Resource Scarcity
From IssuesBriefs
Overview
Contributing to the problem of the global food shortage is the competition of the use of arable land for food crops with other products such as timber, biofuels and plastics production. In many situations, it is becoming more financially viable for farmers to choose products other than food for production resulting in a further shortage of food. Biofuels are an obvious candidate for this, where companies are endeavouring to reduce their use of non-renewable energies through investing in biofuels to create more sustainable fuels for the future. Paradoxically, this is creating incentives for farmers to move away from food production, resulting in less food on the market while increasing prices. Similarly, many carbon credit schemes are being met by the plantation of timber. Furthermore with the growing global population, increased utilisation of land for housing reduces land available for agriculture. The use of arable land for various other ventures, combine to perpetuate the issue of the global food shortage.
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Urbanisation
The current trend prevalent in many parts of the world is a population shift away from agricultural regions towards urban regions. This has been noted to be due to the wider range of opportunities in urban areas as well as more profitable and more constant work and income. These opportunities come in the form of better access to education, health and the wider range of employemnt available in cities. Similarly there is a cultural acceptance of the urban lifestyle dominant in many parts of the world. Furthermore the common understanding that countries move away from agriculture as they develop is leading to food shortages, as the people of the major growth economies of China and India move away from agriculture and simultaneously consume more due to their increased purchasing power. These changes are having large repercussions throughout the world with overall increased demand of food, including increased demand of more production intensive foods such as meat and pre-packaged foods coupled with restricted supply through the process of urbanisation reducing the number of those working in agriculture.
The urban culture is obvious in Australia where 87.0 percent of the national population living in urban areas and 63.3 percent in capital cities. This leaves only a small percentage of the population in agricultural areas, tightening the supply of food in the already overstretched market.
Biofuel production
This is a fashionable villain at the moment. It is pointed out in Tim Anderson's article 'Struggles for 'food security' '[1] that 230kg of corn which could feed a child for a year is being diverted to produce merely 50 litres of ethanol through biofuel production. This is creating financial incentives for farmers to divert production away from food, especially considering a large proportion of the hungry population of the world is poor and those demanding biofuels are more commonly from more affluent countries. The current inefficient nature of the biofuel production endeavour inspires a great deal of controversy however there are types of crops which could viably be used to produce biofuels in the near future, particularly with further research in the field. Cellulosic biofuel production is predicted by some to be able to use trees and shrubs, while algae in tanks might be used to produce a sort of bio-diesel, and the tanks could be placed in arid regions. The question of how appropriate and effective these endeavours will be remains, as well as the issue of diverting much needed resources away from food production.
Plantation Timbers
The issue here, as pointed out by Lawrence Solomon in his book "The Deniers" [2], is that many carbon credit schemes are being met by planting of timber, which potentially competes with food production, depending where the trees are being grown. This is similar to the issues arising from biofuel production by decreasing the amount of land available for food production as well as potentially creating financial incentives for farmers to move away from food production. The issues or arable land being used for ventures other than food production is often questionable, as the alternatives must be weighed up carefully so as to not use land ineffeciently.
Plastics Production
I read about research the other day [3] where researchers at the CSIRO are using oil from plants to make plastics, paints and cosmetics. This, along with biofuels, raises issues to do with peak oil. If we are running out of fossilised sources of hydrocarbons it impacts not just on fuel availability, but on the whole petrochemical industry. We already grow textiles - cotton, wool and hemp - and without synthetic textiles we'd have to grow a lot more.
Contributors
- Colin Chartres - Director General of the International Water Management Institute, based in Sri Lanka
- Fay Helwig - Primary producer in the Granite Belt
- David Kemp - Chair of Farming Systems at Charles Sturt University
- Polly Ericksen - Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford Environmental Change Institute
Articles
