Reflections of Fidel:
The grave food crisis
Fidel Castro
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Hunger and malnutrition |
On January 19, under the title “Now is the time to do something,” I
wrote:
“The worst is that, to a large degree, their solutions will depend on
the richest and most developed countries, which will reach a situation
that they really are not in a position to confront, unless the world
which they have been trying to mold…collapses around them.”
“I am not talking at this point about wars, the risks and
consequences of which wise and brilliant people, including many from the
United States, have conveyed.
“I am referring to the food crisis produced by economic acts and
climate change which are apparently already irreversible as a
consequence of the actions of human beings, but which in any case the
human mind has the duty to address with haste.
“The problems have suddenly increased as a result of phenomena which
are being repeated on all continents: heat waves, forest fires, loss of
harvests in Russia, with many victims; climate change in China, heavy
rainfall or drought; progressive reduction of water reserves in the
Himalayas which is threatening India, China, Pakistan and other
countries; torrential rain in Australia, which has flooded almost one
million square kilometers; unseasonable and unprecedented cold in
Europe, drought in Canada and unusual cold in this country and the
United States…”
I likewise mentioned unprecedented rainfall in Colombia, Venezuela
and Brazil.
In that reflection I noted that “production of wheat, soy beans,
corn, rice and many other grains and legumes, which constitute the
nutritional base of the world – the population of which has today
reached an estimated 6.9 billion, rapidly approaching the unprecedented
figure of seven billion and where more than one billion are suffering
from hunger and malnutrition – is being seriously affected by climate
change, creating an extremely grave problem worldwide.”
On Saturday, January 29, the Internet news bulletin which I receive
daily reproduced an article by Lester R Brown published on the Organic
Way website and datelined January 10, whose content, I believe, should
be widely circulated.
Its author is the most prestigious and recognized US ecologist, who
has been warning of the harmful effect of the growing and substantial
volume of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. I will just take
paragraphs from his well-argued article which coherently explains his
point of view.
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A wallaby stuck
because of the recent floods in Australia |
“As the New Year begins, the price of wheat is setting an all-time
high…” the world population has nearly doubled since 1970, we are still
adding 80 million people each year. Tonight, there will be 219,000
additional mouths to feed at the dinner table, and many of them will be
greeted with empty plates. Another 219,000 will join us tomorrow night.
At some point, this relentless growth begins to tax both the skills of
farmers and the limits of the earth’s land and water resources.
“The rise in meat, milk, and egg consumption in fast-growing
developing countries has no precedent.
“United States, which harvested 416 million tons of grain in 2009,
119 million tons went to ethanol distilleries to produce fuel for cars.
That’s enough to feed 350 million people for a year. The massive US
investment in ethanol distilleries sets the stage for direct competition
between cars and people for the world grain harvest. In Europe, where
much of the auto fleet runs on diesel fuel, there is growing demand for
plant-based diesel oil, principally from rapeseed and palm oil.
Drought in China |
This demand for oil-bearing crops is not only reducing the land
available to produce food crops in Europe, it is also driving the
clearing of rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia for palm oil
plantations.
“The combined effect of these three growing demands is stunning: a
doubling in the annual growth in world grain consumption from an average
of 21 million tons per year from 1990-2005 to 41 million tons per year
from 2005-2010. Most of this huge jump is attributable to the orgy of
investment in ethanol distilleries in the United States in 2006-2008.
“While the annual demand growth for grain was doubling, new
constraints were emerging on the supply side, even as longstanding ones
such as soil erosion intensified. An estimated one third of the world’s
cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is forming through
natural processes – and thus is losing its inherent productivity.
Two huge dust bowls are forming, one across northwest China, western
Mongolia, central Asia and the other in central Africa. Each of these
dwarfs the US dust bowl of the 1930s.
“Satellite images show a steady flow of dust storms leaving these
regions, each one typically carrying millions of tons of precious
topsoil.
“Meanwhile aquifer depletion is fast shrinking the amount of
irrigated area in many parts of the world; this relatively recent
phenomenon is driven by the large-scale use of mechanical pumps to
exploit underground water.
Today, half the world’s people live in countries where water tables
are falling as over-pumping depletes aquifers. Once an aquifer is
depleted, pumping is necessarily reduced to the rate of recharge unless
it is a fossil (nonreplenishable) aquifer, in which case pumping ends
altogether. But sooner or later, falling water tables translate into
rising food prices. “Irrigated area is shrinking in the Middle East,
notably in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and possibly Yemen. In Saudi
Arabia, which was totally dependent on a now-depleted fossil aquifer for
its wheat self-sufficiency, production is in a freefall. From 2007 to
2010, Saudi wheat production fell by more than two thirds.
“The Arab Middle East is the first geographic region where spreading
water shortages are shrinking the grain harvest. But the really big
water deficits are in India, where the World Bank numbers indicate that
175 million people are being fed with grain that is produced by
over-pumping. In China, over-pumping provides food for some 130 million
people. In the United States, the world’s other leading grain producer;
irrigated area is shrinking in key agricultural states such as
California and Texas.
“The rising temperature is also making it more difficult to expand
the world grain harvest fast enough to keep up with the record pace of
demand. Crop ecologists have their own rule of thumb: For each 1 degree
Celsius rise in temperature above the optimum during the growing season,
we can expect a 10 percent decline in grain yields.
“Another emerging trend that threatens food security is the melting
of mountain glaciers. This is of particular concern in the Himalayas and
on the Tibetan plateau, where the melting ice from glaciers helps
sustain not only the major rivers of Asia during the dry season, such as
the Indus, Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow rivers, but also the
irrigation systems dependent on these rivers. Without this, the grain
harvest would drop precipitously and prices would rise accordingly.
“And finally, over the longer term, melting ice sheets in Greenland
and West Antarctica, combined with thermal expansion of the oceans,
threaten to raise the sea level by up to six feet during this century.
Even a three-foot rise would inundate half of the riceland in
Bangladesh. It would also put under water much of the Mekong Delta that
produces half the rice in Vietnam, the world’s number two rice exporter.
Altogether there are some 19 other rice-growing river deltas in Asia
where harvests would be substantially reduced by a rising sea level.
“The unrest of these past few weeks is just the beginning. It is no
longer conflict between heavily armed superpowers, but rather spreading
food shortages and rising food prices - and the political turmoil this
would lead to - that threatens our global future. Unless Governments
quickly redefine security and shift expenditures from military uses to
investing in climate change mitigation, water efficiency, soil
conservation, and population stabilization, the world will in all
likelihood be facing a future with both more climate instability and
food price volatility. If business as usual continues, food prices will
only trend upward.”
The existing world order was imposed by the US at the end of World
War II and it reserved for itself all the privileges. Obama does not
have any way to manage the pandemonium which they have created. A few
days ago the Government collapsed in Tunisia, where the United States
had imposed neoliberalism and was happy with its political prowess.
The word democracy had vanished from the scene. It is incredible how
now, when the exploited people are shedding their blood and assaulting
stores, Washington is stating its satisfaction with the defeat.
Everybody is aware that the United States converted Egypt into its
principal ally within the Arab world. A large aircraft carrier and a
nuclear submarine, escorted by US and Israeli warships, passed through
the Suez Canal en route for the Persian Gulf some months ago, without
the international press having access to what was occurring there.
Egypt was the Arab country to receive the largest supplies of
armaments. Millions of young Egyptians are suffering unemployment and
the food shortages provoked within the world economy, and Washington
affirms that it is supporting them. Its Machiavellian conduct includes
supplying weapons to the Egyptian government, while at the same time
USAID was supplying funds to the opposition. Can the United States halt
the revolutionary wave which is shaking the Third World?
The famous Davos meeting that has just ended turned into a Tower of
Babel, with the richest European states headed by Germany, Britain and
France only agreeing on their disagreement with the United States.
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