I very visibly suggested that we’d have a massive famine in 2009 thanks the under-fertilization of the wheat crop. This outcome is inevitable and I explored the roots of this in The Dead Gods Of Atacama.
The recent fall of the government in Tunisia was driven in part by food prices. This is now spreading to Algeria and will likely reach Egypt, as well as Jordan. Instead of fossil fuel driven fertilizer supply issues, it looks like climate change is going to be the prime mover behind the troubles our species will face in 2011.
The iron triangle of collapse looks set to break into general public awareness.
First, some words about wheat. Last year I went out and got wheat production data from 1960 through 2008. I found human population numbers for the same time period and created this graphic, showing stocks vs. human population. We hear of increasing yields due to the Green Revolution but the numbers don’t lie - we’ve eaten everything we’ve grown. End of season stocks have been a pretty consistent 70 pounds per person, until the massive biofuel push started at the turn of the century. This drove good wheat lands into serving as marginal corn ground, and it drove end of season stocks down to about 40 pounds per person. That’s the danger zone.
Things recovered a bit in 2009. But then 2010 came … with climate change all over the place. First Russia burned, and the government embargoed wheat exports.
The Russian embargo put a huge hole in the world wheat supply picture. Just two months or so ago, it was expected that Russia would, again, as in the last two years, export around 18 MMT. Shipments were closed after about 3.5 MMT had left between July 1 and Aug 15, and some 1 to 2 MMT of unaccounted for open sales (to Egypt, the Middle East and Africa) were likely cancelled by the government prohibition. This left importers to fend for themselves to replace cancelled purchased at prices as much as $100 per MT higher than previously agreed to in their cancelled Russian supply contracts.
Then Pakistan’s Indus Valley flooded, laying waste to crops. Wheat is a winter crop there, so the summer floods got rice, beans, and other staples.
Mohsin Leghari, a member of the Punjab regional assembly, told the World Today aid workers were being attacked by desperate, starving people.
"Their crops have gone, their livestock has gone, the infrastructure, the roads are gone," he said. "Right now our land link with the rest of the country is gone."
Now we’ve got a predicted 1.5 million ton shortfall in wheat production due to epic flooding in Australia.
The latest disaster is unfolding in Australia, where the northeastern state of Queensland has been inundated after a month of rain, and is proving every bit the catalyst for rising commodity prices as the 2010 floods in Pakistan and the wildfires in Russia were. Flooding in Australia has roiled Asia-Pacific markets for coal, cotton, wheat and sugar.
Any one of these three events alone would have been cause for serious concern. Three at once?
First, Tunisia goes bang. OK, a dictator flees, that’s all well and good … but what if the new unity government is facing a problem for which there simply aren’t answers? The global economy is staggering, oil prices appear set to repeat their peak and crash pattern of 2008 … I’ve seen articles about whole countries being “priced out of the food market”. Yeah, someone wrote that and they didn’t use the snark or PureEvil tags.
Next hundreds are injured in food riots in Algeria.
Algerian state media says at least two people have been killed and 300 have been injured in rioting over soaring food prices.
Jordan has peaceful protests. But they only stay peaceful if the government can do something about the problem that has driven people into the streets.
The peaceful protest was held despite hastily announced government measures to curb commodity and fuel prices. Similar demonstrations were held in three other towns and cities across the country, witnesses said.
and this tidbit is particularly interesting …
Other Arab countries have taken similar steps. Libya abolished taxes and customs duties on food products and Morocco offered compensation to importers of soft milling wheat to keep supplies stable after a surge in grain prices..
This article by the Independent sums it all up.
Inflation worldwide is back with a vengeance – and with distressing social consequences. World food prices hit a new all-time record last week, passing their previous peak in 2008.
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You can see the effect of this around the world. Rising food prices seems to be one of the immediate causes of the riots in Tunisia and Algeria. The governments of Libya, Jordan and Morocco have all taken steps in the past few days to control food prices in the wake of this unrest. The Indian government has taken a number of measures, including a ban on exporting onions, to try to hold down vegetable prices. China has cut road tolls for food lorries. In Indonesia, the price of chillies has risen five-fold and fears of unrest have been one of the reasons share prices have fallen sharply in recent trading.
Even relatively developed countries have been affected. The South Korean government has released emergency stocks of cabbages, pork, fish and so on.
You want a message of Hope and Change?
I hope we can change our foreign policy so we don’t get dragged into a military responses for every brush fire that comes. This is it: energy, environment, and economy are all going sideways at the same time. And there’s precious little we can do about it.