"I love that you've brought this to attention. An extensive database of uncommon but resistant and hardy plants/foods could be developed and organized by climate. Ease of growth and processing should also be taken in to account. I will try to…"
A crash course in changing the world.
Episode 2 MISSION: Food Security
Have questions? Need help? Ideas to share? Looking for
collaborators? Discuss the Food Security mission here.
collaborators? Discuss the Food Security mission here.
Views: 389
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Samuel Freilich on
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If you think that serious disruptions of the global financial and energy and food systems are inconceivable, than it's reasonable to assume that Tokyo won't starve, since the city is fairly wealthy. However, I can certainly imagine scenarios where food imports become much more expensive: Widespread famines, widespread fuel shortages, hyper-inflationary crises, world war. In those scenarios, some countries are likely to restrict exports, with a resulting spike in export prices. Depending on how extreme the disruption is, some urban areas might experience "hard" food shortages (i.e. not enough food at any price) or food prices high enough to make even wealthy areas like Tokyo difficult to live in. (It's worth noting that rich nations have implemented food rationing before, the obvious example being basically everybody during World War II. A large percentage of produce consumed in the US during that time was produced very locally.)
On the other hand, local food supplies are vulnerable to local crises, so the optimal solution is to have a both a robust local system (or systems), enough to provide for self-sustainability in a pinch but specialized enough to allow for trade. I mean, at one point Japan was agriculturally self-sufficient, and that didn't require growing anything as ill suited to local conditions as the "wheat in Saudi Arabia" example above. You can produce enough variety for a balanced diet while still focusing on what the local environment produces the best.
(Though I agree that the story seems to present an isolated food shortage in Japan that's not in the midst of a global crisis. That's just not plausible.)
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Permalink Reply by Ari Tatian on
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Food security issues threaten communities that not only suffer from shortage in water and fertile lands, but also communities that enjoy the said natural endowments, but yet they fail to invest properly in the said resources. Thus, adopting appropriate policies and strategies are quite important in maintaining and consolidating food security trends, especially in developing countries.
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Permalink Reply by Rex Brynen on
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Samuel Freilich said:
(Though I agree that the story seems to present an isolated food shortage in Japan that's not in the midst of a global crisis. That's just not plausible.)
Exactly the point. Effective food security policies, like any other effective social intervention or innovation, requires a nuanced understanding of what is happening and why. Failed development efforts are often a function of having not asked the right questions, or having applied an identical but contextually inappropriate "cookie-cutter" approaches to very different problems.
The Food Security storyline in Evoke could have highlighted this, and indeed contributed to players/users/readers honing precisely those skills. In my view it didn't--and indeed did a disservice to the very real and pressing issues concerned.
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Ari Tatian said:Food security issues threaten communities that not only suffer from shortage in water and fertile lands, but also communities that enjoy the said natural endowments, but yet they fail to invest properly in the said resources. Thus, adopting appropriate policies and strategies are quite important in maintaining and consolidating food security trends, especially in developing countries.
Yes, good point, Ari!
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Permalink Reply by gmoke on
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Back in the 1970s when I first visited Japan, small vegetable even in the cities were evident. I especially like d the small eggplants.
In Africa, keyh*** gardens over the past few years have made a significant dent in food insecurity in many countries. George Orwell and Mohandas K Gandhi both advised the use of local food production during hard economic times, in their case the depression of the 1930s. There are some reports that one of the reasons China has not seen the expected level of unrest due to the economic troubles recently is that factory workers could go back to their small farms and grow food.
Whether these kinds of things could alleviate a food shortage in a short period of time is highly debatable. Even growing radishes requires about a month to produce a crop. Sprouts, now, is a crop of nutritional value that can be produced within a few days but I don't think people will be amenable to such a diet.
Cities will grow a larger proportion of their own food shortly. Burlington, VT is one model which has been working on urban agriculture for many years now and, I believe, produces about 10% of what it consumes. Detroit, MI is planning to institute larger scale urban agriculture by leveling derelict housing. This is an example of what some people are calling smart decline.
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gmoke said:
Your post reminded me of this photo I took during my Japan trip, in Choushi, a few hours from Tokyo.Back in the 1970s when I first visited Japan, small vegetable even in the cities were evident. I especially liked the small eggplants.
Japanese land use in greater urban areas, even deep into suburbia, seems a lot more high-utilization than in the US. Instead of empty yards between stores, space is often filled in with small gardens or agricultural fields. In Choushi, every spare bit of land seems to be filled with the local crop of choice, cabbages.
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Rex Brynen said:Ari Tatian said:Food security issues threaten communities that not only suffer from shortage in water and fertile lands, but also communities that enjoy the said natural endowments, but yet they fail to invest properly in the said resources. Thus, adopting appropriate policies and strategies are quite important in maintaining and consolidating food security trends, especially in developing countries.
Yes, good point, Ari!
And yet, while policies and strategies are important, it is often hard to implement them, partly because it depends a lot on the people who coordinate the implementation. Maybe young motivated local people like Sithembile from Zimbabwe (who has been portrayed in the cover-story of this Evoke mission) can play an important role because they know the local problems and history, particularly if, as in the case of Sithembile, also know the bigger, global picture.
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Permalink Reply by Wanga Mbasa on
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Im thinking of making every realise that food security means a persons being enable to sustain their own food supply the only way for this for us to realise that too much money is wasted on makinf artificial food and packaging it instead of all that money being used to growin our own food. WHO WANTS TO JOIN ME in makinf the world realise his?
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I'm not convinced that it is necessarily a problem that food is packaged and distributed on large scale. You get economies of scale. Producing food only locally doesn't seem to be the answer, according to several postings here. In fact, I'd be very very glad if in Mozambique there would be a more efficient food industry, because we are suffering here with limited access to good food.
Wanga Mbasa said:Im thinking of making every realise that food security means a persons being enable to sustain their own food supply the only way for this for us to realise that too much money is wasted on makinf artificial food and packaging it instead of all that money being used to growin our own food. WHO WANTS TO JOIN ME in makinf the world realise his?
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Permalink Reply by Rob Black on
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That's the best thing about this wh*** Evoke idea - that it puts all of us into a forum to discuss this.
@Rex Brynen (I write this to everyone, but in response to Rex as well) – While I see the logic in that countries should do what they do best, and exploit their comparative advantage (presumably based on their respective factor endowments), I feel the essential problem here is that we are thinking short term, rather than long term. The idea of highlighting a food crisis in Tokyo is more to show that the problem may one day end up on our (the developed worlds) door step. We need to start thinking about not just cutting back, and being more efficient, but on a greater scale it’s almost to the point that we need a wh*** rethink of how we do things. Trade is great, but shipping lacoste shirts from Poland to China, just to sew on a button more “cheaply”, then to have it shipped France, so that the label can be sewn on, raising the “value” of the shirt to sell on the world market and generate trade, is really not sustainable? Food is no different. While we are not there yet, like anything else, the ball must start rolling before it can gain momentum. It spells out like this: we're willing to save in pennies for a fresh tomato, at the expense of that which is lost though inefficient use of resources (fuel) and the resulting negative externalities that go with it (climate change), which in the Long Run will add up to a far higher loss to our economies, than that with which we gain in the short run on those canned mandarins from China. I feel the concept here though is that it's not sustainable. In today's age, "sustainable development" is almost becoming over used and misleading, like "Globalization." And while, as you suggest, it is cheaper to produce what we are good at, I feel there's growing concern that to ship food half way around the world, rather than produce it locally, is just generally not going to last. It’s fine to look at economies of scale, and point to south America and Asia as great locations to produce things cheaply (based on their relaxed safety, environmental, and wage regulations – the point being that there’s almost a billion people in North America and Europe who are just as capable of doing any job as in the countries often stated as having an “abundance of labour”, so it’s not necessarily the amount of labour which dictates why prices are cheaper) but this only acts as an insight into the short run. Look at any graph linking climate change to development (in any context) and I think you’d be hard pressed to not find a positive correlation. We need to rethink things, and not be so focused on saving pennies and getting rich. The tipping point is fast approaching, and so long as we are so narrowly minded in our thinking, there’s little hope that we’ll save it all before it goes kaput. (I encourage you to look into the concept/theory of +2 degrees as a tipping point wherein things are almost irreversible) – It will act as a good base to understand why basic economics and a focus on the short run can only help us so far, and why we need to think further ahead to a time when even Tokyo is unable to meet its needs. It’s worth noting that Japan’s debt to GDP ratio is... amazing. Call it foreshadowing perhaps, but I would say this Evoke mission is not so crazy to point the finger at Tokyo and say “How are YOU going to deal with this problem?” Given that Japan grows most of its rice (if not all of it) within its own borders, this will be a huge asset if/when it’s economy shrinks, and there is no foreign exchange to buy food from outside. This is critical in understanding why Tokyo is a good example.
My last and final thing to say is that there’s plenty of evidence that points to smallholder farms being more efficient than large state farms. Economics will tell you this can’t be – but quite often it seems to me, especially neoclassicals, don’t pull their heads out of the books long enough to understand the real world and how it applies to their models. Take wet rice agriculture for example. A household who has a direct interest in seeing their rice grow to the best it can grow - both to feed their family, to save for a rainy day (or season), but also to generate a surplus from which they can sell or exchange for other market goods that they require – puts in more time and effort, taking the consideration to ensure everything is done right. This is in contrast to the way many large farms are run, given that employees see no direct benefit to working “hard.” Furthermore, families have the “advantage” – often at the expense of things such as schooling, which should be addressed – to bring in additional labour through labour-share agreements or family members during times of higher labour requirements. They can weed better, pre-grow seedlings, ect ect, to ensure a more productive crop. This is not possible on such large scales, because the labour costs alone would make that farm’s rice uncompetitive in the world market. The key to growing our own food, is that it’s on our own time, or at least little keystone gardens would be. Given how much time we waste sitting on facebook, watching TV, or watching the Habs play hockey (zing!!!), surely we can afford to put a little time into some gardening on a local level – which is also proven to help reduce stress, something we can all use a little less of! Positive externalities!!
I lied. One more thing: Brazil grows something like 50% of its ethanol fuel needs on 1% of its agricultural land. It’s unrealistic to point to ethanol and blame it for higher food prices. Given the amount of marginal land we have in the world, there is high potential to utilize it for this, WITHOUT impacting regular food production. We just need to make smarter choices.
So in the end I would say “Effective policy responses, and effective social innovation, requires a nuanced understanding on problems and their social context” is true, and you wont get that understanding from an economics textbook. We need to plant more efficient varieties of crops, utilize land more efficiently, and spend a little time ensuring what we eat is sustainable in every respect, before we drive things beyond the point of no return. A focus on efficiency ignores the inefficiency of money.
Rex Brynen said:It might be an interesting storyline, but does this really cast any light on how issues of food security emerge and are dealt with in the real world? Not at all. In fact, Episode 1 and 2 are very misleading in this respect.
Why does Tokyo have a food shortage? The story seems to imply that food needs to be produced locally, and that indeed societies need to be self-sufficient to be food secure. In an era of global trade, however, they don't--indeed, the basic principles of international trade suggests that countries ought to focus on the production of products where they have a degree of comparative advantage, and then sell those items to acquire items that they can't produce as efficiently. (There are a lot of qualifiers here, but they're unnecessary for now.) Why produce expensive wheat (like Saudi Arabia does, using desalinated seawater at 17x the world price) when you can buy it far more cheaply from Canada, the US, Argentina, Australia (etc)? Why grow tomatoes in (cold) Montreal, when we can import them more cheaply from (warm) Mexico? And so forth.
In other words, why can't Tokyo buy the food it needs? Why isn't imported food cheaper than the (presumably very expensive) alternative of growing food on rooftops, where the small size of individual plots would mean that one would lose the economies of scale associated with larger areas? Only in a comic book would this be an appropriate response to potential famine.
Food insecurity around the world sometimes arises from local shortage (and high prices), but it also arises from distributional issues, income inequality, increases in global prices (due, for example, to ethanol production), changes in the prices of inputs, politics, taxation policies, war and the use of food/famine as a weapon of war, blockades, environmental change. Western trade protectionism in the agricultural sector is also a key problem for many commodities. It is fascinating--but complex--stuff, and developing appropriate responses involves understanding all of those interrelated, multidimensional social, economic, political environmental factors.
Effective policy responses, and effective social innovation, requires a nuanced understanding on problems and their social context.
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I don't doubt that Evoke generates some very interesting discussion on these issues. My original point, however, is that it doesn't make a lot of sense to do so on the back of a poorly thought-out and rather illogical storyline (at least, the Tokyo famine one was) that does more to sustain food insecurity myths than to enlighten the debate... especially when it is just as easy to develop a storyline that addresses these issues more realistically.
As for the trade issue, I'm hardly suggesting globalization as a solution to food security ills, and I'm aware of the environmental externalities. That being said, its important for such decisions to be data based. Lamb produced in NZ and shipped to the UK, for example, is not only cheaper, but has a much smaller carbon footprint than lamb produced locally, because of very different animal husbandry and local climatic conditions in the two countries. Similarly, locally produced tomatoes in the UK have 4x the carbon footprint compared to those imported from unheated greenhouses in Spain. living in Canada, the vast majority of long season/warm climate agricultural produce produced locally has higher environmental costs than that imported from the US or Mexico.
In the case of Africa--the target of the EVOKE project--one simply can't make knee-jerk decisions about the supposed universal merits of small-holder agriculture versus export crops, or local supply versus focusing on poverty alleviation and household purchasing power, because it varies from context to context.
Finally, there is a little irony that discussions of food insecurity here have devoted so much attention to issues of food miles/carbon footprint/environmental externalities/etc... which in much of the developing world is seen as yet another form of Western trade protectionism. (I'm not picking side in the debate, just highlighting the irony!)
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Permalink Reply by Eileen Hurley on
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Anyone have suggestions for groups working on food security in China?
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