Love for Life

Food shortages loom as wheat crop shrinks and prices rise
By Jonathan Leake
24th February 2008
From The Sunday Times

THE world is only ten weeks away from running out of wheat supplies after stocks fell to their lowest levels for 50 years.

The crisis has pushed prices to an all-time high and could lead to further hikes in the price of bread, beer, biscuits and other basic foods.

It could also exacerbate serious food shortages in developing countries especially in Africa.

The crisis comes after two successive years of disastrous wheat harvests, which saw production fall from 624m to 600m tonnes, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Experts blame climate change as heatwaves caused a slump in harvests last year in eastern Europe, Canada, Morocco and Australia, all big wheat producers.

Booming populations and a switch to a meat-rich diet in the developing world also mean that about 110m tons of the world’s annual wheat crop is being diverted to feed livestock.

Short term pressures have compounded the problem. Speculative buying by investors gambling on further price rises has further pushed up prices.

Though shortages are often blamed on the use of land for biofuel crops, the main biofuel cereal crop is maize, not wheat. Farmers have brought millions of acres of fallow land into production and the FAO predicts that the shortages could be eliminated within 12 months.

COMMENT

When they say farmers are buying acres of land for the wheat production and the FAO believe that the crisis could be eliminated. Has anyone given the climate change a thought.( i mean i know they say its because of it that we are having problems with the wheat supplies and production.) but the fact that farmers will need a lot of water for the land they are now so desperate to buy and grow wheat in. They might even cut down forests with rivers, to grow the wheat. The changes in weather are sudden but we have water in the rivers. Yet its not expected to rain as much anytime soon. If its constantly this hot then the rivers will surely start to dry up meaning the crops will not have suffcient water supplies and quite frankly I doubt that the towns and cities in the area would have these sources either. So what will they do when the rivers slowly start drying up and there is hardly any rain because of this oh so suddenclimate change? Did they not expect it,how is it suddenly its a crisis?

Jel, Wiltshie, UK

Blame globalists and environmentalists.

First they say we polllute the world, want cleaner fuels, then decide ethanol is not as good as they thought.

Then cry because fields are full of "fuel", instead of food.

These globalists, environmentalists elitists, have ruined everything!

Fedup, Ky, USA

Google information regarding the fact that rivers are drying up all over the world and underground water levels are at their lowest points in many places, especially the US, and you will note that the world is on the verge of food and water scarcity at a level never before known in recent history.

Water is especially getting scarce and since most of the world's food supply relies on irrigation, rather than rainfall for growth, it's obvious to see that there are just too many people in the world to feed, and if populations aren't reduced a dark catastrophe will come upon us in the near future.

Encouraging immigration from third world countries, because they can't sustain their people, into first world ones is a recipe for disaster by the West.

The current third world population is unsustainable.

Robert, Ocala, Florida

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