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Page added on March 12, 2012
The hunger games governments play
MOST experts agree that the world’s population will level out at around nine billion by 2050. It is also accepted that over three-quarters of the population will be concentrated in urban areas and that current economic growth trends will deliver higher real incomes for many, leading to a change in diets with increased demand for animal products.
Whether the world is capable of feeding that many people, not just for survival but to meet their food preferences, is a question that occupies many minds. It was also the topic of one of the sessions at ABARES’ Outlook conference in Canberra last week.
Among the seminar speakers was Dr Mark Rosegrant of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRA), who listed the key drivers of food demand and supply. What the list showed was how important government policies will be in determining the number of people still at risk of hunger in 2050 and the quality of the diet of billions of others.
Indeed, while technology will play a part and innovation is clearly essential, models of future food supply developed by the IFPRA clearly show that the main drivers of future food availability and prices are in the hands of governments. How well the world eats in 2050 is up to them.
Some examples illustrate the point. On the demand side, governments will determine how much, and for how long, agricultural production is diverted into biofuels and other forms of bioenergy. From Europe to the US, Brazil and Australia, it is only government subsidies and rules mandating use of biofuels that keep them in business. If the government were to abandon these, a lot more production would be committed to food.
The same applies to greenhouse gas mitigation and carbon sequestration policies. Plenty of governments, including Australia’s, encourage the planting of trees as carbon sinks, the retention of certain types of vegetation, and modifications to the diets or other husbandry of livestock, all of which have an impact on food production.
This also applies to conservation and biodiversity. We all know about Europe, where farmers are paid to leave certain areas unfarmed in order to preserve conservation values or promote biodiversity. For similar reasons, and also to gain control over water rights, the Australian government has spent tens of millions acquiring huge farms which are taken out of production.
In fact, government policies governing water and land availability are a critical determinant of food security. While there is obviously no more land being created, there is plenty of land on which food could be produced but is kept out of production due to government policies. The same is true of water – maintaining environmental flows and keeping the mouth of the Murray open, for example, will be at the expense of water that could be used for food production further up the river.
Another big influence on food availability and prices is the cost of energy, which is subject to almost universal government intervention. The IFPRA has modelled the impact of a 50 per cent real increase in energy prices by 2050, not at all unrealistic, and showed it would lead to a significant rise in the price of cereals and meat and expose many more to the risk of hunger.
Even when there is an energy market based on supply and demand, it operates in a context determined by policies such as taxation (including Australia’s carbon tax), renewable energy, attitudes to coal, oil and gas extraction, limits or prohibitions on nuclear energy, and environmental regulation. In a free market the most efficient low-cost suppliers of energy would out-compete the others, but this is impossible in energy. Food producers around the world are compelled to rely on inefficient sources of energy and to pay higher prices for energy intensive inputs such as fertilisers.
Policies towards agricultural research and development also play a part, although probably not as much as government-funded researchers would like us to believe. The main source of productivity-enhancing innovation over the last several decades has actually been the private sector. But the private sector will obviously sit back if the government makes it unattractive or invests in the same field itself. If productivity is to increase enough to avoid the expansion of food production into areas that are not currently cultivated, innovation is absolutely vital.
Equally, government policies towards the adoption of new scientific knowledge are also crucial. The US government’s now abandoned policy of limiting the accuracy of civilian GPS services, for example, played a role in restricting its application in precision agriculture. Numerous countries, Australia included, have either prohibited or severely restricted the adoption of genetically modified crops, which are almost invariably more productive than their conventional alternatives.
About 900 million people in the world are currently at risk of hunger. A couple of billion who would have been at risk two or three decades ago can now afford to eat more of what they like, mainly beef, chicken, pork and dairy foods, because their governments abandoned central planning of their economies and allowed markets to operate more freely.
But agriculture remains a highly regulated industry with enormous government intervention. There is a long way to go before it can operate freely to meet the world’s food needs. As one of a small number of countries with the capacity to significantly contribute to meeting those needs, Australia has a vital interest in the decisions made by politicians and policy makers everywhere.
10 Comments on "The hunger games governments play"
BillT on Mon, 12th Mar 2012 1:34 am
Eliminate meat from diets would automatically increase food availability to billions. Make beef illegal. In SeaQuest, a TV series not long ago, beef was illegal. All protein came from soy or other vegetable sources. And there were limits to fuels used personally. Oxygen generation was aided by huge technical complexes because so much vegetation had been cleared. Maybe they should bring it back for a few seasons to educate Americans on what can happen in the world of tomorrow.
Anvil on Mon, 12th Mar 2012 2:51 am
Humans have evolved as omnivores over millions of years. It is a crime against nature to live off veges. I have seem much of the the poor health of vegetarians in my short time on this earth.
In fact it is a crime against nature that human pop has climbed so far above its natural levels.
The only benefit of being a vegetarians is a moral high ground.
I will not give up my health to extend the unnatural cycle of human growth.
Nobody else should be neither.
BillT on Mon, 12th Mar 2012 4:28 am
Anvil, eventually, most meats will be too expensive to eat other than on a special occasion and eventually not at all. There is other protein that requires a more varied diet to be complete, but it is possible. Maybe man is an omnivore, but, I think circumstances will change that soon. Not only the water, but the grain used for beef will get too expensive to feed a steer for a few years. Pigs will be available longer because they covert calories to meat more efficiently, and maybe goats because they don’t need grains to grow, and they give milk. Chickens will probably be the last meat source available eventually and they will be expensive. If you think gas prices are going up, wait until you start to see meat prices climb.
lisa on Mon, 12th Mar 2012 6:34 am
Anvil, go to youtube and look at some of the clips presented if you search for “Factory farm”. Then come back and we can discuss crime against nature.
And incidentally, humans are NOT omnivores. I dare any human to go out and kill an animal with bare hands, chew trhough it without tools and without preparing it. Omnivores and carnivores can do that.We can’t. We have learned to eat meat but that’s a totally different story.
And as for “over millions of years”… The Paleolithic era (believed to be when tools were first used) was some 2.5 million years ago and controlled use of fire not until 400 000 years ago (debated admittedly).
DC on Mon, 12th Mar 2012 6:46 am
Population will level off @ 9billion…experts say? Really? Based on what? Wishful thinking? Hope, dreams, pulled the idea out their backsides? The only thing that will level off human pop. is going to be wars, famine,lack of fuel,lack of room to expand, which will lead to ….wars!, diesease, or some combination of all the above. As things stand, we will go to ANY lengths, not to just to keep the already bloated population mostly fed, were always makeing plans for the next billion…or two…or three. As long as its possible for us to keep people fed, even if poorly, well do it. Well turn the entire plaent into giant farm to feed on endlessly expanding stomach. Well only stop when its physically impossible to do so any longer. The rest of this BS piece is cheerleading for corporate welfare capitalism. Note the free-enterprise good, central planning=fail haha. But what this authors sponsers are really after, is more industrial psuedo-food production to raise the populuation even more, so that guess who! Giant corporations will have even more customers(with no alternatives of course).
Nice…
Anvil on Mon, 12th Mar 2012 7:07 am
I have worked on factory farms before there is nothing inhumane about them. Except the one that are poorly managed.
This vegetarian scam is reverse evolution bring man back to the stone age before meat allowed them to grow there brain function and evolve tools.
I am i say being a vegetarian not only impacts health but also impairs higher mental function. Yes yes i am.
BillT on Mon, 12th Mar 2012 9:51 am
Anvil, get an education or open your mind to reality. Man was a hunter gatherer, yes, but they gathered more than they hunted. And then they took up farming, growing the foods they needed instead of picking them wild. Does that sound like they needed a lot of meat? Nope! Grains made all of us possible, not meat. If we ate only meat, there would be about 6+ billion less of us on the planet and today, we would be starving in a day if we only ate the meat available. Most of the world lives without meat, especially beef. Factory farms are killing us with their drug fed animals.
MrBill on Mon, 12th Mar 2012 4:40 pm
DC makes a good point. I keep reading that population growth is expected to level out around the year 2050. What is this based on? Does anyone know? If it is resource limitation it may happen a lot sooner.
Kenz300 on Mon, 12th Mar 2012 6:01 pm
Every problem is made harder to solve with the ever growing world population. The world added a billion people in the last 12 years. Where will all the food, water, oil, fish and jobs come from to support this massive population growth?
lisa on Mon, 12th Mar 2012 6:23 pm
Not so difficult to do the math on that; all who live in complex societies have to use less resources to get the necessities.
That would also be a good response to the pollution predicament we are in, which incidentally have reduced the availability of (clean) water and food (incl. fish).