Reflections by comrade Fidel: The serious food crisis
just eleven days ago, on 19 January, I wrote under the title "It is time to do something," the following:
is "The worst thing is that the solutions depend to a large part of the richest, most developed countries, who will come there to have to confront a situation, they do not look in the eye, without coincident that her world view that they have tried to shape [...] have. "
" I am not speaking only of wars, the dangers and consequences of wise and brilliant people, including many Americans, transmitted.
I mean the food crisis, caused by economic facts and climate change, which are a result of human beings seemingly irreversible, but with respect to which the human mind still has a duty to them as quickly as the end . To offer "
" The problems have suddenly taken shape, by phenomena that repeat themselves on every continent: heat waves, forest fires, crop losses in Russia [...] Climate change in China, [...], increasing loss of water in the Himalayas Mountains that includes India, China, Pakistan and other countries threaten, excessive rainfall in Australia that have inundated nearly a million square kilometers, unusual and seasonally shifted cold spells in Europe [...]; drought in Canada, unusual cold spells in this country and in the United States [...] "
did I mention the rain also unprecedented in Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil.
have in that reflection I clearly: "The production of wheat, soy, corn, rice and numerous other crops and bush fruits, which are the basis for feeding the world - whose population is now estimated that nearly 6.9 billion inhabitants is and the record number is approaching 7 billion, and where more than one billion people suffer from hunger and malnutrition - are already damaged severely by climate change, causes what in the world have a big problem "
On Saturday, the 29th. January, was in the Internet news - Assembly, I receive daily, one on 10 January on the website Vía Orgánica published article by Lester R. Brown mentioned, the content in my opinion should be disseminated to detail.
Its author is the most prestigious and the most decorated U.S. environmentalist who has long been on the harmful effects of the increasing and extensive calls attention to the atmosphere of CO2 emitted volume. From his well-reasoned article I will refer to only two sections that explain its position consistently.
"At the beginning of the new year has reached the price of wheat unprecedented magnitude ..."
"... the world's population has nearly doubled since 1970 and we continue to grow with an annual pace of 80 million people. Tonight will be more to feed 219,000 people on the board, many of which will find only an empty plate. Tomorrow night will be added further 219 000. At some point the time will come that this continuous growth, the capacity of farmers and the limits will exceed the soil and water resources of the planet. "
" The meat, dairy and egg consumption is growing rapidly in developing countries and is also unprecedented. "
" In the United States, where 416 million Tons of grain were harvested in 2009, are 119 million tons were sent off into the ethanol distillation plants to produce fuel for cars. That would be enough to feed 350 million people a year. The enormous investment by the United States in the ethanol plant creates the conditions for direct competition between cars and people around the world grain harvest. In Europe, where much of the rail car parks will operate on diesel, a growing need to do from plants, mainly from rapeseed and palm oil produced diesel fuel. This need for oil-bearing plants not only reduces the area available for food production in Europe, but also accelerates the clearing of tropical forests in Indonesia and Malaysia is in favor of palm oil-producing plantations. "
" ... the annual growth in world grain consumption from an average of 21 million tonnes annually between 1990 and annually by 2005 to 41 million tonnes increased from 2005 to 2010. Most of this enormous leap of investment license from the ethanol plants in the United States between 2006 and 2008 due to.
With the doubling of annual growth in demand for cereals are created new limits on the offer, including when those long term incurred, such as those caused by soil erosion were noticeably stronger. It is estimated that one third of the arable soils of the world the plant layer lose faster than they need for the formation of new soil by means of natural processes and so they lose their associated productivity. Two large dust masses are currently in the making. A extends to the northwest of China, the western part of Mongolia and Central Asia, and the other is in Central Africa. Each of them is much larger than that of dust mass, which has caused damage in the 1930s in the United States.
The satellite images show a continuous flow of outgoing from these regions Dust storms, and they each usually transported millions of tons of valuable plant layer. "
" Meanwhile, reduced rapidly in many parts of the world the expansion of irrigated land due to the depletion of groundwater resources. This relatively new phenomenon is due to the application in large scale by mechanical pumps for pumping of underground water. In the presence of half the world's population lives in countries where the water level drops to the extent that in the exhaustion of the excessive pumping of the basic water resources. If a groundwater is depleted, it must necessarily the pumping rhythm be reduced so that it renew the rhythm of it is adapted, if you will not turn into a fossil (non-renewal capacity) groundwater resources, making the pumps would stop forever. But eventually the falling level of ground water level will mean an increase in food prices.
The irrigated areas in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq and possibly go back in Yemen. In Saudi Arabia, which was of a currently depleted fossil groundwater resources for their own water supply of wheat plantations dependent, this production has a free fall. Between 2007 and 2010, the Saudi wheat production by more than two-thirds down. "
" The Arab Middle East is the geographic region in which the increasing water scarcity caused the greatest reduction in the grain harvest. But the really high water deficits are recorded in India, where, according to the World Bank provides 175 million people who feed on such crops, which is produced by excessive water pumps [...] In the U.S., the other major grain producer in the world is reduced, the irrigated area in the mainly agricultural states like California and Texas. "
" The temperature increase leads also means that it is difficult to increase the world's grain harvest with the necessary speed to keep up with the unprecedented demand speed step. The environmentalists who are concerned with crops, have their own, generally accepted measure: for each increase of one degree Celsius above the optimal temperature range during the growth period, a decline of 10% in grain yield to be expected "
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"Another trend has occurred that threatens the food security is the melting of mountain glaciers. Located in the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau of particular concern where the melting ice of the glaciers during the dry season, not only those great rivers of Asia, such as the Indus, Ganges, Mekong, Yangtze and the Yellow River supplies, but also fed the irrigation systems that depend on them. Without this ice melts, the grain harvest would fall and prices would rise extremely accordingly.
Finally, and considers the long term threaten the Greenland and west of the south polar ice caps melting in connection with the thermal expansion of the oceans, sea level during this century of up to increase to six feet. Even a rise in sea level of three feet would cause the flooding of the rice-growing areas of Bangladesh. Also a large part of the Mekong Delta, where half of the rice from Vietnam, is the world's second largest rice exporter generated. There are a total of about 19 Asian rice-producing river deltas. There would be a result of the increase in sea level significantly reduce the crops. "
" The anxiety of recent weeks is just the beginning. It is no longer a conflict between heavily armed great powers, but rather to greater scarcity of foodstuffs and rising prices of food products (and the political disturbances which leads) that threaten the future of our world. The world is likely to have a future with more climatic instability and volatility food goods prices front, unless governments begin quickly verifying the safety issues new and divert the expenditure for military purposes to mitigate climate change, to achieve the efficiency in water use, conservation of soil and demographic stability. If things are as not made on, then the trend of food prices will only show up. "
The existing world order was imposed by the United States at the end of the Second World War, and they retained all the privileges for themselves.
There is no possible way for Obama to manage the chaos which they have created. A few days ago the government of Tunisia is overthrown, where the United States imposed neo-liberalism and had enjoyed this political achievement. The word democracy had disappeared from the stage. It's amazing how Washington now brings his delight at the collapse of the expression if exploited people shed his blood, and goes out to stores. No one ignores that the United States, Egypt to its main allies in the Arab world have made. A large aircraft carriers and a nuclear submarine in the U.S. and Israeli warships escorted a few months ago crossed the Suez Canal in the Persian Gulf, without the international press had had access to what was happening. That was the Arab country that has received the most weapons deliveries. Millions of young Egyptians are suffering in the world economy caused unemployment and food shortages, and Washington claims to support it. His Machiavellian approach is that while the Egyptian government supplied weapons, let the opposition get the USAID funds. Can the United States stop the revolutionary wave that shook the Third World?
The famous, has just ended to Davos meeting a madhouse, and the richest European countries, with Germany, Britain and France in the lead, agree only in their disagreement with the United States.
But one should not make the slightest concern, the U.S. Secretary of State promised once again that the U.S. would help with the rebuilding of Haiti.
Fidel Castro Ruz
30th January 2011 18:23
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