One indicator of how close we are to Peak Food, the time when food availability per capita peaks and then begins to decline, is the price of food worldwide. Of course, the price has always fluctuated, especially locally, and is subject to political manipulation through subsidies and duties, but since September 06 the price of wheat has gone from about £70/tonne to over £100/ tonne now. Next year looks set for a further increase.

The Independent on 23/06/07 said, “We are so used to our ultra -competitive supermarket sector keeping down prices that it comes as rather a shock to discover that the same item we bought a few weeks ago has become more expensive. But the shock value is beginning to wear off. Food prices are now rising at 6% a year, twice as quickly as the general cost of living. And it is not just in the UK that we are witnessing this trend. In India the overall food price index is 10% higher than last year. In China, prices are up 10% for some staples. A similar inflationary trend can be discerned in America.

“The immediate reason for this is that global commodity prices are rising. Earlier this month, wheat prices reached their highest level in 10 years. Maize prices have doubled over the past year. Rice prices are rising too. This is being passed on to the price of other foodstuffs such as meat and eggs, as these commodities are used for animal feed.”

The article goes on to discuss the reasons for these increased prices and mentions higher demand from Asia, higher fuel prices and the increasing use of food crops as a source of energy.

All of these issues and more that will lead to Peak Food are dealt with in the many posts under several categories on this site and in my book Famine in the West.

The Independent on 23/06/07 said, “We are so used to our ultra -competitive supermarket sector keeping down prices that it comes as rather a shock to discover that the same item we bought a few weeks ago has become more expensive. But the shock value is beginning to wear off. Food prices are now rising at 6% a year, twice as quickly as the general cost of living. And it is not just in the UK that we are witnessing this trend. In India the overall food price index is 10% higher than last year. In China, prices are up 10% for some staples. A similar inflationary trend can be discerned in America.

“The immediate reason for this is that global commodity prices are rising. Earlier this month, wheat prices reached their highest level in 10 years. Maize prices have doubled over the past year. Rice prices are rising too. This is being passed on to the price of other foodstuffs such as meat and eggs, as these commodities are used for animal feed.”

The article goes on to discuss the reasons for these increased prices and mentions higher demand from Asia, higher fuel prices and the increasing use of food crops as a source of energy.

All of these issues and more that will lead to Peak Food are dealt with in the many posts under several categories on this site and in my book Famine in the West.

“And although its academic content is excellent, it is written in language that can be readily understood by farmers and non-farmers alike.  Indeed, I strongly recommend it, especially to Gordon Brown and David Miliband, who clearly have not yet appreciated its message.

“John Gossop pulls together the host of statistics on global warming, declining oil supplies and increasing demand for food that have been released, piecemeal, over recent years.  He concludes that the world has been living on cheap energy created by photosynthesis and the power of the sun millions of years ago and that its availability and cheapness are drawing to a close.

“He believes the energy crisis will come much faster than most commentators expect and that this, combined with competition for land to produce food, will trigger famine, even in the wealthy west, within 12 to 15 years.  He despairs at the culture of denial that rules in many countries and he calls for the pending disaster to be tackled urgently on a worldwide basis.

“He cites emergency measures taken during World War II that enabled the Allies to increase the production of armaments and food that were crucial in defeating the Nazis.  He believes that the worsening crisis should be tacked on a similar war footing and start immediately.  He proposes measures that he claims would enable farmers to make significant contributions to our survival.”

 If you would like to read Famine in the West  the ebook is available at the special introductory price of £2.99 (about $5.99).   Alternatively you can buy a printed version for £6.49 plus postage and packing.

He was, perhaps, 200 years early as several factors allowed food production to keep up with population growth until the last few years.

First of all, massive supplies from the vast new lands of the Americas and Australasia became available as settlers from Europe ploughed up ancient natural grasslands to grow grain. Slowly, the transport infrastructure of railways and shipping facilities were built allowing this food to be transported worldwide.

But the one thing that Malthus could not possibly have foreseen was that it would become possible to convert fossil fuels in to food through agriculture.

Fossil fuel powered machines have replaced horses and other beasts of burden, completely in the West but not quite yet in the developing world. This increased productivity many times over, but more significantly, it released the 30% of land that had been needed to grow the hay, oats and other food needed for the millions of horses used in farming, transport and the army.

Then came the discovery that nitrogen fertiliser could be manufactured using fossil fuels. This boosted yields enormously so that today it is estimated that on average, 40% of our grain yield is due to nitrogen fertiliser. Similarly, pesticides made from fossil fuels have boosted yields by reducing weed competition, killing insect pests and reducing fungal diseases.

Fossil fuels have also allowed large scale pumped irrigation, cheap transportation and better food storage by drying or freezing.

Unfortunately, there are no vast new lands to exploit, fossil fuels are finite and future supplies uncertain, while climate change is causing extreme weather events such as droughts and floods that are having an increasing negative impact on food production. At the same time world population continues to rise by 80-90 million per year, so that by 2025 there will be 8 billion people to feed.

The fact that Malthus’s prediction did not come true when he said it would may have given us a false sense of security that it never will. In my book Famine in the West I try to warn that if we do not take urgent action, famine is a certainty.

“Peak oil refers to the point at which world oil production plateaus before beginning to decline as depletion of the world’s remaining reserves offsets ever-increased drilling. Some experts argue that we’re already there, and that we won’t exceed by much the daily production high of 84.5 million barrels first reached in 2005. If so, global production will bump along near these levels for years before beginning an inexorable decline.

“What would that mean? Alternatives are still a decade away from meeting incremental demand for oil. With nothing to fill the gap, global economic growth would slow, stop, and then reverse; international tensions would soar as nations seek access to diminishing supplies, enriching autocratic rulers in unstable oil states; and, unless other sources of energy could be ramped up with extreme haste, the world would plunge into a new Dark Age. Even as faltering economies burned less oil, carbon loading of the atmosphere might accelerate as countries turn to vastly dirtier coal.”

Surprisingly, no mention is made of what this would mean for food production, but as more coal burning would accelerate climate change with negative effects on farming, and as food production in the West is totally dependent on oil and gas inputs, we can safely say that Peak Oil equals Peak Food and declining oil equals declining food.