Finding out Carbon's Shoe Size over Dinner
When it comes down to it, a major hurdle to solving the global food crisis is that we, the world's population, do not have a common problem. The causes of the food crisis, and its associated issues, are not universal; they are regional and local. This was evident at the recent United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization summit in Rome, participants seemed more eager to heap blame others and push individual agendas rather than unify and seek out commonality and potential solutions through critical discussion.
The current global food crisis can be seen as a gleaming example of the complexity our world faces. The complexity is such that the label "global food crisis" is vastly over simplified, because it is one aspect of an intricate and dynamic web of global challenges. The food crisis is tied to the oil crisis and both are woven into the climate change crisis. The spin-off crises (e.g. inflation, civil unrest, trade restrictions) cause greater problems, especially when mixed with natural disaster and nationalistic politics.
Focusing on solutions that singularly address the global food issue will not do much to solve the problem, except provide short-term political stability for some governments. The food crisis needs to be addressed, in all its complexity, as part of the oil crisis and climate change crisis, because each has roots in the others, in terms of both causes and solutions. However, where is the common problem that motivates and unifies and how do we identify it in all this complexity?
Agriculture is hydrocarbon intensive. As oil prices increase, so do the costs of the energy required for tilling fields and transporting product to market. Increasing oil prices also affect the cost of agriculture inputs because of reliance on hydrocarbon-based pesticides and fertilizers. The increases in energy and input costs are vivid and linear, but oil's influence does not stop here. The rise in oil prices has led some countries (e.g. United States, Brazil) to divert foodstuffs for fuel use (ethanol, bio-fuel), adding supply pressure to a global food chain that happens to have a growing appetite. However, the diversion of foodstuffs to fuel does not explain the price increase of rice, which to date is not used to produce bio-fuel.
The oil price cannot take all the blame for the global food crisis, there are other culprits. Global demand for food has increased, particularly in developing nations, as globalization has raised living standards. This particular characteristic of the global food crisis would not be a problem if investment in agricultural research and infrastructure had not been in decline for the last 25 years. Years of abundance did not attract private investment because food was cheap and margins were slim. When globalization's dividends, more people moving out of poverty with money to spend, started to come due beneficiaries headed straight for the grocery, and the grocer was not prepared.
Politics is another major contributor to the food crisis. Some key exporters of foodstuffs have recently imposed and/or strengthened export tariff in order to stabilize domestic markets. Export tariffs may ensure short-term domestic supply and price reduction for individual countries but creates major problems for those who depend on imports. Export tariffs also hinder domestic production, in the same way subsidies do, by isolating a domestic market from the global economy, and removing incentives for farmers to improve efficiency and increase production.
Any attempts at solving the food crisis need to consider the climate change issue, which creates another level of complexity, but also opportunity. Improving agricultural systems, in order to feed growing and more demanding populations that include sustainable agricultural management practices requires continuous global cooperation. Approaching the food crisis via climate change may provide world leaders with a common problem, which they can (mostly) agree, if the focus is carbon-footprint reduction. There seems to be greater potential for a global agreement on the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions resulting from human activity than the food crisis, even though both are related. Improving agricultural systems to produce more food for more people, whilst using fewer resources (i.e. water, inputs, energy) that promotes carbon-footprint reduction could help solve both the food and climate change crises.
A carbon-footprint reduction approach does not stimulate political and scientific turmoil because, regardless ones' opinion of climate change, its execution makes sense at many levels. Proactive steps can be taken to reduce the carbon-footprint by individuals, bands, businesses, tribes, companies, chiefdoms, states, nations, governments or any other assemblage of human activity that produce noticeable results, on the regional, local and global level. For companies, reducing a carbon-footprint is good business, as too for individuals and countries because it invigorates innovation and reduces cost. This makes it a motivating and unifying topic or, in other words, a potential common problem for addressing the food crisis.
Originally published June 16, 2008