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You are here: Home» Water Security» Soil Security» Food Security» Forest » Nato

 

 

Food Security and Insecurity

World food prices are at record highs

Food Security undoubtedly has been the issue of plights for poor countries and has become a top priority on political agenda in all countries, under-developed, developing or developed.
Climate change will worsen the living conditions of farmers, fishermen and forest-dependent people who are already vulnerable and food insecure. Hunger and malnutrition will increase. Rural communities dependent on agriculture in a fragile environment will face an immediate risk of increased crop failure and loss of livestock.

The findings of the Intergovernmental Panel Climate Change ( IPCC ), show that even if emissions be reduced to below half of 1990 level by 2050, a temperature rise of up to 2oC above pre-industrial levels will be unavoidable. This rise of 2oC will aggravate various security risks with increasing extent and frequencies of extremes of climate in in context of global warming. However, if left unmitigated, the adverse warming effects will be unprecedented and irreversible.

Climate change or global warming will cause

All these will bring about drop in crop and grain production. Moreover, hike in fertilizer prices which react in tandem with oil prices will further drive farmers to resort to forest clearing for new fertile lands, leading to food security and social problems, and further exacerbate climatic disasters.

Besides the general trend of population increase, the robust economic growth in some Asian countries like China, India, Vietnam, Indonesia, has improved people's affordability and lifestyle and dietary change. This creates high inflation rate due to price hike not only in items like dairy products, eggs, meat protein, vegetables and fruits, but also the basic food grains. Fear of food shortages has given rise to bans, quotas, taxes, and other restrictions on the export of food, commodities and raw materials. Hoardings are on the rise due to rising demand and prices.

 
  Not all rich countries are self sufficient in food. Comparison in food self-sufficiency among 12 developed countries in the world shows

Australia topping the list with 237%, Canada 145%, the US 128%, and France 122%. Countries with low figures includes Switzerland, at 49%, South Korea 47% and Japan being lowest at 39%.

Due to soaring worldwide food prices, food security has increasingly become a priority issue on political agenda of most developing and developed countries. 

In India, the world's second most populous country, several agricultural factors may provoke its potential food insecurity:

  • farming technology is relatively backward.

  • lack of ways of dissemination of knowledge in best practices in cultivation

  • lack of awareness and solutions in pest-related problems

  • lack of incentives given to the farming sector to encourage higher farm productivity.

  • new budget reflects an under provisioning of food, oil, seed and fertilizer subsidies to the farming sector.

  • inadequate storage, refrigeration and infrastructure facilities for perishables, like fruits and vegetables

  • lack of breakthroughs in farming practices

China is the largest wheat producer in the world thanks to its well-established policy in agriculture. China recently experiences the worst drought in 60 years which is threatening its wheat harvest. Traditionally self-sufficient in grain, China may one day need to import wheat to add to its stockpile. This would definitely cause upward surge in food grain prices and aggravate global food stress.

  Drought too occurs at other parts of the world: Australia, Argentina, the Black Sea.

 

Drought in the Black Sea region cut Russia's wheat harvest by a third in 2010. A subsequent ban on wheat exports drove prices up.                                                        Reuters

     

 

Japan, though being the world's third largest economy, is not self-sufficient in food grains. Japan is the world’s largest importer of food. It is the largest corn importer and also the 3rd largest soybeans importer in the world. 86% of its wheat supplies and 50% of the meat products consumed are sourced from imports too. Japan's ministry of agriculture sets a goal of raising food self-sufficiency to 45% by 2010, but it has since pushed back the target to 2015.

In March 2011, Japan experienced multiple disasters of  9.0 Richter scale earthquake, tsunami with 10 m high waves which partially ruptured its nuclear reactors. The catastrophe has caused

  destruction of rice fields, grain storage and transportation infrastructure, radioactive contamination of water, crops and livestock.
This placed Japan instantly as a country facing humanitarian food and water crisis. Japan's sudden new food demand caused prices hike. The massive cyclone and flood that hit Australia, the winter storms in the US, Europe, Japan, Russia and China are but a few of the recent catastrophic weather that hit some major grain zones of the world. turnbacktogod.com
     

 

The political unrests in the Middle East, the subsequent high oil prices, the greater conversion of cereals food to bio-fuels, the speculation on agricultural commodity futures too cause food price increase.

  There are concerns that biofuels have partly contributed to the global food shortage and driven up food prices; and that more crops are turned into fuel instead of food, threatening food security.

Left: Oil palm for biodiesel
Right: Corn for bioduel
 
         

 

Africa is one of the continents most plagued by food shortage, as most countries here are net-food importers. They have low adaptive capacity and experience multiple stresses. Stresses include increasing

These are very common issues leading to food insecurity in many African countries. They cannot be easily overcome at national level. Regional coordination and collaboration integration is conceived as a viable solution to enhance productivity and competitiveness. The president of International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD suggested:


5
key areas for addressing food security issues:

Increasing agricultural productivity through drought, heat and salt resistant crop varieties, capacity building and technology transfer;
Increasing water productivity and savings;

Combating desertification and land degradation through projects for soil and water conservation and re-vegetation;

Monitoring of natural resource use, and capacity building for sustainable land management

Improving infrastructure, such as roads, financial services, marketing services and price information services;
Engaging youth in the agricultural and agro-processing and trading sectors to reduce unemployment and raise education levels.

 

African farmers given drought tolerant maize variety

 
  Maize is the most widely grown staple crop in Africa with more than 300 million dependents. 70% of people in Africa rely on agriculture for their livelihoods and food security. Maize cultivation in Africa have been under constant threats of drought as three-quarters of the world’s severe droughts have occurred in Africa over the past 10 years.

Droughts lead to crop failure, food price hike, hunger, undernourishments to the poverty-stricken Sub Saharan African Continent and many countries in the world. One of the fundamentals to realizing food security lies in the development of drought-tolerant crop varieties which are also high yielding. This could be attained through biotechnology.
 

Equally essential is the ability of the small-scale farmers to adopt integrated crop management practices, supported by the strong political will of the government to mitigate drought impacts.

 

Currently in Africa, there are many international organizations working in close collaborations with the long-term goal to solve food security issues:

Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) partnership to address the effects of drought in a cost effective way to African smallholder farmers; 
African Agricultural Technology Foundation, AATF, to contribute project management expertise, technology stewardship
International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) to provide high-yielding maize varieties that are adapted to African conditions,
Monsanto to provide proprietary germplasm, advanced breeding tools and expertise, and drought-tolerance transgenes developed in collaboration with BASF;
Agricultural research systems, farmers’ groups, seed companies in Africa

 

 

A Project that targets to give African Farmers Drought Tolerant Maize - Africasciencenews.org Jan 2009

Stress-tolerant rice for poor farmers in Africa and South Asia Project has received approval for funding by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through a grant to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and the Africa Rice Center (WARDA) for US$19.9 million.

 

Currently, more than a billion people worldwide live on less than a dollar a day and nearly one billion live in hunger. Over the next 50 years, the population of the world will increase by about 50%. About half of the world’s population consumes rice as a staple cereal, so boosting its productivity is crucial to achieving long-term food security. In addition, the project aims to build the capacity of researchers and seed producers and promote the exchange of stress-tolerant rice varieties.

 

  A new strategy to genetically engineer rice and other crops to make them more tolerant of drought, salt and temperature stresses, while improving their yields, is being reported by molecular biologists at Cornell University, headed by Ray J. Wu, and Ajay Garg, Cornell professors of molecular biology and genetics.
Photo and information origin: http://www.news.cornell.edu


Growing in the same salty soil conditions, the rice plants at left were genetically modified by Cornell biologists to produce trehalose sugar and resist environmental stresses, while the "normal" plants, at right, were not.

 

     
 

Photosynthesis, by which plants use solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates for growth, varies among plant species. Rice species, have a relatively inefficient mode of photosynthesis (known as C3). Others like maize and sorghum, have a more efficient mode known as C4. Photosynthesis C4 is 50% higher than that of C3 crops.
IRRI is using modern molecular tools in its research to converting the photosynthesis of rice from C3 form to the C4 of maize, to increase yields by 50%.

  C3 to C4 photosynthesis   
Africasciencenews.org: Multimillion dollar rice project   C4 (from maize)   to replace  C3  in Rice    
 
 

 

The Cornell biologists showed stress tolerance by introducing the genes for trehalose synthesis into Indica rice varieties, which represent 80% of rice grown worldwide. They envisage the same strategy to work in Japonica rice varieties, and a range of other crops, including corn, wheat, millet, soybeans and sugar cane.

(Pic: Cornell molecular biologists Ajay Garg, left, with 'normal' rice, and Ray Wu, with transgenic rice grown under the same environmental stresses.)

 

 

  They are placing the new technology in the public domain to make seeds for stress-tolerant crops available worldwide.

Project
is expected to increase rice yield of the poor farmers in Africa and Asia by 50%, over the next 10 years, benefiting at least 18 million households in the long term.

The same plants in simulated drought conditions, with the modified stress resistant version on the right.


Photo and information origin: News.cornell.edu
     

 

 

New Challenges!

While the increased productivity with new crop varieties increases grain yield and partially help to mitigate food shortage, it has led to nutritional problems. The high-yield varieties are usually low in minerals and vitamins. So, many people in the food stress areas of Africa and Asia, while having been spared from starvation might in the long run, become vulnerable to mineral deficiency- related illnesses.

The new varieties require continuing application of hazardous pesticides and environmentally damaging fertilizers. The need to reduce these inputs to achieve more sustainable agriculture thus pose a new challenge in the hunt for a solution variety.

 

Millions at risk of malnutrition and hunger
Brooding of global social and economic instability

The soaring price has caused inflation which erodes a major part of worker's income and the economic growth of a country. Equally worrying is that it is placing millions at risk of malnutrition and hunger, and is brooding global social and economic instability.

In March 2011, FAO called for greater investment in agriculture, commenting that that world food prices will continue and persist the upward hike to record high. The global population increase of 2 billion by 2050 - will need a 70% increase in global food production and a 100% increase in the developing countries. In opposite direction, the share of official agriculture assistance fell from 19% in 1980 to 3% in 2006, with current standing at 5%. Developing countries only allocate 5% of their national budgets to the sector, instead of 10%, despite its contribution to gross domestic product, exports and the balance of payments"

FAO commended the United Arab Emirates for pursuing its late leader, Sheikh Zayed's policy to attach great importance to the agricultural sector, who declared "Give me agriculture and I will give you civilization".

 

 

 

   
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References and Sources of Information:

World Bank Helps Millions Hit by Food Crisis
Ifad President Calls on the Arab Agriculture Sector: Climate-I.org
News.cornell.edu
Africasciencenews.org
Fao.org/climatechange
International Rice Research Institute


 

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