Creeping Climate Food Shortages as Countries Limit Exports
Yes we have no bananas. Or onions. Or Olive Oil, or rice. If we had ham we could have ham and eggs. If we had eggs.
Climate driven food shortages don’t mean suddenly there’s no food on the shelves. It’s just an incremental price creep that, ,at first, only the poor will notice…. And El Nino has not really hit yet..
How do you cook a meal when a staple ingredient is unaffordable?
This question is playing out in households around the world as they face shortages of essential foods like rice, cooking oil and onions. That is because countries have imposed restrictions on the food they export to protect their own supplies from the combined effect of the war in Ukraine, El Nino’s threat to food production and increasing damage from climate change.
For Caroline Kyalo, a 28-year-old who works in a salon in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, it was a question of trying to figure out how to cook for her two children without onions. Restrictions on the export of the vegetable by neighboring Tanzania has led prices to triple.
Kyalo initially tried to use spring onions instead, but those also got too expensive. As did the prices of other necessities, like cooking oil and corn flour.
“I just decided to be cooking once a day,” she said.
Despite the East African country’s fertile lands and large workforce, the high cost of growing and transporting produce and the worst drought in decades led to a drop in local production. Plus, people preferred red onions from Tanzania because they were cheaper and lasted longer. By 2014, Kenya was getting half of its onions from its neighbor, according to a U.N. Food Agriculture Organization report.
At Nairobi’s major food market, Wakulima, the prices for onions from Tanzania were the highest in seven years, seller Timothy Kinyua said.
Prices for rice grown in Kenya soared a while ago because of higher fertilizer prices and a yearslong drought in the Horn of Africa that has reduced production. Cheap rice imported from India had filled the gap, feeding many of the hundreds of thousands of residents in Nairobi’s Kibera slum who survive on less than $2 a day.
But that is changing. The price of a 25-kilogram (55-pound) bag of rice has risen by about a fifth since June, going from the equivalent of about $14 to $18. Wholesalers are yet to receive new stocks since India, the world’s largest exporter of rice by far, said last month that it would ban some rice shipments.
It’s an effort by the world’s most populous nation to control domestic prices ahead of a key election year — but it’s left a yawning gap of around 9.5 million metric tons (10.4 tons) of rice that people around the world need, roughly a fifth of global exports.
“I’m really hoping the imports keep coming,” said Ndege, 51, who’s sold rice for 30 years.
He isn’t the only one. Global food security is already under threat since Russia halted an agreement allowing Ukraine to export wheat and the El Nino weather phenomenon hampers rice production. Now, rice prices are soaring — Vietnam’s rice export prices, for instance, have reached a 15-year high — putting the most vulnerable people in some of the poorest nations at risk.
The world is at an “inflection point,” said Beau Damen, a natural resources officer with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization based in Bangkok.
Even before India’s restrictions, countries already were frantically buying rice in anticipation of scarcity later when the El Nino hit, creating a supply crunch and spiking prices.
What could make the situation worse is if India’s ban on non-basmati rice creates a domino effect, with other countries following suit. Already, the United Arab Emirates has suspended rice exports to maintain its domestic stocks. Another threat is if extreme weather damages rice crops in other countries.
An El Nino is a natural, temporary and occasional warming of part of the Pacific Ocean that shifts global weather patterns, and climate change is making them stronger. Scientists expect the one underway to expand to supersized levels, and, in the past, they have resulted in extreme weather ranging from drought to flooding.
The impact would be felt worldwide. Rice consumption in Africa has been growing steadily, and most countries are heavily dependent on imports. While nations with growing populations like Senegal have been trying to grow more of their own rice — many are struggling.
Amadou Khan, a 52-year-old unemployed father of five in Dakar, says his children eat rice with every meal except breakfast, which they often have to skip when he’s out of work.
“I am just getting by — sometimes, I’ve trouble taking care of my kids,” he said.
The full extent of the damage won’t be known until after harvest time in October and November, but European olive oil production could sink by 700,000 metric tons — a fall of more than 30% — compared to the five-year average, Holland said.
Bulk prices for olive oil have doubled compared to the same time last year and all indications point to a shortfall in the next harvest, Zanre said.
“There doesn’t seem to be any respite on the horizon,” he said, adding “the industry is in crisis.”
The International Olive Council stopped short of calling the situation a crisis, but a spokesperson said “we are facing a complex situation as a consequence of climate change.” Globally, olive oil production is predicted to drop 20% between October 2022 and September 2023, the spokesperson told CNN.
Historically, keen observers of human affairs have made note of the implications of food shortages.
This saying is difficult to trace because it can be expressed in many ways. Here is an overview showing selected examples with dates and ascriptions:
1896: The only barrier between us and anarchy is the last nine meals we’ve had. (Alfred Henry Lewis) 1906: There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy. (Alfred Henry Lewis) 1911: Only nine meals stood between civilization and anarchy. (Anonymous) 1916: Only about seven meals stand between a man and anarchy. (Anonymous) 1932: We are never more than nine meals away from anarchy. (John J. Fitzgerald) 1942: There are only nine meals between man and revolution. (Anonymous) 1946: No one is more than nine meals away from murder. (Theo. G. Lurman Jr.) 1947: Every man is only nine meals away from Communism. (Leland L. Sage) 1974: No man was ever more than about nine meals away from crime or suicide. (Eric Sevareid) 1977: No country is more than three meals away from a revolution. (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) 1980: You’re only nine meals away from being a criminal. (Anonymous prison inmate) 1980: Each of us is only nine meals away from stealing. (Robert L. Eddy)
2 thoughts on “Creeping Climate Food Shortages as Countries Limit Exports”
Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz may have been responsible for promoting some non-sustainable practices, but he was a real fiend for pushing for oversupply of food as a form of national security.
It’s such a tragedy that sub-Saharan Africa is beset by so many sociopolitical problems, because it has on the whole neglected education and promotion of good farm and soil management practice. It’s been aggravated by the fact that in the past US “foreign aid” is often in the form of massive grain transfers (negotiated by the farm lobby) that undercut local farmers’ prices.
Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz may have been responsible for promoting some non-sustainable practices, but he was a real fiend for pushing for oversupply of food as a form of national security.
It’s such a tragedy that sub-Saharan Africa is beset by so many sociopolitical problems, because it has on the whole neglected education and promotion of good farm and soil management practice. It’s been aggravated by the fact that in the past US “foreign aid” is often in the form of massive grain transfers (negotiated by the farm lobby) that undercut local farmers’ prices.
Time for even the smallest countries to throw at least a billion dollars at making cultured meat and precision fermentation a going concern.