Water scarcity triggers global food crisis
Billy I Ahmed | Saturday, 19 July 2008
AFTER decades in the doldrums, food prices have been soaring this year, causing more misery for the world's poor than any credit crunch.
The geopolitical shockwaves have spread round the world, with food riots in Haiti, strikes over rice shortages in Bangladesh, tortilla wars in Mexico, and protests over bread prices in Egypt.
The immediate cause is declining grain stocks, which have encouraged speculators, hoarders, and panic-buyers. But what are the underlying trends that have sown the seeds for this perfect food storm?
Biofuels are part of it, clearly. A quarter of U.S. corn is now converted into ethanol, powering vehicles rather than filling stomachs or fattening livestock.
And the rising oil prices that encouraged the biofuels boom are also raising food prices by making fertilizer, pesticides, and transport more expensive.
But there is something else going on that has hardly been mentioned, and that some believe is the great slow-burning and hopelessly under-reported, resource crisis of the 21st century-water.
Climate change, over-consumption and the alarmingly inefficient use of this most basic raw material are all to blame.
The Yellow River in China, the Rio Grande and Colorado in the United States, the Nile in Egypt, the Indus in Pakistan, mighty rivers of Bangladesh, the Amu Darya in Central Asia, and many others are all running empty.
The confident blue lines in a million atlases simply do not tell the truth about rivers that have gone mostly dry and have lost their ability to irrigate crop fields.
We have used up these rivers to death. And we are also pumping out underground water reserves almost everywhere in the world.
With two-thirds of the water withdrawn from nature going to irrigate crops -- a figure that rises above 90 per cent in many arid countries -- water shortages equal food shortages.
Consider the two underlying causes of the current crisis of world food prices: falling supplies from some of the major agricultural regions that supply world markets, and rising demand in booming economies like China and India.
Why are the supplies falling? Of late, farm yields per hectare have been stagnating in many countries. The green revolution that caused yields to soar 20 years ago may be faltering.
But the immediate trigger, according to most analysts, has been droughts, particularly in Australia, one of the world's largest grain exporters, but also in some other major food grain supplying countries such as Ukraine. Australia's wheat exports were 60 per cent down last year; its rice exports were 90 per cent down.
Why is the demand rising? China has received most of the blame here -- its growing wealth is raising demand, especially as richer citizens eat more meat.
But China traditionally has always fed itself. What is different now is the world's most populous country can no more produce all of its own food.
A few years ago, the American agronomist and environmentalist Lester Brown wrote a book called Who Will Feed China?: Wake Up Call for a Small Planet.
China can no longer feed itself largely because the demand is rising sharply when every last drop of water in the north of the country, its major breadbasket, has already been taken. The Yellow River, which drains most of the region, now rarely reaches the sea, except for the short monsoon season.
The same is true of India, the world's second most populous country. Forty years ago, India was a basket case. Millions died in famines. The green revolution then turned India into a food exporter.
Its neighbour Bangladesh came to rely on India for rice. But Indian food production has stagnated recently, even as demand from richer residents has soared. And the main reason is water.
Most of Bangladeshi people depend on water-intensive agriculture. Various types of crops especially Irri-boro paddy and maize are being cultivated on the riverbed.
Meanwhile, the ground water table has been dropping in the vast tract of Barind area with the reduction of water level in the Padma River resulting in non-functioning of most of the hand-driven tube wells including power pumps for irrigation.
The small rivers and tributaries of the Padma are also drying up due to the withdrawal of water at Farakka Barrage.
There are 57 rivers that enter Bangladesh from India. Brahmaputra Basin Rivers carry more than 70 per cent of the water that enters Bangladesh.
For Bangladesh, most of the water comes from its' Eastern rivers, and some from Western rivers.
With river water fully used, Indian farmers have been trying to increase supplies by tapping underground reserves. In the last 15 years, they have brought a staggering 20 million Yamaha pumps to supply water from beneath their fields.
Tushaar Shah, director of the International Water Management Institute's groundwater research station in Gujarat, estimates those farmers are pumping annually to the surface 100 cubic kilometres more water than the monsoon rains replace. Water tables are plunging, and in many places water supply is declining.
"We are living hand-to-mouth," says D.P. Singh, president of the All India Grain Exporters' Association, who blames water shortages for faltering grain production.
Last year India began to import rice, notably from Australia. This year, it stopped supplying food grain to Bangladesh, triggering a crisis here, too.
More and more countries are up against the limits of food production because they are up against the limits of water supply.
Most of the Middle East countries reached this point years ago. In Egypt, where bread riots occurred this spring, the Nile River no longer reaches the sea because all its water is taken for irrigation.
A map of world food trade increasingly looks like a map of the water haves and have-nots, because in recent years the global food trade has become almost a proxy trade in water -- or rather, the water needed to grow food. "Virtual water," some economists call it.
According to estimates by UNESCO's hydrology institute, the world's largest net supplier of virtual water until recently was Australia. It exported a staggering 70 cubic kilometres of water a year in the form of crops, mainly food.
With the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia's main farming zone, virtually dry for the past two years, that figure has been cut in half.
The largest gross exporter of virtual water is the United States, but its exports have also slumped as corn is diverted to domestic biofuels, and because of continuing drought in the American West.
The current water shortages should not mark an absolute limit to food production around the world. But it should do three things. It should encourage a rethinking of biofuels, which are themselves major water guzzlers.
It should prompt an expanding trade in food exported from countries that remain surplus in water, such as Brazil. And it should trigger much greater efforts everywhere to use water more efficiently.
For too long, we have seen water as a cheap and unlimited resource. Those days are ending -- not just in dry places, but everywhere.
For if the current world food crisis shows anything, it is that in an era of global trade in "virtual water," local water shortages can resound throughout the world -- creating higher food prices and food shortages everywhere.
The writer is tea planter, columnist and researcher
The geopolitical shockwaves have spread round the world, with food riots in Haiti, strikes over rice shortages in Bangladesh, tortilla wars in Mexico, and protests over bread prices in Egypt.
The immediate cause is declining grain stocks, which have encouraged speculators, hoarders, and panic-buyers. But what are the underlying trends that have sown the seeds for this perfect food storm?
Biofuels are part of it, clearly. A quarter of U.S. corn is now converted into ethanol, powering vehicles rather than filling stomachs or fattening livestock.
And the rising oil prices that encouraged the biofuels boom are also raising food prices by making fertilizer, pesticides, and transport more expensive.
But there is something else going on that has hardly been mentioned, and that some believe is the great slow-burning and hopelessly under-reported, resource crisis of the 21st century-water.
Climate change, over-consumption and the alarmingly inefficient use of this most basic raw material are all to blame.
The Yellow River in China, the Rio Grande and Colorado in the United States, the Nile in Egypt, the Indus in Pakistan, mighty rivers of Bangladesh, the Amu Darya in Central Asia, and many others are all running empty.
The confident blue lines in a million atlases simply do not tell the truth about rivers that have gone mostly dry and have lost their ability to irrigate crop fields.
We have used up these rivers to death. And we are also pumping out underground water reserves almost everywhere in the world.
With two-thirds of the water withdrawn from nature going to irrigate crops -- a figure that rises above 90 per cent in many arid countries -- water shortages equal food shortages.
Consider the two underlying causes of the current crisis of world food prices: falling supplies from some of the major agricultural regions that supply world markets, and rising demand in booming economies like China and India.
Why are the supplies falling? Of late, farm yields per hectare have been stagnating in many countries. The green revolution that caused yields to soar 20 years ago may be faltering.
But the immediate trigger, according to most analysts, has been droughts, particularly in Australia, one of the world's largest grain exporters, but also in some other major food grain supplying countries such as Ukraine. Australia's wheat exports were 60 per cent down last year; its rice exports were 90 per cent down.
Why is the demand rising? China has received most of the blame here -- its growing wealth is raising demand, especially as richer citizens eat more meat.
But China traditionally has always fed itself. What is different now is the world's most populous country can no more produce all of its own food.
A few years ago, the American agronomist and environmentalist Lester Brown wrote a book called Who Will Feed China?: Wake Up Call for a Small Planet.
China can no longer feed itself largely because the demand is rising sharply when every last drop of water in the north of the country, its major breadbasket, has already been taken. The Yellow River, which drains most of the region, now rarely reaches the sea, except for the short monsoon season.
The same is true of India, the world's second most populous country. Forty years ago, India was a basket case. Millions died in famines. The green revolution then turned India into a food exporter.
Its neighbour Bangladesh came to rely on India for rice. But Indian food production has stagnated recently, even as demand from richer residents has soared. And the main reason is water.
Most of Bangladeshi people depend on water-intensive agriculture. Various types of crops especially Irri-boro paddy and maize are being cultivated on the riverbed.
Meanwhile, the ground water table has been dropping in the vast tract of Barind area with the reduction of water level in the Padma River resulting in non-functioning of most of the hand-driven tube wells including power pumps for irrigation.
The small rivers and tributaries of the Padma are also drying up due to the withdrawal of water at Farakka Barrage.
There are 57 rivers that enter Bangladesh from India. Brahmaputra Basin Rivers carry more than 70 per cent of the water that enters Bangladesh.
For Bangladesh, most of the water comes from its' Eastern rivers, and some from Western rivers.
With river water fully used, Indian farmers have been trying to increase supplies by tapping underground reserves. In the last 15 years, they have brought a staggering 20 million Yamaha pumps to supply water from beneath their fields.
Tushaar Shah, director of the International Water Management Institute's groundwater research station in Gujarat, estimates those farmers are pumping annually to the surface 100 cubic kilometres more water than the monsoon rains replace. Water tables are plunging, and in many places water supply is declining.
"We are living hand-to-mouth," says D.P. Singh, president of the All India Grain Exporters' Association, who blames water shortages for faltering grain production.
Last year India began to import rice, notably from Australia. This year, it stopped supplying food grain to Bangladesh, triggering a crisis here, too.
More and more countries are up against the limits of food production because they are up against the limits of water supply.
Most of the Middle East countries reached this point years ago. In Egypt, where bread riots occurred this spring, the Nile River no longer reaches the sea because all its water is taken for irrigation.
A map of world food trade increasingly looks like a map of the water haves and have-nots, because in recent years the global food trade has become almost a proxy trade in water -- or rather, the water needed to grow food. "Virtual water," some economists call it.
According to estimates by UNESCO's hydrology institute, the world's largest net supplier of virtual water until recently was Australia. It exported a staggering 70 cubic kilometres of water a year in the form of crops, mainly food.
With the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia's main farming zone, virtually dry for the past two years, that figure has been cut in half.
The largest gross exporter of virtual water is the United States, but its exports have also slumped as corn is diverted to domestic biofuels, and because of continuing drought in the American West.
The current water shortages should not mark an absolute limit to food production around the world. But it should do three things. It should encourage a rethinking of biofuels, which are themselves major water guzzlers.
It should prompt an expanding trade in food exported from countries that remain surplus in water, such as Brazil. And it should trigger much greater efforts everywhere to use water more efficiently.
For too long, we have seen water as a cheap and unlimited resource. Those days are ending -- not just in dry places, but everywhere.
For if the current world food crisis shows anything, it is that in an era of global trade in "virtual water," local water shortages can resound throughout the world -- creating higher food prices and food shortages everywhere.
The writer is tea planter, columnist and researcher