Outgrowing the Earth Part 2

OUTGROWING THE EARTH

THE FOOD SECURITY CHALLENGE IN AN AGE OF FALLING WATER TABLES AND RISING TEMPERATURES

LESTER BROWN

EARTHSCAN          2005

PART II

Growth: The environmental fallout

The world economy, as now structured, is making excessive demands on the earth. Evidence of this can be seen in collapsing fisheries, shrinking forests, expanding deserts, rising CO2 levels, eroding soils, rising temperatures, falling water tables, melting glaciers, deteriorating grasslands, rising seas, rivers that are running dry, and disappearing species.

Two new challenges

As world demand for food has tripled, so too has the use of water for irrigation. As a result, the world is incurring a vast water deficit. But because this deficit takes the form of aquifer overpumping and falling water tables, it is nearly invisible. Falling water levels are often not discovered until wells go dry.

• With 1,000 tons of water required to produce 1 ton of grain, food security is closely tied to water security. 70% of world water use is for irrigation, 20% is used by industry, and 10% is for residential purposes.
• As urban water use rises even as aquifers are being depleted, farmers are faced with a shrinking share of a shrinking water supply.

At the same time that water tables are falling, temperatures are rising. As concern about climate change has intensified, scientists have begun to focus on the precise relationship between temperature and crop yields. Crop ecologists at the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) have jointly concluded that with each 1-degree Celcius rise in temperature during the growing season, the yields of wheat, rice, and corn drop by 10%.

Over the last three decades, the earth’s average temperature has climbed by nearly 0.7 degrees Celcius, with the four warmest years on record coming during the last six years. In 2002, record-high temperatures and drought shrank grain harvests in both India and the United States. In 2003, it was Europe that bore the brunt of the intense heat. The record-breaking August heat wave that claimed 35,000 lives in eight nations withered grain harvests in virtually every country from France in the west through the Ukraine in the east.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that during this century, with a business-as-usual scenario, the earth’s average temperature will rise by 1.4 –5.8 degrees Celsius (2-10 degrees Fahrenheit). These projections are for the earth’s average temperature, but the rise is expected to be much greater over the land than over the oceans, in the higher latitudes than in the equatorial regions, and in the interior of continents than in the coastal regions. This suggests that increases far in excess of the projected average are likely for regions such as the North American breadbasket – the region defined by the Great Plains of the United States and Canada and the U.S. Corn Belt. Today’s farmers face the prospect of temperatures higher than any generation of farmers since agriculture began.

The Japan Syndrome

• If countries are already densely populated when they begin to industrialize rapidly, three things happen in quick succession to make them heavily dependent on grain imports: grain consumption climbs as incomes rise; grainland area shrinks; and grain production falls.
• The rapid industrialization that drives up demand simultaneously shrinks cropland area. The inevitable result is that grain imports soar.
• Within a few decades, countries can go from being essentially self-sufficient to importing 70% or more of their grain.
• I call this the “Japan syndrome” because I first recognized this sequence of events in Japan, a country that today imports 70% of its grain.
• Initially, rising incomes permit more direct consumption of gain, but before long the growth shifts to the greater indirect consumption of grain in the form of grain-intensive livestock products, such as pork, poultry, and eggs.
• Grainland area begins to shrink. Among the trends leading to this are the abandonment of marginal cropland; the loss of rural labor needed for multiple cropping; and a shift of grainland to the production of fruits, vegetables, and other high-value crops.
• First, as a country industrializes and modernizes, cropland is used for industrial and residential developments. As automobile ownership spreads, the construction of roads, highways, and parking lots also takes valuable land away from agriculture.
• Second, as rapid industrialization pulls labor out of the countryside, it often leads to less double cropping, a practice that depends on quickly harvesting one grain crop once it is ripe and immediately preparing the seedbed for the next crop.
• With the loss of workers as young people migrate to cities, the capacity to do this diminishes.
• Third, as incomes rise, diets diversify, generating demand for more fruits and vegetables. This in turn leads farmers to shift land from grain to these more profitable, high-value crops.
• Japan was essentially self-sufficient in grain when its grain harvest area peaked in 1955. Since then the grainland area has shrunk by more than half.
• The multiple-cropping index has dropped from nearly 1.4 crops per hectare per year in 1960 to scarcely 1 today.
• Some six years after Japan’s grain area began to shrink, the shrinkage overrode the rise in land productivity and overall production began to decline.
• With grain consumption climbing and production falling, grain imports soared. By 1983 imports accounted for 70% of Japan’s grain consumption, a level they remain at today.
• A similar analysis for South Korea and Taiwan shows a pattern that is almost identical with that of Japan.
• Based on the sequence of events in these three countries that affected grain production, consumption, and imports – the Japan syndrome – it was easy to anticipate the precipitous decline in China’s grain production that began in 1998.
• The obvious question now is which other countries will enter a period of declining grain production because of the same combination of forces?
• Among those that come to mind are India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and Mexico.

 

The China factor

China – the largest country in the world – is now beginning to experience the Japan syndrome. Perhaps the most alarming recent world agricultural event is the precipitous fall in China’s grain production since 1998. After an impressive climb from 90 million tons in 1950 to a peak of 392 million tons in 1998, China’s  grain harvest fell in four of the next five years, dropping to 322 million tons in 2003. For perspective, this decline of 70 million tons exceeds the entire grain harvest of Canada.

Behind this harvest shrinkage of 18% from 1998 to 2003 is a decline in grain harvested area of 16%. The conversion of cropland to nonfarm uses, the shift of grainland to higher-value fruits and vegetables, and, in some of the more prosperous regions, a loss of the rural labor needed for multiple cropping are all shrinking China’s grainland – just as they did Japan’s.

In addition, China is also losing grainland to the expansion of deserts and the loss of irrigation water, due to both aquifer depletion and diversion of water to cities. (See Chapter 8 for further discussion of these pressures.) Unfortunately for China, none of the forces that are shrinking grainland area are easily countered.

Between 1998 and 2003, five consecutive harvest shortfalls dropped China’s once massive stocks of grain to their lowest level in 30 years. With stocks now largely depleted, China’s leaders – all of them survivors of the great famine of 1959-61, when 30 million people starved to death – are worried. For them, food security is not a trivial issue.

• China is a fascinating case study because of its sheer size and extraordinary pace of industrial development. It has been the world’s fastest-growing economy since 1980.
• In the deteriorating relationship between the global economy and the earth’s ecosystem, China is unfortunately on the cutting edge.
• With water, the northern half of China is literally drying out. Water tables are falling, rivers are going dry, and lakes are disappearing.
• The World Bank foresees “catastrophic consequences for future generations” if water use and supply cannot quickly be brought back into balance.
• It is difficult to visualize how fast deserts are expanding. Throughout northern and western China, some 24,000 villages have either been abandoned or partly depopulated as drifting sand has made farming untenable.

On the food front, the issue within China is not hunger and starvation, as the nation now has a substantial cushion between consumption levels and minimal nutritional needs. Rather, the concern is rising food prices and the effect that this could have on political stability. China’s leaders are striving for a delicate balance between food prices that will encourage production in the countryside but maintain stability in the cities.

As noted earlier, smaller countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan can import 70% or more of their grain, but if China turns to the outside world to meet even 20% of its grain needs, which would be close to 80 million tons, it will provide a huge challenge for grain exporters. The resulting rise in world grain prices could destabilize governments in low-income, grain-importing countries. The entire world thus has a stake in China’s efforts to stabilize its agricultural resource base.

The challenge ahead

It is difficult to overestimate the challenges the world faces over the next half-century. Not only are there a projected 3 billion more people to feed, but there are also an estimated 5 billion people who want to diversify their diets by moving up the food chain, eating more grain-intensive livestock products. On the supply side, the world’s farmers must contend with traditional challenges, such as soil erosion and the loss of cropland to nonfarm uses, but now also with newer trends such as falling water tables, the diversion of irrigation water to cities, and rising temperatures.

At the World Food Summit in1996 in Rome, 185 governments plus the European Community agreed that the number of hungry people needed to be reduced by half by 2015. Between 1990-92 and 1995-97, the number did decline by some 37 million from 817 million to 780 million, or over 7 million a year – but this was much less than the 20 million per year needed to reach the 2015 target. And then things got even worse. From 1995-97 to 1999-2001, the number of hungry people in the world began to increase, rising by 18 million to 798 million. This increase in hunger is not too surprising, given the lack of growth in the world grain harvest from 1996 to 2003.

• Against this backdrop of a slowly deteriorating food situation, there is the prospect that the Japan syndrome will soon take effect in other countries, shrinking their grain harvests.
• Because aquifer depletion is recent, it is taking agricultural analysts into uncharted territory. Water tables are falling simultaneously in many countries and at an accelerating rate.
• Less clear is exactly when aquifers will be depleted and precisely how much this will reduce food production.
• If the climate models projecting the effect of rising atmospheric CO2 levels on the earth’s temperature are anywhere near the mark, we are facing a future of higher temperatures.
• We do not know exactly how fast temperatures will rise, but in a world of rising temperatures, there is added reason to be concerned about world food security.
• In Africa the spread of HIV/AIDS is threatening the food security of the entire continent as the loss of able-bodied field workers shrinks harvest.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, disease begets hunger and hunger begets disease. In some villages, high HIV infection rates have claimed an entire generation of young adults, leaving only the elderly and children.
• Without a major intervention from the outside world, the continuing spread of the virus and hunger that is cutting life expectancy in half in some countries could take Africa back to the Dark Ages.
• In a world where the food economy has been shaped by an abundance of cheap oil, tightening world oil supplies will further complicate efforts to eradicate hunger.
• Modern mechanized agriculture requires large amounts of fuel for tractors, irrigation pumps, and grain drying. Rising oil prices may soon translate into rising food prices.
• The countries that have dominated world grain exports for the last half-century – the United States, Canada, Australia, and Argentina – may not be able to export much beyond current levels.
• By contrast, countries such as Russia and the Ukraine should be able to expand their grain exports at least modestly.
• The likely increases in exports from these countries are small compared with the prospective import needs of China and, potentially, India. It is worth noting that the drop in China’s grain harvest of 70 million tons over five years is equal to the grain exports of Canada, Australia, and Argentina combined.
• The only country that has the potential to substantially expand the world grainland area is Brazil with its vast cerrado, a savannah-like region that lies on the southern edge of the Amazon Basin. (See Chapter 9.)
• Because its soils require the heavy use of fertilizer and because transporting grain from Brazil’s remote interior to distant world markets is costly, it would likely take substantially higher world grain prices for Brazil to emerge as a major exporter.
• Beyond this, would a vast expansion of cropland in Brazil’s interior be sustainable? Or is its vulnerability to soil erosion likely to prevent it from making a long-term contribution?
• What will be the price paid in the irretrievable loss of ecosystems and plant and animals species?

Ensuring future food security is a formidable challenge. Can we check the HIV epidemic before it so depletes Africa’s adult population that starvation stalks the land? Can we arrest the steady shrinkage in grainland area per person, eliminate the overgrazing that is converting grassland to desert, and reduce soil erosion losses below the natural rate of new soil formation? Can we simultaneously halt the advancing deserts that are engulfing cropland, check the rising temperature that threatens to shrink harvests, arrest the fall in water tables, and protect cropland from careless conversion to nonfarm uses?

Data for figures and additional information can be found at www.earth-policy.org/Books/Out/index.htm.

Chapter 2: Stopping at Seven Billion