The hungry planet

[Briar]

The hungry planet
As stocks run out and harvests fail, the world faces its worst crisis for 30 years
By Geoffrey Lean


Food supplies are shrinking alarmingly around the globe, plunging the world into its greatest crisis for more than 30 years. New figures show that this year's harvest will fail to produce enough to feed everyone on Earth, for the sixth time in the past seven years. Humanity has so far managed by eating its way through stockpiles built up in better times - but these have now fallen below the danger level.

Food prices have already started to rise as a result, and threaten to soar out of reach of many of the 4.2 billion people who live in the world's most vulnerable countries. And the new "green" drive to get cars to run on biofuels threatens to make food even scarcer and more expensive.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which produce the world's two main forecasts of the global crop production, both estimate that this year's grain harvest will fall for the second successive year.

The FAO is still compiling its latest crop forecast - due to be published next month - but told The Independent on Sunday late last week that it looked like barely exceeding 2 billion tons, down from 2.38 billion last year, and 2.68 billion in 2004, although the world's appetite has continued to grow as its population rises.

The USDA estimates it will be even lower - 1.984 billion tons. This would mean that it would fall 58 million tons short of what the world's people are expected to consume this year: 10 years ago, by contrast, farmers grew 64 million tons more than was consumed. The world's food stocks have shrunk from enough to feed the world for 116 days in 1999 to a predicted 57 days at the end of this season, well below the official safety level. Prices have already risen by up to 20 per cent this year.

...

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1325467.ece

[whistle]

1. Time to implement the Soylent Green program....

<Spoiler warning: if you have not yet seen the movie, rent or buy it and watch it before reading this link>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green

[Kagemusha]

2. So cars on biofuel merely deepens their inherent evil

Must get rid of cars altogether.

...That's the logical conclusion when reading this, right? I wonder if that was the author's intent.

[Boomer]

4. No, that's just your conclusion

The author is reporting the facts; what we want to do with them is still up for grabs.

For instance, we could....

* get rid of cars

* reduce the amount of biofuel produced

* reduce the number of beef cows

* and finally, learn to eat something other than food when the military takes control of all biofuel supplies "for reasons of national security."

[Delphinus]

3. What a remarkable story.

I'm sitting here, shaking my head, wondering what we're going to do.

The tinfoil hatter in me thinks tptb have something in the wings that will wipe out most of the world's population, so they don't have to worry about this. Certainly no one is looking at this situation realistically. Indiana wants to build ethanol plants - and it amazed me when I read that Iowa's plants will use up their ENTIRE crop!