Not only is the current food situation deteriorating, but so is the global food system itself. The progress in reducing hunger in recent decades has been reversed. Unless we move quickly to adopt new population, energy, and water policies, the goal of eradicating hunger will remain just that. Time is running out. The world may be much closer to an unmanageable food shortage than most people realize.
The Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa make up nearly 5 percent of the world's population, yet take in more than 20 percent of the world's grain exports.
More than a quarter of all the meat produced worldwide is now eaten in China, and the country’s 1.35 billion people are hungry for more. In 1978, China’s meat consumption of 8 million tons was one third the U.S. consumption of 24 million tons. But by 1992, China had overtaken the United States as the world’s leading meat consumer—-and it has not looked back since. Now China’s annual meat consumption of 71 million tons is more than double that in the United States. With U.S. meat consumption falling and China’s consumption still rising, the trajectories of these two countries are determining the shape of agriculture around the planet.
"We have set up a global food system that supports speculation. And with [such] markets, we can't get speculators out of the food business," said Lester Brown, an agricultural policy expert and founder of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute.
There is too much at stake when governments give up land, water, and livestock to large-scale foreign investment. NGOs and funders have to listen and respond to the needs and accomplishments on the ground, and keep local food systems truly local.
A four-part piece about the increasing prevalence of large-scale land acquisition or "land grabs" in Sub-Saharan Africa from the Worldwatch Intitute.
Growing world food insecurity is ushering in a new geopolitics of food scarcity, one where competition for land and water is crossing national boundaries.
Lester Brown, the president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, says even if the investor comes in wielding impressive, shiny new technology, it will be of little benefit to the small farm holder.
Food import anxiety is spawning an entirely new genre of trade agreements as food-importing countries seek to buy or lease large blocks of land to farm in other countries, writes Lester Brown.
