invisible crisis

Just before the housing bubble burst, things looked really good. Excitement was in the air. Credit was easy to come by and housing tracts appeared out of nowhere as so many mushrooms before dawn. There were new houses everywhere you looked, and more were being built all the time. Furthermore the houses changed hands in the blink of an eye. Everyone was getting richer and richer all the time.

Very few people had an inkling that anything was wrong or could go wrong. The prevailing mantra was housing will always go up. It has always gone up and it will always go up. Never mind that the population is aging, never mind that many people already owned two and three houses. Housing always goes up. There is no such thing as a national housing market, all housing is local, and local looked good. And then the bombshell hit.

Currently, there is a food crisis. It is hardly visible from where we are and as one San Diego reader to another blog remarked: supermarket shelves are full and people are obese. What food crisis? But the food crisis is as real as the housing crisis. It just hasn't hit the US yet. Being one of the richest countries in the world has its advantages you could say. But it will hit and it will hit hard. First the farmers will benefit some more, and then everyone will be in dire straits. Everyone except the well to do. Unless of course things really go out of hand. You never know.

One thing about bubbles and catastrophes of this kind is that things always look the best right before the implosion. Witness all the overweight people. Witness all the wasted food everywhere. Nevertheless, we are about to experience a major food implosion. Many countries have already seen riots and more riots are sure to come. Better get ready for the storm. Food prices are rising at astronomical rates, and they are rising to levels that will hurt middle class consumers. But it won't stop there. There will be shortages too. It won't be pretty. And there won't be any quick solutions. So much for biofuels you might say.

let's not forget about india

With all the talk about China we sometimes forget that India too is growing at breakneck speed. And while that means good news for the world economy in the short term, it is bad news in the long run. Because, like China, India has a huge population. India is the "other" nation with a population in excess of 1 billion people. And that means that any minor change in the standard of living translates to huge amounts of extra consumption and waste. Keep in mind that standard of living primarily measures consumption.

Take the Indian car market for example. It is growing so fast, Western and Asian car makers are drooling like mad. Renault's chief executive was quoted as saying" "It offers significant potential for profit growth." That is an understatement to say the least. The Indian car market doubled since 2000 and it is set to double again in another 8 years. Today 7 out of every 1,000 Indians have a car. By 2010, the projected number is 11 in 1,000. And what is most frightening is that this explosive growth is nowhere near saturation. We are a long way from one car per person, as is common in the West.

More cars leads to more driving and more driving means more greenhouse gases. India is one of the nations rejecting pressure to cut greenhouse gases. Already in 2001, India ranked 5th in the world in terms of carbon emissions at 251 million metric tons of carbon. The number is expected to triple by 2020. India accounts for only 5% of the current global carbon emissions but its contribution to the emissions growth will be very significant. As a developing nation, India did not sign the Kyoto protocol.

More cars require more roads. And roads are being constructed at a rate of 14 km per day (almost 10 miles a day), double the rate of 2005. More roads not only destroy valuable forests and agricultural land, they also enable people to live bigger. More roads translates into more sprawl. And that means less land for food production. And for India that could translate into big time trouble.

India is a major food producer at nearly 3% of the world production. Slightly more than half the land is arable and there are considerable water resources. Many areas support year round irrigation and can produce two or three harvests a year. But India is one of the countries that is most severely threatened by climate change. A greater frequency of droughts and floods would have a devastating impact on India's agriculture. Experts have warned that the country is ill-prepared for such events. Effects of global warming will affect India more than China or the US. Any additional stresses from construction will only make matters worse.

India is risky for other reasons. It has a highly diverse population with large groups vying for power. Civil war is never far from the surface and when stresses mount, violence is common. Much of it is embedded in the country's religions, that are often at odds with one another. The crumbling caste system, India's public secret, is also adding significant tension and periodic uprisings by the untouchables or dalits are symptoms of larger ills. Additionally, India has a rocky relationship with its neighbor Pakistan, another nuclear power.

Like China, a furiously growing India could become a major world problem in the near future.

join the locavores

A new movement took shape in San Francisco a few years ago. Concerned about food miles, a group labeling themselves "culinary adventurers" started making an effort to eat only foods grown or harvested within a 100 mile radius from the City. This at a time when the average food item in the US travels 1,200 miles before consumption. Cutting out 1,100 miles can have a significant impact on greenhouse gases. Because it isn't just the distance that matters. All during transit, many food items are refrigerated or even frozen, and all that adds a considerable burden to the environment.

Not all that long ago, 100 miles was a serious distance to go gather food. These days, the reverse is true. Some would call that progress. If it is, we will have to go back and regress, because it is not sustainable. This type of progress takes too much energy. Putting in 10 calories of fuel for every calorie you harvest may work when the planet has only a billion or so people. But it won't work once there are 10 billion.

These days an idea like eating locally grown food is so revolutionary that the locavores only attempted to sustain it for an entire month. Similar movements were started in the UK, Canada, and Western Europe. The San Francisco group began in summer, an auspicious idea. They were so successful that they extended their initial endeavor into September. Now they have been going strong for nearly three years. And a new word is in the dictionary: the locavore.

Eating "local" food is rather easy in California, as the state is a key food producer and one that produces a very large variety of items. Much of it is grown within the 100 mile radius too. The agricultural lands of the Central Valley are quite near and Sacramento is only about 85 miles away. Eating local during or close to the harvest season also made things a lot easier. But it is always good to start easy.

The real challenge comes in winter of course, when appealing fruits and vegetables from the Southern Hemisphere are splashed all over supermarket shelves. Yet that is the time when things really matter. No fresh food travels longer than fruit and vegetables from Chili in winter. And cherries from Chili for Christmas have become a great hit in the UK according to the BBC.

Eating local foods only is a great way to make a difference and reshape our economy into a more sustainable pattern. Sure, it takes some sacrifices and sometimes you have to forgo some instant gratification, but in the long run, it is healthier and better too. Locally grown food that is in season just tastes better than those watered down cherries and peaches from Chili.

Here is a great New Year's resolution. Try to eat local food only for an entire month. You will have to change your diet and it will take some effort and maybe even some hassle. Winter is a tough time in many parts of the country. But that is what New Years Resolutions are all about. Try something that is challenging. If you live up North, take a look at the Scottish local food recipes on the BBC website.

But there are rewards. You will rediscover food if you do. If you eat peaches year round, they don't taste special anymore. You forget about the taste and just gobble them up. This is not just fiction. There is a marked decay in taste in food. Consumers shop with their eyes and supermarkets know it. They push appearance and size of fruits over taste. And consumers go along. Fruits that used to have intense tastes and smells are now pushed out by oversized balls bloated with water. But with perfect skin.

Eating such food makes you fat. If you wait however, you will forgo immediate gratification. But the reward will be worth it. Nothing tastes better than fruits in season. And if you have to wait a long time for it, it will taste even better.

false modesty

There are those who believe we are too puny to matter on this planet. They are usually the ones who only display this type of modesty when it comes to arguments about pollution or global warming. When it comes to showing of their cars, boats, mansions, and other toys, they are not nearly so modest. In essence what they want is to be left alone in their mecca of over-consumption. 

Consider this. The US has 442 million acres of cropland according to the USDA. Of that, about 77% or 340 million acres is used for crops. That works out to about 1.13 acres per person. Using traditional farming methods, it is estimated that 1.2 acres is needed to feed a person for one year. This is a rough estimate of course and depends on location, climate, whether the person is a vegetarian or a meat eater, and what you define as "traditional farming." Modern farming does a lot better, unless you figure in all the hidden costs.

Those costs include depleting aquifers, fertilizer and pesticide runoffs, petroleum products used, gas, etc. Some have estimated we put in about 10 calories for every calorie of food we grow. But apart from water it seems we can at least keep doing this for a while longer.

Crop yields have jumped dramatically since the so-called green revolution of the 50's. Estimates are that yields jumped by an order of magnitude after world war II due to the increased use of fertilizer, pesticides, and irrigation. That, by the way was what people meant when they said the "green revolution." It turned the country green.

In 2002, an irrigated acre of land yielded 4,260 pounds (1,932 kgs) of wheat on average. Barley yields are comparable, while oats yield half as much and corn about twice as much. A rough estimate says that one acre of wheat could feed 4-5 adults for a year if they were lean vegetarians. If they were lean meat eaters only about 1 person per year could be supported for every acre.

Not surprisingly, the US is the world's biggest food exporter. According to some estimates the income derived from food exports is close to $40 billion per year. However, if the population keeps growing at present levels, the US will cease to be a food exporter by 2025 or there about. All the land will be needed to feed the people living here. By 2050, food shortages will start affecting the population at large.

The point is not to paint a doomsday scenario. Clearly there are many ways to avoid disaster. And quite frankly it won't affect everyone. Already more than 10% of the US population or 35 million do not have "food safety" (i.e. they go hungry), and we are still exporting food to other countries. Call it the free market.

The point is that we are incredibly close to disaster. And given the enormous lag times in the system, we could cross a boundary and not notice it until it is too late. So much for modesty and laissez faire.