water tables tumbling

Danger looming as water tables tumble

Source: Copyright 2006, Kenya Times
Date: January 24, 2006
Byline: Aniphera Nassur

FALLING water tables, rising temperatures, soil erosion and desertification are likely to drive up food prices world wide in the coming decades.

“A doubling of world grain prices could disrupt global economic progress and this in turn could be the world’s wake up call,” says the Earth Policy Institute.

This, being a distinct possibility, would destabilise governments in a number of low income countries that import a substantial amount of grain. According to Lester Brown, president Earth Policy Institute, it is estimated that the world grain stocks level are now at the lowest level in 30 years due to four harvest shortfalls that dropped the world carry over stock.

The 105 million tonne grain shortfall in 2003 is the largest on record, amounting to 5 percent of annual world consumption of 1,930 million tonnes.

Brown further says that the last time grain stocks were this low was in 1972-74, where world wheat and rice prices doubled.

In the Ugandan market, the price of maize grains has jumped to more than 200 percent in the past two weeks following entrance of other traders into the market to meet demands in the drought- stricken Kenya and Tanzania.

In addition to the usual uncertainties farmers face, they must now contend with two new negative trends namely falling water tables and rising temperature.

Falling water tables mean shrinking harvest where water shortages equal food shortages. In many parts of the world experiencing falling water tables, the demand for irrigation has also tripled thus leading to the over pumping of aquifers.

According to the Earth Policy Institute, loss of momentum in raising land productivity is due not only to the shrinking backlog of technology but also to the loss of irrigation water.

A country like Singapore, which has to buy water from Malaysia with its advanced technology, is beginning to recycle its urban water supply in order to save on consumption. Half of the world’s population are now estimated to be living in countries where water tables are falling and wells running dry. These countries included are China, India and the United States. The three being big grain producers together account for nearly half of the world’s grain harvest. A new research by crop ecologists at the international Rice Research Institute in the Philippines and the United States Department of Agriculture indicates that for each one degree Celsius rise in temperature during the growing season, we can expect a 10 percent decline in yields of wheat, rice and corn.

In 2002, intense heat and drought reduced the grain harvest in India and the US where rice is water dependent. The International Panel on Climate Change is projecting that average temperatures will rise somewhere between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius.

The panel further has it that this change is more likely to make it difficult for farmers to keep up with the demand as they will have a difficult task feeding 74,000,000 people being added to the world population each year.

From the year 1950-1990, the world’s grain farmers raised productivity of their land by an unprecedented 2.1 percent a year, slightly faster than the 1.9 annual growth of the world population during the same period.

However, from 1990 to 2000, this dropped to 1.2 percent annually scarcely half as fast. Between 1950 and 1998, China increased its grain production from 90,000,000 tonnes to 392,000,000 tonnes.

However, since 1998, its grain production drastically dropped to a disturbing 322,000,000 tonnes attributed to spreading water shortages, conversion of crop land to non farm use and the country’s increased interest in other technological activities like automobile production. Since then, China has been covering the country’s decline in grain production largely by drawing down its once massive stocks of grain despite them being largely depleted.

In early 2003, wheat buying delegates from China to Australia, the US and Canada have bought 9,000,000 tonnes of wheat. China alone imports between 30-50 million tonnes of grain, making it the world’s largest wheat importer with the US controlling close to half of the world’s grain exports.

This is despite the United States having for a long time consumed the lion’s share of the world’s resources. The situation has also been changing fast as the Chinese economy surges ahead overtaking the United States in the consumption of one resource after another. “The environmental trends undermining our future can no longer be neglected since there is no economic indicator that is more politically sensitive than food prices”, asserts UNEP.


Originally posted at: http://www.timesnews.co.ke/25jan06/nwsstory/opinion.html