Farmers and Fishers Now Need Help From Family Planner to Balance Food and Population

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6:00 PM EST
Saturday, September 28, 1996

"Food scarcity is emerging as the defining issue of a new era, much as ideological conflict was the defining issue in the era that recently ended," says Lester R. Brown in Tough Choices: Facing the Challenge of Food Scarcity. This new book is the Worldwatch Institute's contribution to the U.N. World Food Summit that begins in Rome on November 13, 1996.

During the previous era, from 1950 to 1990, the oceanic fish catch increased more than four fold and the world grain harvest nearly tripled. During the six years since 1990, there has been no growth in the oceanic catch and growth in the grain harvest has suffered a dramatic loss of momentum, writes Lester R. Brown, author of Tough Choices.

As a result, world carryover stocks of grain dropped to 50 days of world consumption in 1996, the lowest level on record. Even though all U.S. cropland idled under commodity programs was returned to production in 1996, the world grain harvest in 1996 will not be large enough to rebuild depleted stocks. For at least another year, the world will be living close to the edge, hoping for a dramatically larger harvest.

Tough Choices challenges the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization projections to the year 2010 of surpluses and falling grain prices, arguing that the future will be dominated by scarcity and rising grain prices.

Marine biologists report that all 17 oceanic fisheries are being fished at or beyond capacity. For the first time in history, the world's farmers can no longer expect any help from its fishers in expanding the world food supply.

But there are limits on land as well, with fertile land waiting to be plowed a rarity. The world grainland area peaked in 1981 and has declined since then both because of its conversion to nonfarm uses, and the shift to fresh fruits, vegetables, oilseeds, and other high-value crops sought by affluent customers.

Water scarcity is also restricting efforts to expand food production. From 1950 to 1990, the world's irrigated area expanded from 94 million to 239 million hectares, but here, too, farmers are now pushing against the sustainable yield limits of aquifers and beyond. Water tables are falling in major food-producing regions--the southern Great Plains of the United States, the Punjab of India (that country's breadbasket), and throughout much of northern China.

Once aquifers are fully depleted, the rate of pumping is necessarily reduced to the much slower rate of recharge, forcing cutbacks in irrigation water supplies. Irrigated area is already shrinking in California, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Colorado, in the United States, and in some provinces of northern China.

As the demand for water begins to press against available supplies, growth in the cities can be satisfied only by taking water from agriculture. In hundreds of cities, cities as different as Los Angeles and Beijing, the growth in water needs is being satisfied by diverting water from irrigation.

As irrigation water is diverted to cities, countries often have to import more grain to offset the loss. To import a ton of wheat is to import a thousand tons of water. In effect, grain becomes the currency with which countries balance their water books.

The key to raising land productivity since mid century has been the growing use of fertilizer. From 1950 to 1989, the use of fertilizer climbed from 14 million tons to 146 million tons, a ten fold increase. Since then, however, fertilizer use has dropped as farmers in many countries discovered they were using more fertilizer than crop varieties could effectively use.

The old formula of combining more and more fertilizer with ever-higher yielding varieties that helped to almost triple the world grain harvest from 1950 to 1990 is no longer working very well. And there is no new formula to take its place. This is a challenge to political leaders who must decide what to do now.

There are still innumerable small steps that can be taken to expand world food output, all of which are important, but there are no new technologies on the horizon that can bring quantum jumps in output comparable to those that came from earlier advances, such as the discovery of fertilizer or the hybridization of corn.

Farmers, who have always had to deal with the vagaries of weather, must now cope with climate change. The 11 warmest years since recordkeeping began in 1866 have all occurred since 1979. Of these 11 years, the three warmest occurred during the nineties. And 1995 was the warmest of all. Unfortunately for consumers, the crop-withering heat waves of the sort that shrank harvests in 1995 across the northern tier of industrial countries could become even more frequent if atmospheric CO2 levels continue to build. Higher temperatures could mean higher food prices.

If the earth's average temperature continues to rise in the years ahead, as it has over the past 15 years, the threat to food security may force a dramatic reorientation of energy policy. Among other things, it might translate into a stiff carbon tax, one that would stimulate far greater investment in energy efficiency and in renewable energy sources, such as wind power, solar cells, and solar thermal power plants. In a world of rising temperatures, future food security may now be influenced more by energy policy than by agricultural policy.

Meanwhile, the world's farmers must not only feed nearly 90 million more people each year, but they must also respond to the extraordinary rise in affluence in Asia, a region with 3.1 billion people. Excluding Japan, the regional economy has been growing at eight percent per year for the last four years. Because of its huge population and rapidly rising pork consumption, China has already overtaken the United States in total consumption of red meat.

As the growth in grain production has slowed in the nineties and stocks have declined, prices have climbed. In the late spring and early summer of 1996, wheat prices climbed to over $7 a bushel, the highest level on record, and double the prices of a year earlier. Corn prices climbed above $5 for the first time, also doubling the price at the beginning of 1995. Rice prices followed wheat prices upward.

For the world's affluent, higher food prices may be annoying, but for the 1.2 billion people in the world who live on a dollar a day and who are spending 70 percent of that dollar on food, a doubling of grain prices is life threatening. People trapped between low incomes and rising food prices will hold their governments responsible, taking to the streets, as they did in Jordan in the summer of 1996. Political instability could threaten the stability of the international monetary system, the profits of multinational corporations, and the performance of stock markets.

This record rise in affluence in Asia helps explain why surpluses are being replaced by scarcity. Asia's grain imports have increased from some 6 million tons in 1950 to over 90 million tons in 1995. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan now import more than 70 percent of all the grain they consume. Grain imports into China and Indonesia are soaring. Asia is becoming industrially strong, but agriculturally vulnerable.

The vulnerability of importers is underlined by the growing dependence on one country--the United States--for half of world grain exports. Today, the United States accounts for a larger share of grain exports than Saudi Arabia does of oil. This dependence is risky because the U.S. grain harvest, largely rainfed, fluctuates widely from year to year depending on temperature and rainfall.

Countries everywhere are assuming that U.S. grain exports will expand dramatically in the decades ahead but with little new land to plow, the U.S. capacity to export depends on raising land productivity. With the rise in land productivity likely to fall below the projected population growth of one percent a year, the potential for expanding grain exports may be less than many think.

The bottom line is that in an age of growing food scarcity governments are facing tough choices. Food scarcity may force a rethinking of population policy, of land use policy, water use policy, and even definitions of security. Countries where the demand for grain is outrunning the carrying capacity of land and water resources may face a choice between quickly slowing population growth or foregoing any hope of upgrading diets. Many land-scarce societies may be facing a classic case of intergenerational equity, a conflict between the reproductive rights of the current generation and the survival rights of the next generation.

Conflicts over water between the countryside and cities will intensify. Many countries simply will not have enough water to satisfy irrigation needs and for indoor plumbing. Countries will have to decide whether to invest in military security or in food security. Continuing heavy investments in military security may deprive countries of the investments needed for agricultural research, soil conservation, and water efficiency.

In a world of scarcity, the conversion of cropland to nonfarm uses anywhere threatens food security everywhere. In China, a group of scientists is challenging the decision by the Ministry of Heavy Industry to develop an automobile-centered transportation system simply because there is not enough land both to build roads, highways, and parking lots and to feed the country's projected population of 1.6 billion. This challenge of traditional development policy illustrates the kind of new thinking needed in every sector.

With the cropland idled under U.S. commodity programs now back in production and with world carryover stocks of grain amounting to little more than pipeline supplies, the only major reserve left in the world is the 36 percent of the world grain harvest that is consumed by livestock and poultry. One way of tapping this reserve would be to impose a tax on the consumption of livestock products. Such a tax, unpopular though it would be, might be accepted if it became the price for economic and political stability in the world.

In the absence of a dramatic technological breakthrough in the effort to expand food output, making the wrong choice or delaying tough decisions could be disastrous. The bottom line is that achieving an acceptable balance between food and people now depends more on family planners than on fishers and farmers.