| | Is it 2008 all over again (but followed by famine rather than recession)? As the global diet becomes less diverse, a staggering 75% of the world's food comes from just 12 plants and five animal species and about 60% of the calories produced by farmers come (directly or indirectly) from four crops—rice, wheat, corn, and soy. By one estimate, four too-big-to-fail corporations control 90% of the global grain trade . The global food system has consolidated, formed links, and implemented business practices that have stripped redundancies and other system safeguards in ways that are strikingly similar to the financial system just prior to 2008. As George Monbiot says in this Guardian op-ed, "As a system approaches a critical threshold, it's impossible to say which external shock could push it over. Once a system has become fragile, and its resilience is not restored, it's not a matter of if and how, but when." And the potential for external shocks are myriad: | | | | | Supply chain issues COVID-19 provided a preview of what a shock to the supply chain could do. Much of the global food supply passes through a handful of vulnerable choke points, such as the Turkish Straits (already obstructed due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine), the Suez and Panama Canals, and the Straits of Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, and Malacca. War, natural disaster, piracy, or geopolitical demands by the countries that control those choke points could create a tipping point that unbalances the entire system. | | | | | Crop disease, pathogens, and pests The homogeneity of the global diet and consolidation of the global food trade has reduced both the types of crops grown and the varieties within each crop. Just four corporations control 50% of the world's seed stock, emphasizing easily transportable crops and non-open-pollinated seed stock. This encourages an eggs-all-in-one-basket monocropping system that poses an increased risk of massive crop failure from pests or disease. This isn't theoretical—the Irish Potato Famine, which lasted from 1845 to 1852, and the southern corn leaf blight epidemic of the early 1970s show how easily it can happen. | | | | | Climate change A recent paper shows that the chances of climate-related simultaneous crop losses in the world's major growing regions have been dangerously underestimated—and even small simultaneous crop losses present what the paper calls "systemic risk." And the underestimated risks were already alarming. Woodwell researcher Monica Caparas, who works with agriculture risk models, predicts that by 2030 crop failures will be 4.5 times higher and by 2050 the likelihood of crop failure will be up to 25 times current rates. According to Caparas's models, a synchronized failure across all four crops becomes a possibility every 11 years. A 2018 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science found that if global average temperatures rise by 2°C, there's an estimated 7% probability of simultaneous losses across the world's maize breadbaskets, and the probability rises dramatically to 86% under a 4°C warming scenario. "We face an epochal, unthinkable prospect: of perhaps the two greatest existential threats—environmental breakdown and food system failure—converging, as one triggers the other," warns Monbiot in the Guardian op-ed mentioned above. | | | | | What's next? Food distribution is already skewed toward wealthier populations. The UN estimates that one in nine people—over 820 million—face food insecurity today. And things only get worse when climate impacts on global food production are incorporated into these models. A 2014 climatic change study found that if we carry on as we have been, over 50% of the entire human population—4.2 billion people—would be at risk of undernourishment by 2050. Monbiot argues that the reason governments aren't taking the issue seriously is the power of the ultrawealthy to maintain the systems that earned them their wealth. "The struggle to avert systemic failure is the struggle between democracy and plutocracy," he says. Most experts agree that to alleviate the risks inherent in our current food systems, we need to dramatically rethink the way we grow and distribute food. Changes in the global diet and innovations in climate mitigation, crop resilience, and weather modeling will be required. Governments will need to create efficient policies to reduce food insecurity, fund and build redundancies in the food systems, and prepare contingency plans for catastrophic crop or supply chain failures. As Monbiot says, "The stakes are now higher than ever." | | | |
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий
Примечание. Отправлять комментарии могут только участники этого блога.