Will there be food shortages in the next decade?

[forfismum]

Dear sweet people ,I think that if we stop the panic and refrain from talking down the ability of farmers to come to the rescue and produce more food we will all sleep easier in our beds.Forget the machinations of speculators and look hard at the reality.The southern part of Africa was,and will be again,the breadbasket of that continent just as soon as Mugabe is sidelined.This will be an enormous contribution to world stocks.The African love-affair with the Chinese is coming to an end and that bit of colonialism by our red friends will soon be over.A reduction in the supply of cheap raw materials will not be good for the Chinese economy.I dread to think of how little of the farmland in Europe is in "set-aside" but it can be brought back into productivity if common sense ever comes back into fashion.If you think back to a thread in our forum some weeks back you may remember a bit about charcoal as a soil enhancer and its potential to improve yields.Well ,it seems that the prospects are even better as new research into "Biochar" uncovers its benefits.

published under the new sweetness and light program

[screener]

Nothing like a little common sense in the mode of sweetness and light!

There is a quote somewhere that 1/3 of the earths landmass is in agricultural land. A figure that should be enough to stagger the imagination, especially in light of John Brunners: Stand on Zanzibar. And farmers will produce foods, like tigger says, it's what we do best.

There are factors which are beyond the capacity of farmers to control. Fuel prices are a major one, climate variability, water, input costs like machinery and repairs, fertilizers and pesticides and seed, their own aging and their kids desire to not get into the business, and transportation, handling, processing,...... Ok so now I'm depressed again.

But Thank you for trying.

[forfismum]

Well now young screener i mistyped in my post above,I meant to say "how much " of the land in Europe is in set-aside.As for children not wanting work on the land, the forecasted recession if it comes to pass,will make them happy to work anywhere.Could there be a time coming when the ever increasing size of machinery is reversed? When farm size decreases? i once worked for a man who refused to move his[very successful ] business to anywhere that he could not walk to. Echoes of a thread on what is local,right here in the forum.

[screener]

forfismum, what criteria went into decisions to create set-aside over there, In Canada there has been very little as yet in any kind of government mandated programs. My impression is that these lands are set aside primarily because they are soils that are easily eroded or degraded in some way. Farmers were working the land because they were under the pressure of high interest rates and other input costs and low returns, and were trying to squeeze whatever possible from their farms.

Perhaps if food prices can stay up enough then we would be able to take better care of our soil and thereby allow less erosion. I understand that there are other categories as well, for biodiversity purposes, for tourism enhancement reasons, etc. Any idea on the percentage that could be returned on a permanent basis to farming?

When I was a kid National Geographic had a story on the agriculture of the future where we would be sitting in our home offices and controlling all our nuclear powered machinery by remote control. On the other hand, I was shown a picture of a wind powered tractor that worked on the Canadian prairies during the dirty thirties. I kind of hope that we can aim at farming land quantities responsibly as units.

[screener]

Cuba, Egypt, and Pakistan have won approval from the UN Human Rights Council to, "hold a special session on May 23 to examine how the world's food crisis is undermining the right to food for millions of people, "

Should be an interesting debate.

Top U.N. human rights forum to examine food crisis

[forfismum]

Originally Posted by screener

forfismum, what criteria went into decisions to create set-aside over there, In Canada there has been very little as yet in any kind of government mandated programs. My impression is that these lands are set aside primarily because they are soils that are easily eroded or degraded in some way. Farmers were working the land because they were under the pressure of high interest rates and other input costs and low returns, and were trying to squeeze whatever possible from their farms.

Perhaps if food prices can stay up enough then we would be able to take better care of our soil and thereby allow less erosion. I understand that there are other categories as well, for biodiversity purposes, for tourism enhancement reasons, etc. Any idea on the percentage that could be returned on a permanent basis to farming?

When I was a kid National Geographic had a story on the agriculture of the future where we would be sitting in our home offices and controlling all our nuclear powered machinery by remote control. On the other hand, I was shown a picture of a wind powered tractor that worked on the Canadian prairies during the dirty thirties. I kind of hope that we can aim at farming land quantities responsibly as units.

basically what happened in Europe and in Ireland and the UK was that farmers were too efficient and produced millions of tons of unsold food that was stockpiled into "butter mountains" and "wine lakes" and so they were paid to take land,some of it the best in the world,out of production.crazy but true.

[forfismum]

For as long as I can remember the Guinness Brewery have sold the by-product of their brewing to cattlemen,"brewers grains" a highly regarded food ,very much in demand by farmers near to Dublin .So where does the "shortage" of grains supposedly caused by ethanol production arise? Shortage of feed grain being used as an excuse to put prices up,do you smell the same rats as i do?

PS the smell of brewing is divine,I would be tempted to eat the hot grain meself

[screener]

forfismum, I don't know what the ration of grain in to the process is compared to byproduct feed. I don't expect that much of what comes out after the ethanol has been extracted is wasted but I can see that there would be quite a bit of the energy gone from the feed.

It may be high quality in protiens, vitamins, or minerals, but there wouldn't be as much feed value as in what was used. The other thing to consider is that livestock producers, at least over here are stuck with low prices for the first time in years, all things being relative, compared to grain prices.l

[forfismum]

What I was suggesting is that there is an impression about that food crops used for fuel production is totally lost to the food web and this is not so.I take your point re prices and I would not think that farmers are behind the rise in food costs,it is the midllemen and speculators as usual.They are hyping up a problem of supply and the farmer and consumer are the loosers.Another thing to mention is that cattle over here are for the most part out on grass for much of the year and the grains are a suplementary feed.Feedlots as such are few and far between in my neck of the woods.

[thomasz]

Food shortages, I think so!