Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?
This is the kind of article Jim Rogers would recommend reading. What happens when “The biggest threat to global stability is the potential for food crises in poor countries to cause government collapse”?
Click Here To Read About Our Looming Food Shortage problems.
Introduction (Via Lester Brown @ Scientific American)
One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis. (Miguel’s Comment: Think Black Swan)
For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems preposterous. Who would not find it hard to think seriously about such a complete departure from what we expect of ordinary life? What evidence could make us heed a warning so dire—and how would we go about responding to it? We are so inured to a long list of highly unlikely catastrophes that we are virtually programmed to dismiss them all with a wave of the hand: Sure, our civilization might devolve into chaos—and Earth might collide with an asteroid, too!
Key Concepts Covered (Via Scientific American)
1. Food scarcity and the resulting higher food prices are pushing poor countries into chaos.
2. Such “failed states” can export disease, terrorism, illicit drugs, weapons and refugees.
3. Water shortages, soil losses and rising temperatures from global warming are placing severe limits on food production.
4. Without massive and rapid intervention to address these three environmental factors, the author argues, a series of government collapses could threaten the world order.
Most Important Excerpts (Via Scientific American)
Our continuing failure to deal with the environmental declines that are undermining the world food economy—most important, falling water tables, eroding soils and rising temperatures—forces me to conclude that such a collapse is possible.
The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV tank with ethanol could feed one person for a year.
The recent merging of the food and energy economies implies that if the food value of grain is less than its fuel value, the market will move the grain into the energy economy. That double demand is leading to an epic competition between cars and people for the grain supply and to a political and moral issue of unprecedented dimensions. The U.S., in a misguided effort to reduce its dependence on foreign oil by substituting grain-based fuels, is generating global food insecurity on a scale not seen before.
Click Here To Read About Our Looming Food Shortage problems.
