August 31st, 2007 by John
Wheat and other grain prices keep rising and are now well over double the price of a year ago, reflecting the very tight supply situation. We at Peak Food have been saying for some time that we are facing a food crisis, but still hope that this is just a blip and not the start of the real thing.
Of course, farmers needed a rise on the £60-£70 per tonne they have been getting for the last few years but the recent jump will mean real hardship for some. In the West with our processed, packaged food, the grain element is usually a small proportion of the retail price and the price increases should cause no real problems, but spare a thought for the hundreds of millions of people in the world who live on a few dollars per day and buy basic food. They will find that the cost has nearly doubled and that may mean the difference between struggling by or not. If the world is short of grain, demand will have to fall to the level of supply and this will happen by the poorest eating less.
On our site, we have listed the many threats to food supplies. Of those, the ones causing the present problems are:
- Climate change
- competition from biofuel production, and
- millions of people in Asia moving up the food chain.
Posted in News | 1 Comment »
August 15th, 2007 by John
As Pakistan celebrates its independence anniversary, we need to consider how its future could have a big effect on the West’s future oil supplies and therefore our ability to produce food.
President Musharraf has been in the difficult position of having to take action against Islamic militants without losing popular support. The storming of the Red Mosque has lost him many supporters.
Radical Islamists are working for an Islamic state covering the Middle East and beyond that would confront and try to destroy the Infidels. If they can get control of Pakistan with its atomic weapons, they could cause chaos in the Middle East and disrupt oil supplies to the Infidels, causing collapse of food production.
Posted in News | No Comments »
The above heading has been seen many times over the last 60 years, but it as never been more true then it is today, nor has middle east instability ever been so dangerous to the rest of the world. We have allowed our entire way of life including our food production to become reliant on finite oil and natural gas and because these fuels have been so cheap, we have not developed technologies to use them sparingly, nor have we properly researched and developed efficient methods of collecting the abundant energy of the sun.
As a result, consumption in the west is so massive that we have squandered a large part of our own reserves and increasingly need more from unreliable countries such as Russia, Nigeria and Venezuela and the dangerously unstable region of the middle east. The middle east contains about 60% of the worlds remaining conventional oil and it’s supplies are absolutely vital for the continuation of our civilization and for life itself.
For that reason, the west has tried to stabilize the middle east by helping friendly governments, however dictatorial they have been, and in some cases sought regime change if it was thought to be needed.
In the case of Iraq, disposing of Saddam Hussain was fairly easy but it has not led to stability. The sunni’s and shi’ites are killing each other and only the presence of U.S. Troops is preventing for now, a full scale civil war that could spread to the entire region. It now looks as if the U.S. will soon reduce troop numbers and will come under pressure to pull out all together.
That alone would be bad enough but there are many other problems looming. Extreme Islamists are working hard to bring about an Islamic state encompassing the entire middle east and beyond. One way to bring this about would be to gain control of a nation just outside the middle east, Pakistan. President Musharraf’s support of the war on terror has helped al-Qaeda and other extreme groups to become stronger. If an islamic government eventually takes power, as seems likely, Pakistan’s atomic weapons will make it impossible for the U.S. to police the region and keep the oil flowing. In addition, terrorists now see the destruction of oil facilities as the most effective way of damaging the hated west.
We really should be taking urgent measures to cut our consumption of oil and gas so that we can survive when the flow from the middle east stops.
