The relationship between people and their land is gone, at least here in the west it is. We no longer reach down to touch the black, churned soil beneath our feet. We don't smell it, taste it, or ever look around at our plentiful crops and thank our land for what it has given us. Because here in the west we go to the market, and we look at how much oranges cost, or beef maybe. We don't ask questions when the price of our food goes up, we just shrug, get a bit annoyed and pay. This is why most people don't know that the corn we grow to create biofuel (to save us from global warming) is creating a hunger in millions of people around the world. And this is a really big problem. Between 2005 and 2008 the prices of wheat and corn tripled, and the cost of rice was up fivefold. Unlike previous food shortages, this radical price change came during years when farmers around the world had record highs in crop production. So why the long faces? The raised food prices were just a reflection of a different problem we've been ignoring. For most of the past ten years, we have been consuming more food than we can produce. Agricultural productivity only rises one or two percent a year, and it cannot keep up with the demands of our growing populations... and the worlds stockpiles are getting low. There is simply not enough food to go around, and this is bad news for the poorest billion people on the planet who usually spend 50-70% of their income on food. The prognosis doesn't get much better, climate change due to global warming is producing hotter growing seasons and increasing water scarcity where it's needed most. This will most likely cause a reduction to future harvests in much of the world.
A perpetual food crisis.
So, what can we do? Well, four years ago Malawi established a fund to help local farmers get fertilizer and high-yielding seeds, things they would not be able to afford on their own. After one year of this program Malawi's usually scant harvest doubled. If we could create an international version of the Malawi fund we could help to end this crisis for 10 billion dollars, which is roughly $10 per person (living in the developed world). But I guess it's not that easy. Another thing we could try would be to stop subsidizing the conversion of food into biofuel. The U.S. government is giving farmers a 51 cent subsidy per gallon of ethanol used to convert corn into biofuel and not food. We all want to help stop global warming, but right now we are putting food in a gas tank and not in hungry mouths. We have to find another way to help slow global warming, one that won't jeopardise the lives of so many men, women, and children around the globe.
Hunger often accompanies drought, among other unavoidable things mother nature throws our way. For a poor farmer something as simple as a pond to catch rain water could make the difference between a good crop and a famine. The Climate Adaption Fund already exists to help poor regions climate-proof vital economic activities, like farming. Unfortunately the fund has not yet made good on its promise (http://www.scidev.net/en/news/un-approves-climate-change-adaptation-fund.html, http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L6349998.htm).
What is true for food is true for everything else, energy, water, and other increasingly threatening resources. We can help, but only if we do it now.
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