Peak Food

Dr Vickey Pope, head of climate advice at the Met office described these projections as the most comprehensive analysis to date.

Whatever we do now, we are bound to have average the temperature rise by almost 2C compared to pre-industrial levels, but robust measures now could prevent rises above that level, which is where many scientists fear dangerous feedback effects will start to kick in.

The projections are that rainfall will stay about the same in the UK, but more will fall in winter with summer rainfall down by anything between 20% and 80%. The temperature on the hottest days could hit 41C by 2080.

This is exactly the opposite of what is good for food production. We need regular spring and early summer rainfall and moderate temperature to obtain the huge crop yields we now have in the UK.

Hilary Benn, commenting on these projections said they make very sobering reading and that climate change is the greatest challenge we face.

He said that we need to plan how to cope and protect people. He considers that the meeting in Copenhagen in December is the most important one in humankind’s history.

That’s quite a statement and does show that some government ministers do fully understand the situation. The problem is that the years are going by without the huge and far reaching measures being taken that would prevent warming going above the crucial 2C.

Most of Africa struggles to produce enough food, mainly through poor practices, poor government policies and a lack of money and education among farmers.

There are now many well meaning schemes to increase yields, but it will be a great shame if African farmers become dependent on fossil fuel inputs for better yield, only to find that in the future they cannot afford to buy them.

In the June issue of National Geographic magazine, there is a report that tells of two different approaches to increase yields in Malawi. The first is a government scheme where about 1.3 million farm families received coupons that allowed them to buy three kilograms of hybrid corn seed and two 50- kilogram bags of fertilizer at a third of the market price.

This has had excellent results with the 2007 harvest being a national record. But is it sustainable?

In northern Malawi, a different project is getting the same results at a fraction of the cost. In Ekwendeni Hospital, the staff were seeing high rates of malnutrition which research suggested was due to corn monoculture that had depleted soils and was giving poor yields.

The SFHC project now distributes legume seeds, recipes, and technical advice for growing nutritious crops like peanuts, pigeon beans, and soybeans, which enrich the soil by fixing nitrogen while also enriching children’s diets.

This is surely the sort of project that will give lasting results and will not make Africa’s small farmers as dangerously dependent on finite resources that are bound to become scarce and expensive, as the rest of us. I think that the education part is very important, not only to show farmers how to manage these crops, but also how to use them well in a balanced diet.

It is my opinion that the use of legume crops will need to increase in places like Europe too as we build a farming system that produces more vegetable protein with lower inputs. As we cannot grow soybeans in northern Europe, we really need a breeding programme to improve field bean and pea varieties.

Future generations will surely look back in astonishment and horror when they consider what our generation did for them.

They will see how we burned the once and for all endowment of fossil fuels with no thought for efficiency and conservation, leaving them short of oil for essential needs.

That excessive use, along with rain forest destruction will have changed the climate so much that extreme weather and rising sea levels will have caused food production to be far below that needed to feed the 8 billion or more after 2025.

Our massive consumption of goods and energy will mean that many resources, even uranium, will be scarce and expensive. Water for irrigation and human needs will be short as we have depleted the ancient aquifers as if there were no tomorrow.

Previous generations who started the destruction, could claim that they did not understand the consequences of their action. We know all too well, but prefer to continue, because we do not want to give up our any of fossil fuel enabled prosperity.

But now, especially in countries like the U.S., the U.K., and Ireland, we are leaving them massive debt, running in to many thousands of pounds for every man, woman and child, making life even more difficult.

What a legacy.

Peak Food is pleased to report that Britain’s food security is being more widely questioned. Recently Dr. Rob McCall, who is the Climate Change Officer for the Countryside Council for Wales, gave a talk at entitled ‘Can Britian Feed Itself?’

Excellent work, Dr. McCall! I wish I had been there to hear your conclusion.

The recent documentary on BBC2 by Rebecca Hoskins was very informative about the way farming and food is dependent on finite fossil fuel. The interview with Richard Heinberg was excellent as he was able to explain how perilous the situation is and how urgent is the need for sustainable solutions.

Rebecca’s conclusion that we would have to eat less meat would be hard to argue against, but the other ideas of year round grazing and permaculture do not seem to me to be the way to feed 6.7 billion mainly city dwellers when oil becomes scarce.

Instead we need a system where we can efficiently utilise both the seed and the straw in cereal and oilseed crops in a way that does not damage the soil, so that agriculture can produce enough food but also enough biofuel for it’s own energy needs.

We believe that harvesting the whole, ripe crop unseparated and then processing it at a bio refinery may be part of the solution.