With drought parching farms in the US and near the Black Sea, weak monsoon rains in India and insidious hunger in Africa’s Sahel region, the world could be headed toward another food crisis.
Asia should keep a catastrophe at bay with a strong rice harvest, while the G20 group of industrialized and emerging economies tries to parry the main threat, soaring food prices.
“We have had quite a few climate events this year that will lead to very poor harvests, notably in the United States, with corn, or in Russia, with soya,” Philippe Pinta of the French farmers’ federation FNSEA said.
Photo: Reuters
“That will create price pressures similar to what we saw in 2007-2008,” he added in reference to the last global food alert, when wheat and rice prices nearly doubled.
In India, “all eyes will be on food inflation — whether the impact of a weak monsoon feeds into food prices,” Samiran Chakraborty, regional head of research at Standard Chartered Bank was quoted by Dow Jones Newswires as saying.
Monsoon rains were 15.2 percent below average in the middle of the month, according to latest data from India weather bureau, and Asian rice prices are forecast to rise by as much as 10 percent in the coming months as supplies tighten.
India and Thailand are two of Asia’s leading rice exporters.
Indian Food Minister Kuruppasserry Varkey Thomas told parliament this month that prevailing conditions “could affect the crop prospects and may have an impact on prices of essential commodities.”
However, despite that warning, the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) expects rice output to slightly surpass “excellent results” recorded last year, though it cut its global forecast for production of unmilled rice to about 725 million tonnes from its previous figure of 732 million tonnes.
The world is feeling the onset of the El Nino weather phenomenon, which has a natural warming effect, is active in the western Pacific and is expected to last until winter in the northern hemisphere, according to Japanese meteorologists.
The US farm belt has been ravaged by the most stifling drought since the 1950s, and the country’s contiguous 48 states have just sweltered through the hottest July on record.
Corn production is probably at the lowest level in six years, the US Department of Agriculture said, and curtailed production will likely send corn and soybean prices to record highs, it added.
“Cereal prices have shot up, with an increase in [corn] prices of almost 40 percent since June 1,” strategists at the CM-CIC brokerage said.
Commerzbank commodity experts said high temperatures and drought around the Black Sea “have resulted in wheat crop shortfalls on a scale that cannot yet be predicted with any accuracy.”
AgResource Co president Dan Basse told the Australian Broadcasting Corp last week that the Australian harvest could play a role in easing the food shortage.
“We need every metric tonne of wheat and grain the Australian farmers can produce,” Basse said. “Anything that the Australian farmer can do to assure or boost his production should be profitable in the year ahead.”
Jean-Rene Buisson, head of French national association of food industries ANIA said: “All products based on cereals, including meat, will be affected by price increases, not necessarily by September, but definitely during 2013.”
In China, food prices are considered politically sensitive and account for up to a third of a consumer’s average monthly budget, government statistics show.
However, China has reined in inflation as its economy slows, while its grain output stood at 1.3 trillion tonnes in the first half of the year, up 2.8 percent from the same period a year earlier.
The Financial Times said concerns over the US harvest had prompted senior G20 and UN officials to consider an emergency meeting on food supply, with a conference call on the issue scheduled for Aug. 27.
The newspaper cited officials as saying the talks were not a sign of panic, but rather reflected the need to establish a consensus to avoid a repeat of the riots and tensions sparked in 2007-2008 by spiking food prices.
Major concerns include hoarding or export restrictions by food producing countries, along with panic buying by others.
Also crucial is the balance between the use of grain as a direct source of food and its role as animal feed or as a basis for motor fuels.
FAO director-general Jose Graziano da Silva of Brazil called in the Financial Times for the US to suspend biofuel production programs to ease the pressure on food resources.
“An immediate, temporary suspension” of a mandate to reserve some crops for biofuels “would give some respite to the market and allow more of the [corn] crop to be channeled toward food and feed uses,” he wrote.
A region where food is in chronic shortage is the Sahel region of Africa, where the number of malnourished children is estimated to have hit a new high of 1.5 million as cholera and locusts emerge as new threats, UNICEF has said.
The relief agency World Vision Australia said 18 million people need food assistance in Niger, Mali, Chad, Mauritania and Senegal.
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number
Australian police yesterday said a 40-year-old itinerant with mental illness was behind a Sydney shopping center stabbing rampage that killed six people, including a new mum whose nine-month-old baby is still in hospital with serious wounds. New South Wales Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cooke said the assailant — who was shot and killed by a senior police officer at the scene on Saturday — was Queensland man Joel Cauchi. Five women and one male security guard were killed in the attack as Cauchi roved through a packed shopping center in the city’s Bondi Junction neighborhood with a large knife. Twelve more people