ‘The end of the Line’, and in particular a film backed by the Co-op called ‘Chasing Ice’. It nearly brought me to tears.
Ah, I hear some of these climate change deniers already saying ‘there have always been warming and cooling periods throughout the earth’s history, and the earth’s overall temperature has not increased for 16 years’. Indeed, there have always been natural climate changes – but if you separate sea temperature from land temperature, you will see that land temperature is still rising (.3 degrees centigrade in the last 10 years across the whole globe) 2 degrees C in China in the past 50 years, and 3 degrees C in the Antarctic peninsula where the icecap is rapidly melting ditto the Arctic. Compared to pre-industrial times, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have nearly doubled. ie We are changing the ratio of gases all plant and animal life breathes.
The result is that extreme weather is becoming much more common. Peak rainfall rates in South East Asia have doubled over 30 years, and in theUKwe have seen a rise in the number of heavy, localised showers as cumulus clouds become bigger. Last year was the second wettest on record, and saw one of the longest periods of drought. In theUSAit was the warmest year on record, and inRussia, the second warmest – which devastated crops and caused huge bush fires. DittoAustralia.
Climate change equals extreme weather – floods – drought – increased wind speeds – soil erosion and polluted water.
The Chinese are so concerned about the effects of their rapidly accelerating rate of development and urbanisation, that they are buying up vast areas of agricultural land in places likeSouthern Sudanto feed their population. Questions were asked recently about why, in a recent mapping exercise in one area ofChina, over a thousand rivers and streams were not recorded. They no longer existed – and many other Chinese Waterways, as well as ground water sources, are now so polluted by industrial waste that they are becoming undrinkable, and are contaminating crops.
When I talk to some climate change deniers they often say ‘it won’t happen in my lifetime’, and I want to shout ‘it is happening – it is starting to effect you and me now – and doesn’t even your tabloid mindset care about your own children and grandchildren?’
Are you not concerned about the plummeting decline in bees and moths – the chief pollinaters of our crops, without whose industry we would see mass global starvation?
Are you not concerned about the rapid decline in many species of birds?
Are you not concerned about the plummeting decline in global fish stocks, because we continue to allow huge industrial trawlers with mile long, nylon nets to plough the ocean floors, hoovering up fish, and destroying vital coral reefs, and the feeding and breeding grounds of fish?
Yet the EU still has a policy of allowing fishermen to jettison all fish under a certain size. ie they are thrown back overboard – dead. Eg bass only start to breed when they are about 42 cms long, yet commercial fishermen are allowed to catch them at 36 cms long. Ditto cod. It is difficult to conceive of a more insane policy.
A few politicians raise concerns. Perhaps a 2 year moratorium on neonicotinoid pesticides might be a good thing to see if bee numbers recover? (Research over 5 years has shown that these pesticides are very likely to be the cause of the near 80% decline in bee numbers as well as destroying moths and possibly birds). Should we not do something about the bio side that is current fishing policy? Why are we importing so much food which could be grown in theUKand so many of our farmers are giving up the land while so many young people find it impossible to enter the farming industry? But there is no sense of real urgency – just dithering. ‘Nature is always plentiful, and new technologies will surely come along’.
We are organisms not mechanisms – part of nature, not separate from her; yet we treat the earth like an object – a possession that we can exploit and rape at will.
In our top-down world, governed as we are by vast international corporations such as the petrochemical industry and banks, we are completely ignoring the reality of our position as one unique species reliant on all the others.
So what can we do? We must ‘think globally and act locally’ – recognize that nature abhors centralisation. In the natural world, lots of little things co-operate and contribute to the whole.
Today, most people have now become so divorced from the natural rhythms of nature that they have ceased to wonder where their food and drinking water actually comes from, and how the supply of both are now in jeopardy.
Some believe that GM crops will save us. Not according to thousands of small farmers inCanadaand theUSAwho were sold the idea of bug resistant plants and increased yields. Yes, GM worked for them for a few years, but as bugs mutated, the population of pollinaters declined, and yields fell, the multi-national GM companies such as Monsanto, still demand that these small farmers fulfil their contracts with them and buy their seed.
Ah, but plants have always been bred ever since humans started farming, some will respond. Yes, they have, but until very recently, they have never had alien genes from other life forms injected into them – and we have no idea of the long term consequences. Don’t forget, it was only just over 2 years ago, soon after the first genomes were de-coded, that scientists were saying that 80% was junk! Now they realise that every bit of that so-called junk DNA can act as a transmitter / reactor with umpteen others at different times of the life cycle.
Is better plant breeding the answer? Sometimes. About 50 years ago there were hundreds of varieties of rice grown inAsia. Today, there are only about ten main varieties, which at first, proved much higher yielding and disease resistant. But bugs, viruses and bacteria are always mutating, and it is a constant struggle to maintain the same levels of productivity, particularly in a system of agri-monoculture where other plants are excluded which help maintain the health of an eco-system.
So where is the good news you must be asking? Well, don’t look to the increasingly lignified corporate thistles that dominate the land. Look to the tender green shoots sprouting locally.
Increasing numbers of people are realising that the uniformity of the corporate capitalist system, whose raison d’etre is ever increasing production, consumption and profit is completely unsustainable, because of it’s destructive onslaught and rape of the natural order.
In theUKfor instance there are now 350,000 people with allotments, and over 100,000 on the waiting list. The National Trust is responding to people who want land to grow their own food, and opening up some of their properties. Many farmers, particularly in the South West, have realised they can make more money by renting a hectare of their land to people wanting to work it, than they can from the Single Farm Payment. The Urban Farm Movement, the so-called Rurbanites who grow crops on any unused land, co-operative farm shops and local farm markets are growing in strength. More and more people are growing food and raising chickens in their own back gardens.
At a national level, the Co-op’s Plan Bee is attracting huge support, and even this government has had to respond to calls for opening up a few more marine reserves to help fish stocks recover.
Did you know that if you drilled an acre of land you might get four and a half to five tons of wheat or barley from it. If you took that same acre and built houses on it to the right density, and assume the householders were all good gardeners, not only would you get approximately five times the quantity of food, you would have the choice of over 2,000 different varieties of food crops that can be grown in the UK! ie small is beautiful, and often far more productive.
Nature is always differentiating. No two snowflakes, grains of sand or even clones are the same or remain the same. It is only human beings, who seeking uniform control over each other and over nature, are in opposition to difference and diversity. This is particularly so today, when with the aid of our technologies, we are now so blindly anthropomorphic that we are blithely wiping out tens of thousands of species – from plankton to pandas, from good bacteria to bees – species that are absolutely essential for our own survival. Compared to even 400 years ago, what we see around us today in terms of flora and fauna – is a desert.
Yet, in our small minded, ignorant way we continue to invest our energies in arguing the case for a particular religious or political ideology, as the exploitation of the planet continues. It really no longer matters whether we are capitalist or communist, atheist or believer – we are all in this together on this small planet. Until we face up and realise we are commiting biocide we shall continue down this route to self-destruction.
I am not a Luddite – a technophobe looking back to some sort of idyllic eden. I am all for appropriate technologies that work with nature of which we are an intimate and vital part. I want to see a sustainable society, one in the words of David Toolan, ‘that meets the needs of the present without comprising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It would be a system that respects the limits and the carrying capacity of natural systems. It would be powered by renewable energy resources, and so far as possible, would emulate nature, where one organism’s waste is another’s sustenance. It would be a re-use, re-cycle economy. We have the technologies needed to make a sustainable society happen. The question is – do we have the political will?’
My fear is that we don’t – because most people have forgotten that our very lives, let alone all cultural and economic activity, depends on maintaining healthy eco-systems – food and water
Life to the land brings life to the people.
You can’t eat money!