Climate Change leading towards Social Crisis

Climate change is fuelling food shortages capable of reeking serious social crisis across the globe, according to the head of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (UN FAO).

Over the last year we have seen the consequences of chronic food shortages and its impact on social control as was demonstrated in the food riots that broke out in Mexico, India, Bukina Faso and West Bengal among others.

In Russia, the threat of the government being forced from office has lead to the freezing of food prices while other governments like that in revolutionary Venezuela have been able to control prices in their state owned discount supermarkets despite shortages of beef, chicken and milk.

In Argentina and Italy the rise in basic food costs has lead to boycotts against national favorites like tomatoes and pasta respectively.

The UN have placed the blame for the food shortages on a combination of world oil prices, U.S farmers move towards growing crops for biofuel, extreme weather patterns caused by climate change as well as the increased demand being created by the growing economies of India and China.

Ali Gurkan, head of the UN FAO, told the Guardian that cereal crops had been declining for a decade but now stood at levels vulnerable to an international crisis or natural disaster that may occur.

Lester Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute Thinktank explained that the battle for grain was becoming increasingly a battle between those that want to use it to use it to create ethanol for cars and those in the third world that simply wanted to eat it to stay alive.

With oil prices pushing ninety dollars a barrel US President Bush’s pledge, for a steep rise in ethanol production, this has inflated the price of maize crop and taken precious land away from food production.

With maize being a staple food in many countries and 70% of the world’s maize coming from the USA this has meant catastrophe could be right around the corner.

Cuban President Fidel Castro has been critical of biofuel technology and the United States’ attempts to push it on the third world describing it in April 3 edition of the state owned Granma newspaper as “the internationalization of genocide”.

As Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has also become critical of biofuels explained during President Bush’s South American tour earlier this year, “When you fill a vehicle’s tank with ethanol, you are filling it with energy for which land and water enough to feed seven people have been used”.

As Josette Sheeran, director of the WFP, explained to the Guardian, “There are 854 million hungry people in the world and 4 million more join their ranks every year. We are facing the tightest food supplies in recent history. For the worlds most vulnerable, food is simply being priced out of their reach”.