Wagging the Dog:  Economic Growth Leaves Water, Food Supplies and People in the Dust

Jenna Orkin

  While the world's population grows by 70 million people a year or over a million people a week, as the result of economic growth and the attendant ills of urbanization, fuel costs, pollution and those bi-polar symptoms of climate change, drought and floods, our food supply contracts.  Poor planning and corruption add fuel of an undesirable kind to the fire.   Citing the venerable Lester Brown, NOW Magazine's Wayne Roberts maintains that a 57 days' supply of food stands between us and famine, the lowest level since 1973 when a similar shortage drove wheat prices up 6-fold.  http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2006-07-20/news_story7.php   The idea of such a biblical cataclysm is not mere fantasy.  For "reasons ranging from climate to bad economics, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in its crop report last month said the current world grain harvest of 1.984 trillion tonnes dropped by 24 million tons [sic] from the 2005 harvest....   "Water tables are now falling and wells are going dry in countries that contain half the world's people, including the big three grain producers - China, India, and the United States,' reports the London-based Earth Policy Institute." http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HG21Df01.html   In India, the grain shortfall has led 40% of farmers to say they want to get out of agriculture completely.  Thousands of others already have, by committing suicide.    In neighboring Bangladesh, a drought in the middle of the rainy season threatened a third of the country's rice crop.  http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2264304 And in Afghanistan, the Helmand River has run dry and drought has created food shortages affecting 2.5 million people.  Some crops are down 50%, among them, the country's most important crop, wheat.  This may have repercussions for years to come since seeds are also needed to plant next year's harvest.  http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/HMYT-6RSM5M?OpenDocument   While the government lays all the blame for this situation on drought (which is a fact of life in Afghanistan,) the population contends that wheat from neighboring countries makes local cultivation unprofitable.  Farmers also complain of the lack of financial and material credit, improved seeds, fertilisers and pesticides.  As a result more are turning to poppy cultivation.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=34262   Meanwhile "in China, water shortages have helped lower the wheat harvest from its peak of 123 million tons in 1997 to below 100 million tons in recent years." http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HG21Df01.html  In the southwestern province of Chongqing, as in Bangladesh, 17 million people have also suffered drought during the rainy season.  http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2006-08/14/content_663894.htm   6.1   million of them ran out of drinking water completely.  Between Chongqing and Szechuan provinces, droughts have caused $1.15 billion loss, many regions producing no harvests at all. http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/KKEE-6SLQX4?OpenDocument   WIth growing numbers of affluent citizens consuming more meat, dairy and sweeteners, China, long a corn supplier to South Korea, Japan and Malaysia, has turned importer.  Combined with the increased demand for ethanol in the United States, this is making it hard for Japan to get the cheap corn it has come to rely on for animal feed and sweeteners.  Compounding the problem is the fact that 2/3 of U.S. corn is now genetically modified which Japanese consumers are understandably leery of. http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=9&art_id=20210&sid=8272820&con_type=1&d_str=20060607     In Africa, countries around the Horn are experiencing a drought/flood cycle that has destroyed tens of thousands of square kilometers of farmland.  http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=87&art_id=qw1156502520623A162  Meanwhile in Zimbabwe, supermarkets in the capital city of Harare said on August 15 that they hadn't had deliveries of maize in two weeks.  The Grain Marketing Board blamed the shortfall on the severe shortage of fuel necessary to process the maize and bring it to market.  (Possibly this was a way of pointing the finger at Equatorial Guinea whose help Zimbabwe has recently sought with respect to its oil needs.)  Despite the difficulties, the government estimated a maize harvest of 1.8 million metric tonnes.  However independent sources put the number at less than half that, at 800,000 metric tonnes. http://www.voanews.com/english/africa/zimbabwe/2006-08-15-voa70.cfm   South Africa's farming, fishing and forestry sector has contracted 33% over the last two quarters http://allafrica.com/stories/200608250313.html due in part to last season's over-production of maize which led the producer organization Grain SA to urge farmers to scale back planting this season.    The U.N. Food and Agricultural Association lists the following African countries in crisis mostly for reasons related to food:  

AFRICA: Countries in crisis requiring external assistance and main reasons (26)