Showing posts from category food security.
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Meeting Half the World’s Fuel Demands Without Affecting Farmland Joan Melcher, ChinaDialogue
Biofuels: The Grassroots Solution
›May 24, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Joan Melcher, appeared on ChinaDialogue.
The cultivation of biofuels – fuels derived from animal or plant matter – on marginal lands could meet up to half of the world’s current fuel consumption needs without affecting food crops or pastureland, environmental engineering researchers from America’s University of Illinois have concluded following a three-year study. The findings, according to lead author Ximing Cai, have significant implications not only for the production of biofuels but also the environmental quality of degraded lands.The study, the final report of which was published in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology late last year, comes at a time of increasing global interest in biomass. The International Energy Agency predicts that biomass energy’s share of global energy supply will treble by 2050, to 30 percent. In March, the UK-based International Institute for Environment and Development called on national governments to take a “more sophisticated” approach to the energy source, putting it at the heart of energy strategies and ramping up investment in new technologies and research programs.
The University of Illinois project used cutting-edge land-use data collection methods to try to determine the potential for second-generation biofuels and perennial grasses, which do not compete with food crops and can be grown with less fertilizer and pesticide than conventional biofuels. They are considered to be an alternative to corn ethanol – a “first generation” biofuel – which has been criticized for the high amount of energy required to grow and harvest it, its intensive irrigation needs and the fact that corn used for biofuel now accounts for about 40 percent of the United States entire corn crop.
A critical concept of the study was that it only considered marginal land, defined as abandoned or degraded or of low quality for agricultural uses, Cai, who is civil and environmental engineering professor at the University of Illinois in the mid-western United States, told ChinaDialogue.
The team considered cultivation of three crops: switchgrass, miscanthus, and a class of perennial grasses referred to as low-impact high-diversity (LIHD).
Continue reading on ChinaDialogue.
Sources: Sources: International Energy Agency, Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, Reuters, University of Illinois.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “Biofuels,” courtesy jurvetson. -
The Walk to Water in Conflict-Affected Areas
›May 18, 2011 // By Wilson Center Staff
Constituting a majority of the world’s poor and at the same time bearing responsibility for half the world’s food production and most family health and nutrition needs, women and girls regularly bear the burden of procuring water for multiple household and agricultural uses. When water is not readily accessible, they become a highly vulnerable group. Where access to water is limited, the walk to water is too often accompanied by the threat of attack and violence.
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Watch: Edward Carr on Delivering Development and Rethinking Assumptions
›May 13, 2011 // By Schuyler NullWhile visiting West Africa first as an archaeologist, Edward Carr, an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina and author of Delivering Development: Globalization’s Shoreline and the Road to a Sustainable Future, found that the villages in which he was working were far more resilient to the impacts of climate change than he expected. Increased frequency of drought, declines in rainfall, severe storms – these challenges are the sort of thing that can “totally destroy someone’s livelihood in a year,” he said in an interview with ECSP, “yet they were surviving and surviving really, really well.”
That experience and others challenged his understanding of “how I thought the world was supposed to work, how I’d been taught the world was supposed to work, versus what I was actually seeing happen on the ground,” said Carr. “I became so struck by what people were dealing with in the current context that my interest started to shift much more towards what they were doing now.”
Now serving as a AAAS fellow and the climate change coordinator for the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance at the U.S. Agency for International Development, Carr said he is trying to change how the U.S. government does development.
“The last 13 years of my career have been trying to figure out what’s actually happening on the ground first,” Carr said, and that led to writing Delivering Development.
“One of the key arguments I have is that the world does not work the way we assume it does – we are fundamentally misunderstanding what’s happening for most people living out, especially in rural areas, in the developing world,” said Carr. “The challenges they face are significant but not necessarily the ones we’re aimed at.”
For example, said Carr, “we see rising food prices globally and…the presumption is that the poorest people in the world are going to get really hammered by this.” But, he said, “That’s not entirely true, because a lot of the poorest people in the world living in rural areas have an option to just disconnect from markets completely – they go total subsistence if they need to.”
There’s an assumption that people shouldn’t be disconnecting like that, but, Carr pointed out, when new places are integrated into larger markets, “we’re also integrating them into new sources of risk that they may not be very well equipped to manage, and that becomes a really significant challenge.”
“We’re starting with the fundamental assumption that markets can be a solution, without necessarily really looking carefully at how markets can be part of the problem,” said Carr. -
David Biello, Momentum Magazine
Coping with Change: Climate Adaptation Today
›May 2, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by David Biello, appeared in the University of Minnesota’s Momentum Magazine.
The view from space offers a clarity about our changing planet less visible from the ground: spring thaw coming sooner year after year, the iconic snows of Kilimanjaro and glaciers across the globe dwindling – and a great green wall of vegetation spreading across the region just south of Africa’s Sahara Desert.
This arid expanse, known as the Sahel, stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. It has undergone a remarkable transformation since farmers in nations across the region began to allow trees to grow amidst their crops.
In some places it was by accident, as seeds sprouted from manure spread as fertilizer in Niger. In others it was by design, such as the “green dam” against the desert started in Algeria in 1971. But the result has been the same: improved harvests of millet, sorghum, and other staple crops in a region gripped by perennial drought.
Such “agroforestry” boosts yields by returning vital nutrients to the soil in the form of decaying leaves, shading crops from the harshest sun, and recharging underground water reserves. The trees also provide an additional source of income: wood for fires and construction. And they have another even more important benefit: They may help some of the poorest farmers in the world adapt to climate change – while potentially removing as much as 50 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, according to agronomist Dennis Garrity, head of the Nairobi-based World Agroforestry Centre.
“The transformation of agriculture into agroforestry is well underway,” Garrity says. “Agricultural systems incorporating trees increase overall productivity and incomes in the face of more frequent droughts, and agroforestry systems provide much greater carbon offset opportunities than any other climate mitigation practice in agriculture.”
Climate change is already worse than anticipated by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Extreme precipitation events, such as last spring’s flooding in Nashville, Tenn., or last winter’s drought in China, have become more frequent. Sea ice extents have reached record lows in the Arctic. And 2010 marked the end of the hottest decade in recorded history.
Not only that, but the 0.7-degree-Celsius uptick in global average temperatures we’ve seen so far is only half the warming that can be expected from the concentrations of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, according to a 2010 report from the U.S. National Research Council. And as warming continues, according to the NRC report, the world can expect (among other things) a drop in the yield of cereal crops due to higher temperatures, an increase in heavy rainfall, and a rise in ocean levels.
In other words, whatever measures might be adopted to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, the world will still need to adapt to a changing climate. Indeed, that process has already begun.
Continue reading on the University of Minnesota’s Momentum Magazine site.
Photo Credit: Deep in the Sahel, the dwindling Lake Chad borders Niger, Chad, and Nigeria. Courtesy of flickr user NASA Goddard Photo and Video. -
Marissa Mommaerts, Aspen Institute
Aspen Institute: The Revolution We Need in Food Security and Population
›April 27, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe first months of this year brought the second global food price crisis in just three years, with soaring food prices against a backdrop of bad weather, poor harvests, and political turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East. This year will see another milestone: the planet’s population is set to surpass seven billion, with most of the population growth occurring in countries least equipped to meet rising demands on agriculture and the environment. As part of its 7 Billion: Conversations that Matter roundtable series, the Aspen Institute’s Global Health and Development Program brought together three experts to discuss “The Revolution We Need in Food Security and Population” on April 12.
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Biofuels: Food, Fuel, and Future?
›The Wilson Center’s Program on America and the Global Economy (PAGE) together with the Brazil Institute, have held a series of conferences focused on the field of biofuels and its impact both internationally and domestically. As part of the series, PAGE has published the results of a conference held last July on the current “state-of-play” for the biofuels industry in the United States.
In the brief, Biofuels: Food, Fuel, and Future?, C. Ford Runge and Robbin S. Johnson, of the University of Minnesota, and Calestous Juma, of Harvard University, provide context on the various federal mandates, subsidies, and policies that affect the U.S. biofuels market. They also present recommendations to improve what is now a not-so-new market, with the aim of reducing damaging effects on food prices and creating more international competition. The brief was edited by PAGE Director Kent H. Hughes and Elizabeth A. Byers.
Read more from PAGE on their blog, America and the Global Economy, and download the full brief and other PAGE publications from their website at the Wilson Center. -
Michael Kugelman, World Politics Review
The Gathering Global Food Storm
›March 28, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffThe original version of this article, by Michael Kugelman, appeared on World Politics Review.
In India’s vibrant capital, food seems to be everywhere – from bustling fruit and vegetable markets and greasy kebab stalls, to sumptuous platters in rooftop restaurants and dilli ki chaat, Delhi’s ubiquitous street snacks. Poor street vendors and high-end chefs alike offer a multitude of culinary options to keep the city – and its array of visiting tourists, diplomats and business leaders – well-fed.
Yet behind this apparent culinary prosperity lies rampant food insecurity. Food-related inflation in India soared above 18 percent in December, sparking street protests over high onion prices. Today, food-related inflation remains high, at nearly 12 percent. In a nation where at least 250 million subsist on less than a dollar a day, even modest price rises have a devastating impact on incomes and livelihoods. Yet, when food prices fall, India’s small farmers suffer. Already crippled by debt and encumbered by water shortages, 200,000 of them have committed suicide over the past 13 years.
India is not alone in this story. Just a few years removed from the 2007-2008 global food crisis, the world is once again experiencing the telltale drivers of acute food insecurity: rising prices of both food and oil, low agricultural yields, destructive weather and unquenchable demand. Once again, nations are banning exports in an effort to keep prices down at home – even as such policies drive up food costs in global markets. The consequences can be seen from Bolivia, where top government officials are hoarding food in their homes, to the Middle East, where the rising cost of basic foodstuffs has become a rallying cry for revolution.
Continue reading on World Politics Review.
Michael Kugelman is a program associate for the Asia Program at the Wilson Center and lead editor of Hunger Pains: Pakistan’s Food Insecurity and Land Grab? The Race for the World’s Farmland.
Sources: The Economist, India’s Contemporary Security Challenges, CNN, The Washington Post.
Photo Credit: Adapted from “India’s Food Crisis,” courtesy of flickr user lecercle. -
Shannon Beebe, Los Angeles Times
Somali Piracy Shows How an Environmental Issue Can Evolve Into a Security Crisis
›March 14, 2011 // By Wilson Center StaffIt has become apparent that real piracy is far different from the lighthearted subject sometimes portrayed in popular culture, and the problem is growing much worse. Besides the tragic cost in lives, the United States, many other nations, and NATO spent roughly $2 billion combined last year to safeguard the busy international sea lanes off the Horn of Africa from Somali pirates. According to the International Maritime Bureau, “hijackings off the coast of Somalia accounted for 92 percent of all ship seizures last year,” and the price tag does not include the costs of reallocating critical military resources.
