About Water and Food

    Read the following two short essays. Then ask yourself two questions.

1. What impact does this reality have on the Cultural Ecosystem of our planet’s human population?
2. What should we do?

Water
     According to the United Nations, the quality of our global fresh water is declining. A serious gap is beginning to appear between the water demands of a growing population and available supplies.  The two regions that are already experiencing the most serious absolute and seasonal water shortages are – unfortunately – two of the geographic areas where population is growing much too fast.

• The population of Africa (excluding North Africa) is growing at an average of 2.2 percent per year. A University of Cape Town study predicted decreased rainfall will lead to reduced river flow and lower lake levels. Serious water shortages will occur before 2100. That means trouble for a growing population.

• In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), population growth currently exceeds 3 percent per year.  Home to approximately 6.4 percent of the world’s population, MENA has less than 1.5 percent of the world’s fresh water. More cultural trouble.

     Population Action International (PAI) makes projections of national per capita water availability, and forecasts water shortages by 2025. By then, more than 2.8 billion people will live in 48 countries facing water stress or water scarcity. Of these countries, 40 are in the Near East, North Africa or sub-Saharan Africa.
    
     Problems of water quality and availability are evident all over our planet. About 70 percent of our planet’s fresh water supplies are used for irrigation. Depletion means less food. Over 20 cities in India are currently experiencing chronic water shortages and water quality is a national problem. China, which has 22% of the world's population but only 7% of all freshwater, is drawing down on its available water resources faster than they can be re-supplied by nature. Ground water depletion is a problem in Europe and the United States where over-use and contamination has reduced the geographic area of arable land, and threatens the quality of drinking water supplies. Both the South Eastern and South Western states of America are experiencing sporadic drought conditions. We are using the water from our aquifers faster than they are being re-supplied by rainfall. A large area from Iran to Kazakhstan, the North Eastern portions of South America, and the entire continent of Australia (despite excessive regional rainfall in 2010) are vulnerable to severe drought.
    
     If the IPCC is right, we will be challenged by worldwide water problems. By mid-century, annual average river runoff and water availability are projected to increase by 10-40% at high latitudes and in some wet tropical areas, and to decrease by 10-30% over some dry regions at mid-latitudes and in the dry tropics. Some of these areas are already stressed for lack of water. Up to 40 percent of the world’s population relies on snow melt for fresh water and agricultural irrigation. The availability and reliability of these snow falls is questionable. There will be increased algal blooms in both fresh water and sea water resources. Look for a continuing contamination of our water supplies from the use of chemicals, poor control of human waste, and the salinization of irrigation water, estuaries and freshwater systems. Higher sea levels will lead to salt water intrusion that decreases our fresh water resources and reduces the essential elements of our sea life food chain. The existing competition for over-allocated water resources will intensify and lead to regional conflict.
    
     Should we add water resource depletion to our list of challenges that promise to pressure our cultural and economic future?  How will desertification and rising levels of salt compounds affect our production of food?  What is the potential threat from waste and chemical contaminants to our drinking water supplies?
    
     Chronic shortages of fresh water increase the risk of disease, reduce food production, stifle economic development, and create the basis for ugly regional conflict.


Food
     Future food production will be constrained by global climate change, as well as the loss of arable land, declining water quality, and fossil fuel resource depletion.
    
     One of the most immediate results is an increase in malnutrition and hunger. Famines occurred throughout the 20th century: The Allied blockade of Germany from 1915 – 1918; Armenia 1915 – 1917; The Soviet Famine of 1932 – 1934; Poland 1940 – 1942; Leningrad 1941 to 1944; India 1943 – 1944; China 1928, 1942, 1958 - 1962; Biafra in the late 1960s; Cambodia in the 1970s; and more recently the famines in North Korea, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and parts of Latin America. Pockets of starvation and malnutrition happened all over the globe. Two thirds of the nations in Africa face chronic malnutrition (less than 2300 calories per day), and at least 40 percent will experience increasing shortages of food. (UNDP).

     We can blame these problems on crop failure, drought, and pestilence. But many were either created or exacerbated by man. Hatred, war, genocide, lousy economic policy. Hunger has been politicized and globalized. Famine is invariably attended by disease, malnutrition, poverty, inflated food prices, declining education, disrupted medical systems, social disintegration, and – bloody senseless conflict. Most of the dead are little children and old people. More men than women. Millions suffer from severe malnutrition – the bride of crippling disease. And things are getting worse. We humans are destroying our arable land. By the end of the 2oth century, the basic infrastructure of food production was breaking down in many parts of the world. In Brazil, for example, the replacement of small farms with vast seas of industrialized sugarcane monoculture has led to a decrease in biodiversity, the conversion of more forests to farmland, increased food prices, and rising social problems from vandalism, unemployment, political unrest and violence. Food production has declined at many subsistence farms in Africa, Asia, Mexico, and elsewhere. Although the demand for corn promises to increase the income of poor farmers in Mexico, they will have to chose between planting crops for food to feed their family, or crops for fuel that bring in cash.
    
     A study of third world cultural economics suggests millions of Third world farmers face increased deprivation. If impoverished farmers are forced to raise fuel crops because they increase the wealth of those in power, the farmers will starve because they did not grow enough food. Sadly. The prerequisite pattern of oppression has already been established in Third World countries. Farmers are finding they can not afford the cost of inorganic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides which are manufactured from increasingly expensive oil and natural gas. So they plant the land without them until it is exhausted.   Useless.
    
     From the 1960s through 2007, food production actually increased faster than population. Optimists believe this increase can go on forever. What they forget, however, is that past rates of food production (the Green Revolution) have been achieved by applying ever larger increments of fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides and irrigation to impoverished farm land. Year after year. But chemical soil amendments are made from fossil fuel resources – natural gas, oil, and coal. As the availability and cost of these resources became more restrictive, agricultural use declined. Oil depletion will also increase the cost of food production, processing, and distribution because gasoline and diesel fuel are made from increasingly expensive oil. And finally, thanks to thoughtless agricultural land destruction and global warming, over a billion people will be living in areas where there is a critical insufficiency of cultivated land by 2040. (IPCC)
    
     “Just when we need more soil to feed the 10 billion people of the future, we’ll actually have less—only a quarter of an acre of cropland per person in 2050, versus the half-acre we use today on the most efficient farms.” David Montgomery, author of the 2007 book  Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations
    
     These facts must lead us to the conclusion that food will become less available and more expensive as we move though the 21st century. Increased yields in higher latitudes will be offset by decreased yields in warmer regions because of drought. Increased temperatures have already encouraged expanded migration and rising numbers of plant pests. Look for increased plant disease, and the loss of arable land from soil erosion, salinization, and desertification. And finally, as frequently reported in the media, most of the world’s fisheries are already either fully exploited or are in decline.
    
      Global fossil fuel resource depletion, climate change, urbanization, desertification, and limits to irrigation place an upside limit on food production, creating lifestyle challenges for people in every nation. 
    
The Answers
     And so. What are the answers to the two questions posed at the beginning of this essay?

1. What impact does this reality have on the Cultural Ecosystem of our planet’s human population? Will we humans consume our planet’s resources until they are either (for all practical purposes) depleted, unusable, or unaffordable? As accessible resources decline, so will our human population.
2. What should we do? We could try population management. Reducing our human population would create a more sustainable EchoSystem. But we all know that will not happen.  

So this is our fate. Archeologists tell us there have been many civilizations that have flourished and then disappeared. It is a natural process.    
    
      TCE
    
     Definition: “Accessible” resources are those reserves of minerals, water and land that can actually be found, produced, transported, refined, distributed and used without material disruption at a price the consumer can afford to pay.
     UNDP  United Nations Development Program