FAO food price index
The FAO food price index has just topped the 2008 peak. Weather and harvests allowing the index should come down from the current peak by 2012, but there is an alarming upward underlying trend. So far there have not been the same food riots as in 2008, probably according to this Financial Times article because rice, the staple of 3 billion, has been fairly stable. Within the index sugar, oils and fats, plus wheat amongst the cereals, seem to be the main drivers.
In a recent post we saw that Lester Brown thinks we are heading for disaster. John Quiggin takes a more measured view but he too thinks the task of feeding the world, while not impossible, will be difficult.
An article in the New Scientist, whence the graph at the head of the post (also available here), outlines attempts to improve the very process of photosynthesis.
The detailed science is beyond me, but the broad outline is clear. The fact is that the process of photosynthesis is seriously out of date.
Plants pirated the machinery they use for photosynthesis from bacteria more than a billion years ago. The same machinery is found in every single plant today, from tiny insect-eating sundews to colossal redwood trees – and it has barely changed. For all the architectural complexity that plants have evolved, they are still powered by the same engine they have had from the beginning.
As CO2 became less prevalent in the atmosphere the ancient cyanobactaria evolved a way to increase CO2 levels within their cells up to a thousandfold. Plants only managed an inefficient compromise which prevails today. One smallish improvement is the evolution of C4 plants from C3 over the last 35 million years or so as CO2 levels fell. C4 plants have a more efficient photosynthesis process.
Maize and sorghum are C4 plants, wheat and rice are C3. Efforts are now being made to transfer the trait through genetic engineering into wheat and rice, which could improve the photosynthetic rates by 15 to 25%.
Another improvement involves giving plants the capacity to use nitrogen directly from the air instead of from the soil. The article speaks of plants making their own fertiliser, though fertiliser is more than nitrogen.
I dislike and disapprove of almost everything about the genetic modification of organisms as practised by multinational corporations and implemented in farming and food distribution systems except the fundamental scientific process itself. So if it could come up with something really useful…
Elsewhere, The Economist enters the fray, suggesting that higher prices may be a precondition of solving the problem, that subsidies be cut and trade barriers be removed, and that above all there be an increase of public funding of agricultural research. The article ends with:
Few things matter to human happiness more than the yields of staple crops.
Also, Ross Garnaut has a bit to say.
he warns against introducing the large-scale mandated biofuel schemes that are operating in the US and Europe, which he says have had “chilling” outcomes and contributed to rising world food prices. In the US, 25 per cent of the corn crop was now used to produce biofuel, while in Europe nearly 40 per cent of canola was used for biofuels.
“According to a recent study, setting a global biofuels target of 10 per cent of transport fuel would lead to the number of people at risk of hunger rising by 15 per cent, while only delivering significant emissions benefits after 30 to 50 years,” the paper says.
But:
The latest paper identifies enormous opportunities for farmers to be recruited to bio-sequestration, which could be used to mitigate emissions.
We need to sort out accounting and measuring mechanisms. He praises the government’s Carbon Farming initiative and says sequestration activities could eventually be a major source of income for farmers.
Mandating the use of food crops to make biofuels is moral and economic madness.
I wonder what level of carbon price would be required to support this production on a commercial basis?
I have heard it claimed that biofuel from corn actually has a larger carbon footprint than the fossil fuel it displaces.
Biofuel litres produced per year since 2000.
From http://www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/show/Biofuel
I am usually bullish on genetically modified crops, subject to proper safeguards. But I am extremely nervous about releasing into the field any plants with massive competitive advantages like a near-doubling in photosynthetic efficiency. You could run a very real risk of rapid monoculturisation of not just the crops but the wider environment.
Even the safeguard of terminator genes might not be worth the near to existential risk.
Interesting. Though, again, it’s worth pointing out that the inefficiency in crop production is massively compounded by feeding human-edible plant material to slow-growing warm-blooded herbivores like cattle and sheep.
Future potential biofuels don’t have to be made from food crops, if/when they crack cellulosic ethanol it can be made from harvesting residues.
That’s been “real soon now” for years, wilful.
Jacques Chester: I’ve pretty much given up on the hope of keeping random GE contamination out of the wider biosphere. The various governments here seem to regard contamination as a benefit, presumably because Monsanto donates far more to political parties than organic farmers do.
But with that comes a huge opportunity for Australia – we can be a large-scale testbed for GM crops with relatively little risk to the rest of the world. Imagine how well Australian wheat farmers would do if they were getting 20% more from photosynthesis than our competitors! And I’m sure the US or Russia would be happy to sterilise the area of there was a nasty accident.
Also a problem that is not appreciated is that phosphorus in readily bioavailable form is running out. This means that fertiliser production is going to tank sooner rather than later. We may need those GM crops to maintain current production levels. Not to mention that not putting P based fertilisers on our fields may be a really good thing for our rivers and oceans.
Brian / Jacques,
Much of the growth in biofuel production from food crops has been driven from government subsidies. As Incurious and Unread puts it this is economic madness. An unusual (?) example of government spending having perverse consequences.
marks, the costs of using lower-grade sources of phosphate are not particularly drastic, IMO. See this post, if you haven’t already.
moz,
As an OT aside, Monsanto are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. If they leave out terminator genes it’s a threat to the environment, if they put them in they’re screwing farmers.
Australia might be a useful testbed for GM crops and WA is heading that way for production-ready crops. But I’d really rather just not release genes with that kind of advantage into the field anywhere on Earth.
Andrew;
Definitely. And it’s visible because most of the growth effect has been substitution. A classic case of crowding out.
A bit of light reading on the link betwen photosynthesis and yield.
http://ddr.nal.usda.gov/bitstream/10113/26792/1/IND43787856.pdf
Interesting to note that “modern bread wheat cultivars have lower photosynthetic rate than their wild ancestors.” Page 2.
SG,
Why did you doctor that quote? You took out the word “…leaf…” and I cannot work out why you removed it. Was it just a mistype? As the article points out “The lack of correlation between leaf photosynthetic rate and yield in such studies should have been no surprise because these plants differ genetically in many respects beyond photosynthesis.”
The findings in that article are also worthwhile – they argue that it is possible to increase yield by about 50% by increasing such efficiency – possibly at least in part by using transgenic technology.
“I dislike and disapprove of almost everything about the genetic modification of organisms as practised by multinational corporations and implemented in farming and food distribution systems except the fundamental scientific process itself.”
I find that a quite extraordinary atatement. Pure science is ok but to do anything useful with it is bad? If this attitude prevailed there would be no progress past hunter/gathering whatever.
I suggest you stop being fixated by slogans and idealogical hotpoints and look at the massive benefits afforded the masses by the application of scientific knowledge irrespective of the origin of the supplier. GM crops are proving to be hugely beneficial and will be a major help in providing sufficient food for an expanding world population.
Technological improvements have rendered the predictions of Malthus and Erlich false at every turn. That is a fact that should be widely celebrated not criticised.
amortiser “…..massive benefits afforded the masses….” and “… an expanding world population …”, where would you stop amortiser, say 9, 12, 24 or 128 billion human beings on the globe?
Do you know the carrying capacity of human beings on our planet?
Andrew @ 14, I couldn’t cut and paste so I did it from memory, which is not as good as it once was, and in a hurry having overstayed my lunchbreak trying to read as much as possible.
My first impression is that improving yields by improving yields is not as simple, by a long shot, as improving photosynthetic efficiency.
Crops like wheat are grown because they are good performers in areas where there are far more constraints on photosynthesis than a more efficient cycle could overcome, such as moisture, nutrients, toxins and diseases.
Amortiser @ 16, GM crops are not about feeding the masses but about multinational control of the food supply for profit.
No one here is anti-science, far from it and especially Brian, although he can speak for himself and I am looking forward to his reply to you.
Hi Robert @ 10. Phosphate costs are running nicely upward from that time, now at about $650/tonne. In your calculation, you said that at $1000/tonne, that would mean 9c/loaf extra. Not enough to fill most of us here with dread. However, I do not think that it many in the third world would be so sanguine.
Salient Green:
Maybe you should have read what I wrote. Brian was making the statement that he supported pure science but not applied science.
I would also point out to you that farmers don’t grow grain to feed the masses but to make a profit from their efforts. The consequence is that the masses are fed. That principle applies to all producers.
Yeah sorry amortiser, my nomoclatura has just been straightened out by the traders on the local tourist strip and it is not human beings anymore, these are now called “money bags”. So I have to admit from your profit perspective it makes sense to astroturf with supersize hell for leather.
I think Brians statement is far less extraordinary, and frankly far less stupid than yours is amortiser.
The pure and applied science of plant genetics certainly might be interesting, it may even provide some small source of delusional belief about the glorious future of everything for you.
Though an there’s an array of other pure and applied sciences like physics, chemistry and biology, and the derivatives there of. Which largely govern the processes that have manifested the vast web of life on planet earth, that sustains all of us.
How stupid does one have to be to think that the entire ‘future’ of something as vast and as complex, as interconnected and interdependent, as the web of life across the entire earth can be reduced to only one small field of science? You appear to have some suckers belief in.
When the only tool you have or know is the proverbial hammer, everything is just a nail waiting to beaten in to place right?
Humans can do better than nature right?
Those billions of years of struggle amidst the forces of the universe to amass a pile of such plainly useless and inefficient lifeforms, pissweak compared to us eh?
We could start the whole thing from scratch tomorrow, a never ending perfect scientific heaven that will deliver us from all this factual stuff like the physical world having a finite size and biological limits.
Amortiser, I wasn’t talking about science/applied science in general, just in relation to GM food and to a lesser extent fibre. I don’t want to go through the whole thing blow by blow, but corporatised agriculture is part of the problem. The corporations in this case are such that they don’t engender trust.
Jacques, I can’t see C4 wheat and rice going feral as a problem and am not aware of maize and sorghum being such. There is a concern about genetic traits going wild, such as in the production of super, roundup-resistant weeds and grasses.
One problem with GM is that it leads to a lack of genetic diversity. I understand that before the Indian government started promoting the use of GM cotton there were about 130 different varieties in use in Gujerat. If all the world adopted GM cotton you would reduce the varieties to a handful.
On biofuels, Al Gore reckons subsidising corn to produce biofuels in the US was a mistake. Now Clinton has spoken out against it. Joe Romm:
On GM the Australia Talks session was worthwhile, though I thought Mark Tester, Professor of Plant Physiology at the University of Adelaide talked beyond his expertise much of the time. He is a plant guy but talked as a advocate for the whole industry.
One area they didn’t mention at all was the vexed business of cross contamination and the difficulty GM free suppliers have in certifying their produce as GM free when the farmer next door grows GM.
Marks, the latest price figures I can find doesn’t seem to show that, though I’m not convinced of its provenance and it might be a bit out of date.
Regardless, there’s a bunch of new mines coming on stream soon (including one in Australia) so I wouldn’t be surprised to see the price drop back again.
Furthermore, price rises don’t necessarily indicate we’re running out of something. Have a look at this iron ore price graph. Iron is the fourth most common element in the earth’s crust, but that hasn’t stopped the price skyrocketing because BHP, Rio, Fortescue and Vale can’t dig it up fast enough.
Monoculturation is a risk of vulnerability to catastrophic parasitic failure, I agree. Having different companies producing different GM strains will help; it will also be necessary to maintain heirloom variants in seedbanks (and such material will become more valuable as time goes on).
The thing is that we already get total crop failures from time to time, and without the surplus productivity of GM crops that leaves very little wiggle room. For you and I it is a matter of inconvenience, elsewhere on Earth it’s life and death.
There are no easy choices here.
I’m equally conflicted by the prospect of a GM future. on the one hand, I’m generally a techno-optimist (I’ve clearly learnt little from the past thirty years of development
) and I can very much see the benefits if the claimed improvements turn out to be real (despite the very real risks of super weeds and other unintended consequences). For example the Department of Primary Industries and La Trobe uni are working on perennial ryegrass that will finally fix the phosphorus problems in the Gippsland lakes.
On the other hand, the way that Monsanto and others have approached the issue to date fills one with little confidence. They have one goal and one goal only, which is to maximise the short-term profit of shareholders and to seek a dominant or monopoly market position. They’ve no interest in the environment or farmers or society whatsoever.
The destruction of genetic diversity does not only apply to the GMO plant crops being developed. Genetic diversity in wild species of animals will also be destroyed.
GMO species are engineered to grow in marginal conditions. At present these locales are refuges for wild animals and an enormous and still unquantified range of insect and other invertebrate life. At present, already, these species are suffering extinction at hundreds of times historical background rates. GMO cropping with its promise of making life possible for still more humans can only accelerate this alarming destruction of nature.
There is no rational cause for optimism of any kind in this blind techno-vandalism of nature.
Y’know, I don’t get too many opportunities to say this, but my favorite modern political philosopher is Wendell Berry. Granted I draw conclusions from his work that are not what he’d of had in mind, but that’s just too bad: his thought is important and it has, well, unexpected consequences.
Everybody should read “Home Economics: Fourteen Essays.”
Step one in learning to be a grown-up.
Katz: “There is no rational cause for optimism of any kind in this blind techno-vandalism of nature.”
Why, what an exceptionally wise and profound thing to say! (Irony off, no fooling.)
Now if only you chuckleheads could bring yourselves to apply this insight in a more careful fashion…
Nah, that’s askin’ too much. Y’all are a bunch of zoo animals, and we both know it, don’t we.
Japerz, you’re being a dick again. (If friends can’t tell you, who will?)
Hi Robert,
http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/does-peak-phosphorus-loom
http://datasearch.uts.edu.au/isf/news-events/news-detail.cfm?ItemId=25301
DInr: “you’re being a dick again.”
Yeah that’s a fair criticism if you’re of a literal frame of mind, but I was after the style of, as they say, exagerrating to make a point.
But if that’s not your stylistic preference I apologize, it wasn’t strictly the necessary way to go.
What can you do, right? Time and life are short and we have to try and say what we mean, and sometimes the call of elegance conflicts with other calls.
“You must give me the words to that some day.”
– Brendan Behan
Only slightly O/T, while we mess with GM crops and such, we destroy our absolute prime food growing country:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/farmer-worries-mining-company-has-him-pegged-20110302-1bewo.html
According to Wikipedia, Wendell Berry protested against such desecration of arable land. We could say to our Victorian EPA about brown coal what he said to the US EPA about coal ash in Louisville: “”The EPA knows that coal ash is poison. We ask it only to believe in its own findings on this issue, and do its duty.”
Jacques, if you’re worried about cross-fertilization from GM crops to non-GM crops, you shouldn’t be looking to the terminator gene as a safeguard. If that gene crosses species we’re all fucked.
I’d be a lot more comfortable about GM crops if they were focussing on improving photosynthetic productivity or carbon use; instead they’re obviously being designed so that farmers are indentured to agribusiness, with genetic traits that if they move to non-farm species would be disastrous. Imagine New Zealand with roundup-ready Gorse bushes… what a disaster!
sg: imagine Australia with herbicide resistant prickly pear.
Brian: the difficulty GM free suppliers have in certifying their produce as GM free when the farmer next door grows GM.
That question has been answered for us by the legislators, in favour of the GM users. If I was an organic farmer faced with loss of certification I’d be really tempted to find the most destructive thing I could contemplate and do that. Like, say, selling my farm to a mining company. Or a plantation forester who wants to spread semi-treated effluent on the land. In that vein, I find Indian farmers more inspiring than Australian ones, because the locals tend to quietly hang themselves in their own shed rather than setting fire to themselves in front of parliament. So much easier to ignore the problem of rural suicide when no-one ever sees it.
The bulk of our food comes from crops and animals that have been developed in areas with consistent weather patterns. We have wheat that doesn’t produce a crop without “good follow-up rains”. Worse still a crop that is damaged if there is rain at the wrong time. We use cattle as a source of meat even though a cow produces only one calf a year and it takes a long time to build up numbers after a drought.
However, we now look like going into a world with much more variable weather patterns. Variable to the extent that the species on which the bulk of our agriculture depends will struggle to produce food.
The Pilbara gives us some guide to the sort of plants we need to produce food in a more difficult climate. There are the trees that keep producing leaves because their roots go very deep. There are the plants like spinafex that switch off during dry and then green-up when rain comes. There are the plants that germinate and produce seeds before the soil has time to dry out.
Our future food security depends on either very rapid modification of our food crops to handle the variable climate and/or turning plants and animals that can handle variable conditions into serious food producers and/or processes that can convert inedible material into food.
Given the urgency of these problems it would be crazy brave to dismiss GM as a tool for solving these problems. This doesn’t mean that we should tolerate the behaviour of the Monsato’s of the world or that we shouldn’t make sure that the necessary checks and balances aren’t in place.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of grain plantings fail to produce because of a lack of good follow-up rain etc.
John, I agree with this:
Apart from Monsanto and the power it gains over farmers and farming, urgent issues include the proper testing of innovations to the same standard demanded of pharmaceutical companies, and realistic provisions to protect the activities of organic and non-GM farmers.
BTW I understand that varieties now exist where a wheat harvest can be obtained on pre-planting soil moisture alone, on good soils, but I’m not 100% sure on that.
Brian: You say:
By staying “Organic and non-GM” farmers can sell at a higher margin to middle class consumers who have rightly or wrongly, convinced themselves that these things are important. But when the O&NGM start claiming that other farmers can’t use GM because of the risk of genetic drift there is a problem, particularly if we really need GM to produce the species/varieties that can deal with variable climates.
John D, so far I’ve never heard a claim to better yields for GM crops that wasn’t contested by the proponents of non-GM crops. It’s all very confused at the moment with claim and counter claim. The facts are impossible to verify.
BTW the higher margin obtainable for non-GM is said to disappear when a GM producer sets up in the area. The costs of production are said to go up by about 20% and the risks of contamination are said to be such as to make non-GM production difficult if not impossible.
Brian: Is there a logical reason why farming costs would go up 20% when a GM farmer sets up nearby?
There seem to be a number of GM related issues:
1. The certification issue for non-GM/organic farmers
2. The use of GM to make a better tasting coffee? Or to help sell weedkiller?
3. The general and specific GM re the way agribusiness operates?
4. The use of GM to help feed the world?
5. The use of GM to improve health and fight disease?
6. GM and biofuels?
Johnd @ 45
So maybe 20% isn’t fixed, but…
Monsanto have done the pro GM technology lobby great harm by sueing (and threatening to sue) ordinary farmers who collect their own line bred seed, because Monsanto has polluted generations of conventional line breeding. This is akin to a rapist sueing for child maintence.
I have nothing against GM as such, but the way the agri-gene companies behave threatens genetic diversity and their own cause.
i can’t harm Gadaffi in Australia but maybe I can harm Monsanto and Syngeta.
I would be no less a matyr if the gene-mafia are my targets.
John D on costs, it’s going back a couple of years and I can’t remember the specifics, but I think it had to do with providing a certificate that the produce was GM free.