Mon, Feb 11 – Global Crisis (4): Food Shortage

Posted on February 11, 2013 by VirtaPay
Recap for new VirtaPay users: In part 1 of this blog post series, we covered some of the events of the global economic crisis. In part 2, we explained who gets hurt most by the crisis. In part 3, we detailed the growing energy crisis, its root causes and where it appears to be headed.
In part 4 of our Global Crisis blog post series, we are going to look at the coming food shortage.

The global food shortage

In our research of the global economic crisis, we discovered many signs of a coming food shortage. Of course, a food shortage will prolong and add to the economic crisis we are now experiencing. The idea of a food shortage isn’t news for people in some parts of the world — places where it’s already happening. In the rest of this post we will share what we discovered in our research.

Partly to blame… global warming

There is a debate surrounding global warming. The debate is not if global warming is happening, rather, the debate centers around the cause of global warming.
On one side of the debate, we have the majority of scientists in the world who agree that global warming is being caused, or greatly accelerated, by greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide) from the burning of “fossil fuels” (including oil and coal).
On the other side of the debate, we have a very small minority of scientists who say that our Earth is warming due to a natural cycle of our planet. They point to the fact that our Earth has warmed and cooled countless times throughout its history without the help of humans.
For our discussion of the coming food shortage, the debate surrounding what iscausing global warming doesn’t matter. What matters is that global warming is happening. The fact that our Earth is warming is undeniable. The evidence is impossible to ignore. Global warming will contribute to the coming food shortage and is already impacting our lives.
Whether global warming was caused by humans or by a natural cycle of the Earth, again, doesn’t matter. The fact is, regardless of what’s causing it, the warming of our planet is just getting started, and there is no chance that it will begin reversing that trend any time soon.
Another thing to keep in mind is that in this blog post we are covering our concerns about the impacts that this warming trend will have in our lifetimes. The greater impact it will have upon our children and future generations is outside the scope of this discussion.

Global warming already causing damage

Severe droughts in the past several years have caused critical declines in global food production. This has damaged humanity’s ability to produce every type of food product we rely upon, including grains, fruits, vegetables and meats.
The droughts—caused by changes in weather patterns due to global warming—have repeatedly caused crops to fail in the U.S. and other major food-exporting countries in recent years. In six of the past 11 years, the world has consumed more food than it has produced. This has caused world food reserves to fall to their lowest level since 1974.
According to Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington D.C., “We are entering a new era of rising food prices and spreading hunger. Food supplies are tightening everywhere and land is becoming the most sought-after commodity as the world shifts from an age of food abundance to one of scarcity.”
In a recent book, Brown also said, “Food shortages undermined earlier civilizations.We are on the same path. Each country is now fending for itself. The world is living one year to the next.”

Food shortage becoming obvious

Even in countries where the food shortage isn’t yet obvious, it’s still not difficult to see signs of it approaching. If you pay attention when buying food, you have likely already seen some of the following…
  • Rising prices – This is probably the most obvious of the signs. As food becomes more scarce, the prices are rising on the remaining limited food supply. You may have noticed food prices climbing faster than normal in recent years.
  • Smaller containers – This is a sign many people may not have noticed. If you have been paying close attention to the sizes of common food containers, you will have noticed that they are getting smaller. An example is orange juice. In the U.S. there used to be a standard size container that was one half gallon, 64 ounces. The “half gallon” was quietly reduced to 59 ounces and at the same time, the price was raised.
    This is not an isolated example. Food container sizes are gradually shrinking across a wide range of foods in almost every type of packaged food product. Look for it next time you buy food.
  • Lower quality – Many food producers are resorting to inferior quality, cheaper ingredients or fillers without telling the customer. For example, this is being done with coffee. Due to the rising cost of high quality coffee beans, many coffee brewers worldwide have resorted to quietly changing the balance of their brew. They have been secretly been using more of the cheaper and less flavorful “robusta” bean in place of the more highly regarded, more expensive “arabica” bean.
    Again, this is not an isolated example, but is happening across a diverse range of food products. A small sampling of offenders that have been caught include:ground meats [often not from the animal claimed, think of the recent news of horse meat in hamburgers]; olive oil [diluted with cheaper oils]; fruit juices[diluted with cheaper fruits, or added water and sugar]; tea [diluted with lawn grass or fern leaves]; spices [filler herbs often added, sometimes dangerous substances].

Another cause… peak oil

The threat of global warming to food production is huge. However, even if global warming were not a threat, we would still be in big trouble…
According to most scientists, our current global warming problem is caused by our use of oil for energy. So, it is somewhat ironic that we have an even more immediate threat than global warming, but one which is directly linked to it… the world is running out of oil.
The continuing decline of world oil supplies will cause massive disruptions to world food supplies — both the production and the delivery of food will suffer.
Food production
The nations which produce the most food, do so primarily with the use of modern farm machinery powered by petroleum-based fuels. Without these fuels, farms will not be able to operate their machinery. As a result, we simply won’t be able to cultivate land, plant seeds and harvest food on the massive scale we have in recent years.
We have become dependent upon oil, it largely powers our entire food industry.No oil means no food for most of the world.
Food delivery
Even if we had enough oil, or managed to plant and harvest the food by hand, transporting the food to market becomes an issue. Transportation of food to stores and markets will be disrupted once there isn’t enough fuel to power our long haul trucks, train lines and cargo ships.
Big cities will be hit hardest…
  • Big cities are heavily dependent on a constantly refreshed supply of food.
  • A big city, by definition, has a massive human population. Which, naturally, means more mouths to feed.
  • People in big cities rarely ever grow their own food. (And for the few who manage to grow a tiny garden, how long would that food last?)
  • Essentially all food must be delivered to big cities by some form of transportation — all of which depend on oil for energy.
  • It is estimated that in most big cities, the food supply on store shelves and in food markets would last 3 days, or less, if transportation were completely disrupted.
What happens after the food runs out in a big city? We predict: riots, chaos,mayhem. A big city is not a place you will want to be when food shortages become reality.

Part 5 is next…

There are at least 2 more parts to come in our Global Crisis blog post series. Be sure to read every post in the series to discover the big picture of how VirtaPay is positioning to help you profit from the global economic crisis and to help make the world a better place in the process.
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