A lethal combination of high prices and falling supply is threatening food security. Is the climate to blame?

In March food agencies began making emergency appeals when food aid, for regions racked by drought and civil war, fell drastically short of target. High food prices and fuel costs have rendered the provision and transportation of such aid prohibitively expensive, threatening to expose the world’s poorest more than ever.

Countries including India, Vietnam, Argentina and China have imposed export quotas to protect domestic commodity supplies amid rising concern over production and prices. Meanwhile, net importers like the Philippines were left scrambling to secure supply contracts when the production of food staples dipped below global consumption levels. At the end of March, the US Department of Agriculture published an outlook suggesting that for the period 2007-08, global consumption of wheat outstripped production by 14.7 million tons, leaving global wheat stocks at their lowest in 30 years.

Volatile recipe

The volume of world trade in cereals will decline by 1.5% in 2008, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). The FAO Food Outlook, suggests that the contraction in trade will result from continuing high, volatile cereal and grain prices, combined with soaring freight costs. In a separate report, the FAO highlights that while food imports in less developed countries will decline by 2% in 2008, the cost of imports will increase by 35%.

Spiralling food prices have already prompted government intervention in many countries. India, Morocco, China, Senegal and Indonesia have cut import tariffs on wheat, while Ethiopia, Pakistan and Zambia have imposed export quotas and, in extreme cases, export bans. Many countries, including Benin and Senegal, have introduced food subsidies in an attempt to keep basics at an affordable price.

The threat of starvation recently triggered riots in Indonesia, prompting government intervention in the form of food subsidies. Shortages and high food and fuel prices have sparked civil unrest in Central Africa, West Africa and Zimbabwe and caused riots over the last few years in Mexico, Bengal, Indonesia, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Guinea and Mauritania.

Shrinking harvests, surging prices

World cereal production has declined by up to 16% in recent years in both the US and the European Union, mainly due to reduced plantings and adverse weather in some of the major producing and exporting countries, says Joachim Von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). According to the FAO, wheat production in Australia has fallen a staggering 52%, its cereal production by 33%. In January this year, wheat prices were 83% higher than the previous year.

In Thailand, the world’s primary rice exporter, officials have suggested that rice prices may reach US$1,000 a ton in 2008. Currently, the export price for Grade B (long grain) white rice is US$624 per ton – in January 2001 it was US$197 per ton.

Pest threat

Last year the tungro virus and infestations of the brown planthopper insect ravaged rice crops across central and southern Vietnam. Robert Zeigler, director general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), a non-profit agricultural research centre, has warned that the virus and infestations that devastated the crops may re-emerge this growing season and spread to other key producers, including China, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar. On an already thin market, the ramifications could be dire.

A growing number of studies are focusing on the impact of climate change on pests and weeds. A paper by Kohji Yamamura and Masayuki Yokozawa, from the National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences in Japan, found that warmer and earlier growing seasons will increase crop susceptibility to pests and viruses, which are expected to proliferate as a direct result of rising temperatures.

The oil factor

Further fuelling food inflation is the price of oil, sustained at over US$100 per barrel since the beginning of the year. The increased cost of production at farm level, in terms of fertiliser costs and equipment operation, through to transportation and shipping, has significantly increased the prices of food staples.

Efforts by governments to become less dependent on fossil fuels have created a global trend for policies favouring biofuel crop production. This threatens to further push up food prices as ‘fuel versus food’ acreage wars become more commonplace.

Dr Sushil Pandi of the IRRI says: “Shortfalls in production and subsequent price rises are being exacerbated by increasing competition for land, labour and water for biofuel production”. He notes that in China, more than three million hectares have already been shifted out of rice production and into biofuel crop production.

In 2007 alone, world demand for coarse grain doubled due to the demand for grain used in US ethanol distilleries, according to calculations based on USDA figures by the Earth Policy Institute, an independent research organisation. Separately, the International Food Policy Research Institute warns that if current biofuel targets are pursued, maize prices will increase by 72% and oilseeds by 44% by 2020.

Appetite for meat

Increasing demand in Asian countries for meat and dairy products, due to higher incomes and changing diets – at a time when global grain production is at its lowest – is also pushing up prices.

Heightened demand for these products implies that greater tracts of arable land may be switched over to animal feed production, with further acreage being shifted from crop production into livestock farming.

On the flipside, the US Department of Agriculture predicts that higher grain prices, primarily due to the impact of crops being switched into ethanol production, will cause a decline in livestock farming as meat products become priced out of the market.

Climate unknowns

The backdrop to this bleak scenario is the spectre of climate change. Economist William Cline, senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics and the Centre for Global Development in Washington, estimates that global warming will cause a 16% decline in global agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020. He also projects output to fall by 20% in developing countries and by 6% in industrialised nations.

Last year tied as the earth’s second warmest year in recorded history, according to data gathered by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Rising temperatures are already resulting in shorter picking seasons.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation investigates the impact of shorter picking seasons on grapes. In some cases fruit crops are maturing and rotting before they can be picked. Over recent years, warmer temperatures have resulted in fruit ripening early and falling prey to frosts, as was the case with fruit and nut crops in southern USA in 2007 and 2006.

The more arid regions are already being tipped into the danger zone of drought, causing crop failure and loss of livestock. Australia, the world’s second-largest wheat producer, is now suffering its third consecutive year of drought. Formerly the breadbasket of the world, its grain silos now stand virtually empty. As long as they remains so, world grain prices will stay inflated.

Glacial effects

At the other end of the spectrum, rising temperatures are resulting in glacier melt in the Himalayas, which have the largest concentration of glaciers outside the polar caps. According to the World Wildlife Fund, 67% of the glaciers are already melting, causing glacial lakes to burst their banks, destroying villages, crops and livestock. At the UN climate change conference in Bali last December, Bhutan pleaded for adaptation funds to help protect its glacial lakes from bursting.

Over the longer term, the disappearance of these glaciers threatens to deprive China and India of much-needed irrigation water for wheat and rice crops during dry seasons. The glaciers feed the Yangtze and Yellow rivers and provide up to 70% of water in the Ganges during dry season.

Together, China and India produce more than half the world’s wheat and rice, which makes projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regarding the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers by 2035 all the more alarming.

According to Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, Asia’s melting glaciers may pose the biggest threat to food production the world has ever faced.

Extreme weather

A series of reports recently published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) suggests that in coming years, rising temperatures and increased CO2 levels could result in slightly higher crop yields in temperate regions. Meanwhile, farm-level adaptation measures may allow crops to cope with 1–2°C local temperature increases, creating the effect of ‘buying time’ says one report. This scenario assumes the absence of extreme weather conditions.

But the authors also point out that the variables used in simulation models to date have been oversimplified. In general, crop and pasture responses to climate change and corresponding increases in CO₂ remain largely unknown, given that little is known about crop responses to increased CO₂, impacts of sustained extreme weather conditions, related changes in weeds and pests, nor the extent to which carbon sinks will be reduced.

Furthermore, any productivity gains in temperate regions will be offset by reduced livestock productivity, increased livestock mortality and loss of cultivated areas in semi-arid and arid regions.

Extreme weather conditions over a few days could wipe out entire crops, if the conditions occur during a critical development stage. This is already happening on a small scale, say the authors, citing a case in the Po Valley of northern Italy, when extremely high temperatures in 2003 caused a record drop of 36% in corn yields.

In any case, the overwhelming body of research indicates that any productivity gains won in the short term regarding higher CO₂-related crop yields will be lost in the latter half of the century, as mean temperatures rise between 2º and 3°C regionally and globally. “After that, all bets are off,” said Francesco Tubiello, a physicist and agricultural expert at the Nasa/Goddard Institute of Space Studies and co-author of the three PNAS reports. The temperature increases projected for the second half of the 21st century will have increasingly negative impacts on all regions, say the reports.

Adaptation model

In the face of so many variables threatening food security, what is the best line of defence? Policy recommendations currently touted to governments outline ‘adaptation strategies’ that increase resilience of agricultural systems, reducing their vulnerability to climate change.

“The best strategies to implement are no-regret strategies – techniques that would make production systems more robust anyway,” says Tubiello.

“These involve developing more varied systems, and in general include all those techniques that lead to better conservation of soil and water resources – more rotations with several different crops over time; use of cover crops to conserve water; efficient use of inputs; and low-impact tillage,” he says.

“The great news about such techniques is that they typically also contribute to carbon sequestration. The bad news is that they would not necessarily be enough to combat climate change – but it is at least a start,” he said. Such techniques traditionally provide lower agricultural productivity compared to monoculture farming, however.

Smart biofuels

A pilot scheme currently under way in India involving the cultivation of ‘smart crops’ reflects this ‘no-regret’ approach. A mitigating strategy is under way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions via the production of biofuel crops that neither compete for existing cultivated land nor reduce grazing land, but which provide non-fossil fuel-based fertiliser for local agricultural crops and create local education and employment opportunities.

Pongamia, sweet sorghum, jatropha and neem are being planted to provide paid employment and harvest rights to local farmers and landless people. With training, local residents will become the owners, producers, processors and end-users of these smart crops, whose production is for biofuel, animal fodder and fertiliser.

Within the programme 500 hectares of marginal common land are currently under cultivation. The three-year-old crops, which are 100% rain fed, are being cultivated utilising rainwater harvesting and other water and soil conservation methods in an effort to improve soil quality.

Sorghum solution

“Sweet sorghum has a pro-poor advantage given its triple product potential – grain, juice for ethanol, and bagasse [crushed stalk waste] for livestock feed and power generation. The byproduct, biofuel ‘seedcake’, will be used as biodegradable fertiliser for local agricultural crops,” said Dr Suhas P Wani, principal scientist and regional theme coordinator at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), a non-profit agricultural research organisation. An efficient biofuel feedstock, sweet sorghum only requires 4,000 cubic meters to produce a kilolitre of bioethanol, compared with 36,000 cubic meters for sugar cane.

While the existing carbon footprint of the villages themselves is already very low, the high carbon sequestration properties of the tree crops themselves may provide wider benefits – particularly from a carbon credit trading perspective.

No guarantees

The current favourite – and somewhat familiar sounding – policy prescription is to provide farmers with the infrastructure support and financial incentives that enable them to adapt farming practices to the predicted climate changes. But scientists say that even if adaptation policies and farmer training schemes were rolled out blanket-style tomorrow, there is still no guarantee of long-term global food security.

Tubiello estimates that at best, assuming the available investment and the political will exist, European agricultural policy will change over the next ten years to encompass adaptation strategies – if the frequency of extreme climate events continues at the present rate.

Painful progress

Developing countries are currently relying on band-aid-style trade strategies, which are already proving inadequate. Intervention policies, including the removal of import tariffs and the introduction of food price subsidies, have been introduced in an effort to contain food prices. The short-term benefits of these measures are being undermined, however, by the imposition of export quotas and export bans by producer countries – the effect of which is to further push up prices and undercut already short supplies.

The impact on developed countries has so far been negligible in comparison, with bread and pasta prices rising a couple of cents. For the one billion people worldwide struggling on less than a dollar a day, however, the harsh reality is that a couple of cents can mean the difference between subsistence and starvation.>