Severe Food Shortages
Brewing
The New York Times February 7,
2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/opinion/07krugman.html
Severe
Food Shortages
Brewing
Droughts,
Floods and
Food
By Paul Krugman
We're in the midst of a global
food crisis - the
second in three years. World
food prices hit a
record in January, driven by
huge increases in
the prices of wheat, corn,
sugar and oils. These
soaring prices have had only a
modest effect on
U.S. inflation, which is still
low by historical
standards, but they're having
a brutal impact on
the world's poor, who spend
much if not most of
their income on basic
foodstuffs.
The consequences of this food
crisis go far
beyond economics. After all,
the big question
about uprisings against
corrupt and oppressive
regimes in the Middle East
isn't so much why
they're happening as why
they're happening now.
And there's little question
that sky-high food
prices have been an important
trigger for popular
rage.
So what's behind the price
spike? American
right-wingers (and the
Chinese) blame easy-money
policies at the Federal
Reserve, with at least
one commentator declaring that
there is "blood on
Bernanke's hands." Meanwhile,
President Nicolas
Sarkozy of France blames
speculators, accusing
them of "extortion and
pillaging."
But the evidence tells a
different, much more
ominous story. While several
factors have
contributed to soaring food
prices, what really
stands out is the extent to
which severe weather
events have disrupted
agricultural production.
And these severe weather
events are exactly the
kind of thing we'd expect to
see as rising
concentrations of greenhouse
gases change our
climate - which means that the
current food price
surge may be just the
beginning.
Now, to some extent soaring
food prices are part
of a general commodity boom:
the prices of many
raw materials, running the
gamut from aluminum to
zinc, have been rising rapidly
since early 2009,
mainly thanks to rapid
industrial growth in
emerging markets.
But the link between
industrial growth and demand
is a lot clearer for, say,
copper than it is for
food. Except in very poor
countries, rising
incomes don't have much effect
on how much people
eat.
It's true that growth in
emerging nations like
China leads to rising meat
consumption, and hence
rising demand for animal feed.
It's also true
that agricultural raw
materials, especially
cotton, compete for land and
other resources with
food crops - as does the
subsidized production of
ethanol, which consumes a lot
of corn. So both
economic growth and bad energy
policy have played
some role in the food price
surge.
Still, food prices lagged
behind the prices of
other commodities until last
summer. Then the
weather struck.
Consider the case of wheat,
whose price has
almost doubled since the
summer. The immediate
cause of the wheat price spike
is obvious: world
production is down sharply.
The bulk of that
production decline, according
to U.S. Department
of Agriculture data, reflects
a sharp plunge in
the former Soviet Union. And
we know what that's
about: a record heat wave and
drought, which
pushed Moscow temperatures
above 100 degrees for
the first time ever.
The Russian heat wave was only
one of many recent
extreme weather events, from
dry weather in
Brazil to biblical-proportion
flooding in
Australia, that have damaged
world food
production.
The question then becomes,
what's behind all this extreme
weather?
To some extent we're seeing
the results of a
natural phenomenon, La
Niña - a periodic event
in
which water in the equatorial
Pacific becomes
cooler than normal. And La
Niña events have
historically been associated
with global food
crises, including the crisis
of 2007-8.
But that's not the whole
story. Don't let the
snow fool you: globally, 2010
was tied with 2005
for warmest year on record,
even though we were
at a solar minimum and La
Niña was a cooling
factor in the second half of
the year.
Temperature records were set
not just in Russia
but in no fewer than 19
countries, covering a
fifth of the world's land
area. And both droughts
and floods are natural
consequences of a warming
world: droughts because it's
hotter, floods
because warm oceans release
more water vapor.
As always, you can't attribute
any one weather
event to greenhouse gases. But
the pattern we're
seeing, with extreme highs and
extreme weather in
general becoming much more
common, is just what
you'd expect from climate
change.
The usual suspects will, of
course, go wild over
suggestions that global
warming has something to
do with the food crisis; those
who insist that
Ben Bernanke has blood on his
hands tend to be
more or less the same people
who insist that the
scientific consensus on
climate reflects a vast
leftist conspiracy.
But the evidence does, in
fact, suggest that what
we're getting now is a first
taste of the
disruption, economic and
political, that we'll
face in a warming world. And
given our failure to
act on greenhouse gases, there
will be much more,
and much worse, to come.
