The Telegraph had a grim story this week:
Food riots. Scores of panicked people protesting, burning effigies and chanting. Shops being ransacked, supplies running out as soon as they come in, and stricken communities stockpiling rice, bread and water for fear of going without. These have happened in Haiti and Egypt in recent months as the price of scarce food has soared.
But what if they happened on the streets of Bromley? Or Newcastle? Or Bath? As bizarre as this might seem, the prospect of UK food shortages has started to be taken seriously by food manufacturers and retailers
It really does seem that the Food Crisis may actually be coming to mean something real, even in the prosperous West.
Doomsayers have long noted that Just-In-Time food production systems currently used to server the food markets. Terrorism experts have warned that it is extremely easy to disrupt. Just a few days of, say, road disruption and shelves are empty.
The Telegraph article does a good job of looking at the causes, risks and remedies.
Other news is worrying though, particularly for Americans. The first problem is that the US Food Reserves are about to be completely depleted. Here is the American Agricultural Movement on June 6th 2008:
“According to the May 1, 2008 CCC inventory report there are only 24.1 million bushels of wheat in inventory, so after this sale there will be only 2.7 million bushels of wheat left the entire CCC inventory,…Our concern is not that we are using the remainder of our strategic grain reserves for humanitarian relief. AAM fully supports the action and all humanitarian food relief. Our concern is that the U.S. has nothing else in our emergency food pantry. There is no cheese, no butter, no dry milk powder, no grains or anything else left in reserve. The only thing left in the entire CCC inventory will be 2.7 million bushels of wheat which is about enough wheat to make ½ of a loaf of bread for each of the 300 million people in America.”” [Source]
Everyone has been pinning hopes on a big global corn harvest this year to ease the shortages. It looks like a pipe dream. From The New York Times:
In a year when global harvests need to be excellent to ease the threat of pervasive food shortages, evidence is mounting that they will be average at best. Some farmers are starting to fear disaster.
American corn and soybean farmers are suffering from too much rain, while Australian wheat farmers have been plagued by drought.
“The planting has gotten off to a poor start,” said Bill Nelson, a Wachovia grains analyst. “The anxiety level is increasing.”
Apparently vast amounts of the US crops have been destroyed by rain:
Deluges of rain that keep pounding U.S. corn-growing areas and floods that have heavily damaged the newly sown crop already are making the government’s latest dire forecast for corn output look more like an optimistic Polyanna pronouncement.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Tuesday shocked the corn market, revising its forecast for national corn output down 3 percent from last month’s prediction. But experts said the picture probably will get even bleaker because the bad weather will force the USDA to lower its estimate of corn acreage in addition to the lower yields per acre that were announced on Tuesday.
With demand for corn for food and fuel forging ahead while huge corn areas remain under water even as more rainstorms loom ahead, analysts see the threat of a perfect storm. [Source]
All of this is leading to soaring food inflation even in Britain .
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