Climate change, water shortages, Peak Oil, Middle East turmoil, soil degradation, crops for Biofuel, population increases and urban sprawl are combining to make the production of sufficient food impossible at some time in the future unless firm action is taken very quickly.
But why the West?
Because the West is absolutely dependent on oil and gas for every part of food production. Cultivating the soil, making the fertiliser, harvesting and drying the crop, transporting and processing are all done by fossil fuels.
There is no fall-back plan B for when supplies become less then needed. We don’t have the millions of work horses and farm workers that did these jobs 80 years ago or the recycling of soil nutrients that kept fertility high. We’re stuck with what we’ve got: massive machines and artificial fertilisers. Nor can we manage with less. Farmers only use optimum amounts of fertiliser already. Where would they cut fuel use? They must cultivate, sow, harvest and haul to storage. If they cut out some pesticide applications, yields could fall drastically. Without a doubt, less oil and gas means less food.
We know that at some time we will indeed have less oil and gas. It is of course finite and many experts believe that peak production will happen very soon followed by rapid decline. Â
We also have to accept that much of the remaining oil and gas belongs to countries that are unstable and unfriendly. The Middle East could break out into civil war at any time and terrorists could mount concerted attacks on oil refineries and pipelines. Any large reduction in supplies that lasted more then a few months would have a very negative effect on food supplies.
In many developing countries, even now 50-60% of people still live in villages. Although this is changing fast and their farming is using more and more fossil fuel all the time, they would still be able to adapt better to lower fuel availability and the drop in production might be less severe.