Urgent Food News for Global Youth

Last Tuesday, 18 Dec., on page C5 -- not the front page -- the NY Times reported bad news for everyone who wants to eat: a rapid, “unforeseen and unprecedented” dwindling of the world food supply and soaring prices of food.

How bad? Food prices rose an unacceptable 9% last year; this year they rose 40%! Cereals reserves are down 11 percent this year; currently we humans have just 12 weeks of world consumption, compared to an average 18 weeks’s consumption during 2000-2005. Prices of wheat and oil seeds are at record highs. Wheat prices, for example, have rose 52% this last year.

The news is especially bad for young people because changes are “here to stay” reported Jacques Diouf, head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. There is “a very serious risk that fewer people will be able to get food.”

Why is this happening? Because everything is connected to everything else. Climate change has already decreased crop yields in important areas. Energy shortages and efforts to reduced carbon emissions is stimulating demand for biofuels, the production of which takes land away from producing food for humans. With rising incomes in places like China and India, people are eating more meat, and producing animal food takes land that could be used to grow human food. Some countries heavily subsidize crop production and dump surplus food into markets in food deficit countries, thereby undermining the local farm economy. Meanwhile, human numbers continue to increase, in part because some countries refuse to support international efforts to provide family planning services to couples who want no more children.

Food, energy, climate, water, land, poverty, wealth, trade, population, violence, and values are all linked into a single macro-problem – the Global Problematique. That’s what Our Task is all about.