Posted on 06/08/2008 5:19:22 PM PDT by DeaconBenjamin
Food riots. Scores of panicked people protesting, burning effigies and chanting. Shops being ransacked, supplies running out as soon as they come in, and stricken communities stockpiling rice, bread and water for fear of going without. These have happened in Haiti and Egypt in recent months as the price of scarce food has soared.
But what if they happened on the streets of Bromley? Or Newcastle? Or Bath? As bizarre as this might seem, the prospect of UK food shortages has started to be taken seriously by food manufacturers and retailers.
The global food shortage has raced to the top of the political agenda in recent weeks due to a nasty combination of increasing demand, falling supply and ever-costlier production and selling prices. At the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) conference last week, Jacques Diouf, the FAO's director-general, said that $30bn (£15.3bn) a year is needed to relaunch agriculture in the developing world and avert future threats of food conflicts.
Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, said world farm production will need to rise by 50 per cent by 2030 to meet growing demand. Last week Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, told the House of Commons that the UK needed to sign new trade agreements to "get food prices down". On Thursday he raised the topic of food with José Manuel Barroso, the European Union President, as a matter of priority.
There are four trends driving global food scarcity: global population growth (it is expected to grow from 6.7bn to 9bn by 2042), the increasing use of crops for fuel rather than food, the Westernisation of diets in the Far East, and a diminishing bank of farming land due to urbanisation and climate change. Market speculation is also mooted as a factor.
Brazil, Vietnam, India and Egypt have already imposed food export restrictions to protect the produce that they've got. And now big businesses in Europe are starting to stand up and take note.
Earlier this month UK supermarkets including Netto and WM Morrison were forced to ration sales of rice in response to supply problems and price rises.
In 10 days' time senior directors of Carrefour, Waitrose, Coca-Cola and Danone will talk at the World Food Business Summit in Munich, organised by the CIES, a trade body that represents 400 food retailers and manufacturers in 150 countries. The conference will address the "complex new realities" facing food retailers and producers.
The following week the Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum will hold a seminar in London on food prices and the supply chain. It will focus on "evaluating prices and relationships in today's global food market" and seeing whether rising commodity prices are "cause for concern". Speakers include executives from Tesco and public affairs officers from the World Food Programme.
So how concerned should the Government, food producers and retailers be that the kinds of shortages seen in the developing world will spread to the UK?
What could UK retailers and producers do to deal with these shortages? And how much of what is said over the coming months will merely be global retail execs yearning to be recast as poverty-fighting crusaders when in fact they remain profit-focused business-people with shareholders to please?
Douglas Alexander, the International Development Secretary, believes there is a serious problem that needs addressing. "If you look at the rise in commodity and food prices it is clear there is need for global action. There have been political protests, riots, continued protests," he told The Sunday Telegraph.
Alexander envisages short, medium and long-term solutions to the food shortage, including aid, a "fundamental reform" of the international agriculture market, and a huge uplift in global agricultural productivity.
Alexander says that UK supermarket chains must play a large role in encouraging food production in as-yet untapped areas as a means of increasing global output.
His Department for International Development (DFID) recently launched two initiatives to encourage UK supermarkets to do this: the Food Retail Industry Challenge Fund has been set up to encourage UK retailers to buy goods from Africa, and the Procurement for Development Forum was formed in March to encourage supermarket buyers to help producers in developing countries and question the effects of "just-in-time" procurement, their current way of operating.
Such initiatives are designed to broaden the global supply base and could play a key role in averting crisis. However, some UK retailers view the situation differently.
To many of them, the danger lies in the fact that the UK imports almost half the food it consumes (some 46 per cent is bought in from abroad). This means we are not self-sufficient, so would not be able to fend for ourselves if global supplies tightened further.
Mark Price is the managing director of Waitrose, the John Lewis Partnership-owned retailer. He is concerned.
"We have had a short-term blip in food prices. That is likely to sort itself out. But we have a massive medium-term problem in food supply. The population of China is set to rocket and beef consumption in the country has doubled over the last 10 years. While global food yields have doubled in the last 25 years they have levelled off in the last few years. What do I think the responsible approach is? We've got to think more about becoming self-sufficient as a nation," he says.
Growing volumes of cheap imports into the UK over the past four decades have had a negative effect on the UK farming industry. Thousands of farms have closed. When the Labour Party came to power in 1997 agriculture accounted for 1.3 per cent of the UK's economic output. This figure is now less than 1 per cent.
One UK farmer, who supplies one of the country's biggest food retailers but declined to be named, says UK retailers and shoppers need to understand the importance of food security and supply. He says the writing has been on the wall for some time. "Demand is growing, globalisation of distribution is growing and the butter mountains are disappearing, so there is very little slack in the system," says this farmer.
"We have had good growth and the world economy is not going to grow at the same pace over the next 10 years. There will be a rebalance of fundamentals and security of supply will be an issue. Everyone mentions it with energy but not food. If everything shut down, could you feed the nation?" he asks.
And this leads to one of the knottiest issues facing retailers. Cheap food - which makes for happy customers - has been the key battleground of UK supermarkets for the past two decades.
Prices on the shelves have been driven down by imports but this has arguably come at the expense of quality and security of supply. Although UK food prices are rising sharply, they are still low by historic standards. UK families only spend 9 per cent of their disposable income on food, down from 24 per cent in 1963.
Last week Asda, the UK arm of Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, started selling sausages for 2p each. Critics argue that such price promotions are only possible because of cheap imports, which do nothing to help the UK food industry and merely feed Britain's addiction to low prices.
Alexander appears less than impressed by Asda's latest publicity stunt. "Ultimately pricing strategies for supermarkets rest with individual retailers. It is not for governments to dictate strategies. But we'd obviously want British retailers to act in a responsible fashion," he says.
Waitrose's Price says unless Britain becomes better able to feed itself, we are "potentially going to be held to ransom in the food stakes in the way we are now with fuel".
Becoming self-sufficient will undoubtedly involve discussions about controversial issues that the UK food sector has nervously danced around in recent years, notably genetically modified crops. One quarter of the world's farming land - involving 8m farmers - is used for GM food and the UK's refusal to involve itself in this process will almost certainly have to be re-examined, something that will upset the environmental lobby.
Lucy Neville-Rolfe, Tesco's company secretary and director of corporate affairs, says that the global food situation will be helped by the supply chain becoming more productive.
"The Government can help by making sure they don't add cost to the system. They can also encourage productivity improvements in agriculture and the food chain," she says. But she casts doubt on the idea the UK is on the verge of a food disaster.
One observer argues that supermarkets will have to play a larger role in sorting out the issues of global supply than the Government, as retailers are faced with fewer conflicts of interest and competing demands from rival regimes.
"It will be retailers and suppliers who solve this problem, not governments. Global retailers such as Auchan, Wal-Mart and Tesco will have a huge role to play in this," says the food industry insider. Tesco is already working closely with suppliers.
Anyone who doubts that panic buying is in the British psyche need only think back to last July when floods engulfed the west of England. More than 350,000 homes were left without running water after a treatment works near Tewkesbury was waterlogged. Police were called to supermarkets - and shop assistants were in tears - as shoppers emptied the stores of supplies and crowds surged around delivery lorries.
If the global food shortage continues, such sights could become commonplace in the UK.
CALL TO CUT THE PANIC
Executives and food suppliers at Britain’s top supermarkets believe consumers panicking about food inflation should take a look abroad or talk to their parents about the world that was, writes Jonathan Sibun
They say that while the effects of rising food prices in parts of the developing world are terrifyingly real, the biggest threat to UK consumers is a growing hysteria.
Industry insiders insist that, driven down by supermarkets over the last half a century, food prices remain at historic lows despite spiking sharply over the last 12 months.
Industry analyst Euromonitor points out that in 1963 consumers in the UK spent nearly a quarter of their disposable incomes on food; today they spend closer to 9 per cent.
In fact, as a proportion of disposable income, food spending in the UK has remained below 10 per cent since 1997. The situation in the UK is also markedly better than in any of its western European neighbours.
In France, Italy and Spain about 13 per cent of disposable income is spent on food, while in Germany and the Netherlands it is closer to 10 per cent.
“You will see food prices rise between 5 per cent and 10 per cent this year but the issue is not that it is expensive,” says a food boss.
“The issue is that it has gone up year on year.”
That is quite different to fuel which is at historic highs.
Some analysts are even predicting that oil could hit $150 (£76) a barrel as soon as July. Retail executives say that the official food inflation data is out of kilter with their understanding.
Justin King, chief executive of J Sainsbury’s, last month put it at 2 per cent against an official reading of 6.6 per cent
I’m growing my own. And just in case this crap happens here, I am armed to the teeth.
The Liberals see their cherished man-made global warming hoax coming apart. Global food shortage is just the next piece of sky that these Chicken Littles want to stir up the masses with.
There is no global food shortage other than those that are orchestrated to advance global socialism.
Maybe the Irish can teach the Brits how to grow potatoes.
Yep us too. I am planning to can as many tomatoes as I can. We can live on homemade pasta and tomatoes for a very long time and by varying the spices can make a vast array of different sauces. I have around 30# combined of several different flours in the freezer but it’s mostly Semolina. If I were braver I’d try dehydrating eggs but think I’ll just take my chances with being able to afford eggs. DFIL has chickens so might get lucky there.
Global food supply is a growing problem....
thank albore!!!!
Home gardens are a growing solution.
I put in a 10,000 (yeah 100ftx100ft)vegetable garden this year, in addition to the chickens, rabbits, and the steer we are raising. Goats for milk. We’re OK.
The intellectual wizards down at Newsweak have already come up with the solution to this problem. EAT BUGS!!!
Better get one of these, just don`t tell algore I said so:
Johnson CO2 Generator
Fertilizes greenhouse air - easy and inexpensive to install
http://www.johnsongas.com/industrial/CO2Gen.asp
..
I’m a big advocate of creating enormous aquafarms.
Pontoons with descending nets, away from the coasts so they don’t create a pollution problem. Hatchery fish are raised in the net, with aeration and water cleaning done by the current.
They gain slightly more weight than the fish food they are fed.
20 or 30 square miles of such aquafarms could provide the vast majority of the fish consumed by a nation like Japan. And because there are no practical limits to the size or number of such farms, fish could become the dominant protein source in much of the world.
It would also take much of the pressure off of many endangered fish species. On top of that, “charity” fish breeding can be done to rapidly restore wild populations.
Seems like once socialist leftists take over they need to import food while they blame whites.. Europeans ... Capitalists...
Seems like Capitalist Free Enterprise Nations are the only ones that grow their own and can export.
Any pattern here?
Oh! that’s great!
and to add to your intelligent post I would like to add....
Gee, thanks all you environmental, tree hugging freaks..Once again, your emotionalism has hurt people immensley...ala Rachel Carson and her Stupid Spring!
“Improve plant quality - Increase production” !!!
Get your CO2 generator before they are illegal :-)
There will only be significant food shortages it the socialist start tinkering with the markets.
This is awesome...LMAO!
It’s obvious that we need a food tax to discourage eating. /s
food supply is a problem because we keep burning it to make ethanol!!!!
The lefty nutbags don’t want us to burn any fossil fuel for fear of destroying the planet. But they are happy to burn up the food to destroy the lives of the third world.
Hey, at least we are clear on their priorities.
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