The Food Crisis, Causes, and Impact to Local and Global Community - Essay Example

FOOD CRISIS 1. Introduction Food crisis is a vital concern and it requires both short and long-term solutions to prevent or reduce its impact. The disparity between food production and consumption can result to many social and political problems such high prices of goods, high poverty rates, malnutrition, and others. For this reason, a number of solutions were proposed ranging from population control to reduction of carbon emission. However, these solutions must be analyzed and evaluated before any adoption can be made. The following sections discuss food crisis, causes, and impact to local and global community. It also includes an evaluation of different proposed solutions and recommended approach to prevent food crisis in the future. 2. Food Crisis Generally, food crisis is the result of imbalance between rising food demands against limited supply (Brown 2004, p.52). However, food crisis may be best understood by the interaction of factors governing demand and supply of food, both in local and global scale. These factors contributing to food crisis include increasing cost of food production, cost of transport particularly in terms of increasing fuel or oil prices, high demands of commodities for bio-fuel production (United Nations 2009, p.47). Moreover, there are also increasing demand for food such as meat that trigger escalating demand for animal feed, and poor harvest due to unfavourable environmental conditions in agricultural regions of the world. On the other side, there are financial, political, and management related factors that can affect food production such as inadequate investment in agriculture leading to imbalances between population growth and agricultural production. The impact of foreign exchange market, protectionism, poor trade policies, and speculative attitude by governments and commercial agencies resulting to higher world food prices (Benson et al. 2008, p2). Food crisis is not only associated with declining or insufficient food supply but on nutritional values as well. According to Stafford (2007), although plants are benefitting from high carbon dioxide or “greenhouse effect” generated by climate, their nutritional value or quality will be significantly less (p.526). Similarly, high temperatures produced by climate change can suppress livestock’s appetites resulting to lower weight gain. For instance, study conducted by different scientific groups in the United States suggests that cow population dropped by 10% due to increasing temperature. Moreover, it also suggests that herds produce less milk due to temperature change and decreasing forage (Casper 2009, p.66). Food crisis is related to food security which is by definition is the ability of people to access adequate, safe, and nutritious food thus when the right amount and nutritious food is not available, food security is threatened and crisis is inevitable (Atehnkeng 2007, p.46). According to Cribb (2010), rising prices, shortages, rationing, and famine in poor countries occurred because the world consumed more grain that it produced in the years between 2001 to 2008 (p.3). Analysis of world grain stocks that triggered the 2007-2008 food crises suggest that global stock-to-consumption ratio was in its lowest level as shown in Figure 1 below (Cohen & Clapp 2009, p.32); Figure 1- Global stock-to-consumption (Source: Cohen & Clapp (2009)) Food crisis is thus a result of a combination of factors such as decline in growth of agricultural production, increasing energy costs, escalating demand from emerging economies, speculation particular in financial market resulting to high prices, environmental conditions, and others that indirectly or directly affecting food production and cost. 3. Causes and Impact One of the primary causes of food crisis is the imbalance between population growth and food production. For instance, world grain production in the last decade fell short of consumption resulting to high grain prices where poor countries that are already experiencing difficulties cannot afford to buy or grown their own (Brown 2004, p.52). Moreover, 35% of the world’s grain is being diverted to feed livestock and bio-fuel rather than food for people (Mohan 2010, p.116). According to Cohen & Clapp (2009), the escalating demand for grain-based bio-fuels worsen the food situation since affects both demand for grain and prices (p.44). Expanding population and increasing food demand can have devastating effects since it will exceed agricultural capacity leading to food crisis and consequent social collapse (Walden Bello in Mazur (2009) p.179). In fact, population growth and outstripping food resources directly caused food crisis in India and Bangladesh in 1960s and it was only when food production levels were raised through Green Revolution technologies that the country managed to improve the levels of nutrition and food insecurities (Gould 2009, p.53). In China for instance, the demand for food increased with its growing population and dramatic change in diet of over 1.2 billion people. Moreover, since the Chinese economy expanded significantly, personal income increased considerably resulting to change in eating habit and demand for different types of food (Stover 1996, p.49). China however made an effort to control fertility and increase food production and other resources to avoid food crisis (Gould 2009, p.53). The impacts of food crisis according to Brown (2004) are hungry and desperate people seeking remedies from their respective governments that cannot provide then with food security. Various factors such as shortages in freshwater supply, high temperature, degradation of top soil makes food production more difficult and unable to keep up with demand. For instance, the speed by which groundwater is being pumped out from underground sources is faster than what normal rainfall can replenish. The rapidly falling water tables such as those in China’s northern plain and India, threatens agricultural production that can result to food shortages, higher prices, and other catastrophic consequences in the near future. The causes of food crisis as mentioned earlier include factors affecting local and global supply. This may be the rising oil prices resulting to higher cost of production, processing, and transport of goods. The growing population and the rapid economic growth of many developing countries greatly contribute to the imbalances between demand and supply, and ensuing shortages. Land degradation can also affect world’s food requirements in the long term as reduction of available land for agricultural purposes and consequent decrease in crops can lead to scarcity and higher food prices severely affecting poor people (TerrAfrica 2009, p.1-4). For instance, erosion is very significant in land degradation as there around 75 billion tonnes of soil corresponding to $400 billion/year is being lost along with its nutrients and water (Nelleman 2009, p.43). According to Brown (2004), erosion of top soil can lead to hunger as it forms a third of the world’s agricultural land. Moreover, top soil contained the nutrients plant required and it is being lost due to erosion caused by overgrazing, logging or cutting of trees, rain, and land development (p.55). Climate change can also affect food production due to change in plant’s growing condition such as insufficient rainfall, high temperature, and presence of significant level of carbon dioxide. Moreover, extreme weather such as floods, drought, storms, infestation, and storms can lead crop destruction resulting to lower yield (Nelleman 2009, p.43). The significant change in temperature and precipitation is the main causes of floods and droughts thus variations in weather such as the southwesterly Monsoon that carries around 80% of rainfall will have significant effect on regions engaged in farming (Mohan 2010, p.116). The impact of food crisis depends on the country’s food deficit and consumption patterns of its population. However, its impact will be more evident in poor or developing countries in the form of high poverty rates (Cudjoe et al. 2008, p.1), mass famine (Dronin & Bellinger 2005, p.12), malnutrition, inequalities, chaos, and other social problems (UK House of Commons 2008, p.6). Figure 2- Famine & Malnutrition in Poor Countries (Brown 2004, p.52) 4. Evaluation of Proposed Solutions to Food Crisis Some of the solutions proposed to prevent or reduce the impact of food crisis are stabilization or control of the world’s population, reforestation, renewable energy (Stafford 2007, p.527), and reducing carbon emission by at least 80% (Brown 2004, p.57). Others recommend sustainable land management to prevent land degradation (TerrAfrica 2009, p.3), and increase food production through agricultural resource development – people, land, and water (Tso 2004, p.217). However, solution to food crisis must be a long-term measure and should address the fundamental cause of the problem, which is decreasing agricultural production and rapid population growth (Karapinar & Haberli 2010, p.84). As discussed earlier, decreasing agricultural production is caused by land degradation, climate change, decreasing agricultural lands, and depleting water sources that can be address with environmental programmes. However, controlling the population and its appetite for food is a difficult task since population growth is linked to development, “a driving source of increased efficiency, economies of scale, and technological innovation” (Ahlburg et al. 1996, p.260). Population intervention, particularly in developing countries, seems not as practical as increasing the world’s agricultural production. In China for instance, the barriers in agricultural production are erosion, pollution, and agricultural tax that can be address by modern technology, improved credit and marketing systems, and reduction of surplus labour in the farming industry (Tso 2004, p.216). Similarly, land degradation can be address by improved land management, which according to TerrAfrica (2009) can increase yields by 50% (p.3) while high levels of CO2 can be controlled by advanced farming technology to maintain crops nutritional quality (Stafford 2007, p.527). A combination of these approaches is therefore more acceptable than population control with developmental side effects. 5. Conclusion The impact of food crisis includes high poverty rates, inequalities, malnutrition, multiple social problems while land degradation, climate change, diversion of farm produce to bio-fuel, and speculative marketing are some of the causes of food crisis. However, the most important and with larger impact are population growth and low agricultural production. There are a number of proposed solutions to prevent food crisis, but the most encouraging are those supporting the idea of increasing agricultural production. Controlling population growth seems unrealistic considering its negative effect particularly on emerging economies. Food crisis generally occur due inadequate food supply for the growing population thus addressing problems in food production is the most appropriate approach. 6. 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