(First of two parts)

By Felicito C. Payumo May 20, 2008 Management Association of the Philippines I was abroad when I saw a news feed on CNN reporting that the Philippine’s tender to import rice drew only one bidder. On the same screen a live telecast of the storm in Myanmar was showing unprecedented damage with the death toll surpassing 28,000 (latest count was 132,000!). Any devastation always makes news. But for a story on a rice tender to make it on CNN was unusual. Until it dawned on me that that was CNN’s subtle but loud statement on the food crisis in Asia- that it will get worse before it gets better! Is this being alarmist? Not if you read Norman E. Borlaug, an agricultural scientist and Nobel Peace Prize awardee (for his contributions to world peace through increasing food supply) on the global food crisis in his article, “The Future of Food” ( I culled his answers -in italics-to questions that I thought would interest the public. ) - Over the past fifty years, thanks to research and technological advances, the world food supply rose faster than the growth of human population. Perhaps two billion people have been rescued from chronic hunger. - For the first time in history, food production was mainly increased by raising grain yields per acre rather than bringing more land under the plow. The tripling in world cereal production occurred with only a 10 per cent increase in cultivated area. So, where is the problem? If need be, we can always expand the areas for cultivation. And won’t new advances in technology again raise production? - No. Today, much of the global land area suitable for agricultural production is already in use where, as much as three-fourths of future increases in food production will have to come from. And many of these lands, such as in the industrialized countries, already are being intensively farmed and producing to close to their theoretical potential with currently available technology. So, do we now face a tougher challenge? - Yes. Future gains in food production will be harder to come by than in the past. The challenge now is how to meet the formidable food demands of the next 50 years when the world population will peak to 10 billion, and to do so in environmentally friendly ways. What has caused the growth in global food demand aside from the increases in human numbers? - It is the increases in human wealth, which shifts diets from ones in which most calories come from consuming plants to ones where most calories come from consuming animal and fish products, which in turn depend largely upon cereal grains and oil seeds for their feed.(No doubt, the growing economies of China and India, two of the most populous countries, contribute significantly to the growth in food demand.) And how much increase in food and feed demand do we expect in the next 50 years? - Global demand is likely to increase by 75% in 2050 over today, and this figure could be much higher, if large quantities of food and feed crops are diverted to making ethanol and other biofuels…Roughly one-third of the US corn harvest already goes to ethanol production. Converting so much grain into fuel can drive up its price in world grains market. (The U.S. corn belt is the center of ethanol production, accounting for 6.4 billion gallons. Brazil is second with 5.1 billion gallons. The volume of corn required to produce this much ethanol could provide food for 130 million persons.) - This means that, within the next 50 years, global consumers are likely to require an annual world agricultural production that is double the level of today- from 5.5 billion gross metric tons to 11 billion gross tons. -Irrigated lands will continue to contribute a disproportionate portion of world food supplies. This is a gigantic task that will put enormous environmental pressure on global land and water resources. And we have not even factored in the phenomenon of global warming. Mr. Borlaug thinks that there is no doubt it is occurring, and possibly faster than earlier predicted. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EA), Solar and Wind energy which have been on the subsidy take for years still account for only 1 per cent of total net electricity generation. Fossil fuels will continue to dominate energy production. (It is not only the loss of coastal areas to the rising waters that we should worry about. The polar ice caps, which covers an extensive area of the planet’s surface, deflects heat from the sun. But as the ice melts the bare earth absorbs the sun’s heat which accelerates the melting process.) - So, it is better to concentrate on adapting to the effects than try to reverse climate change, which may not be possible to do anyway. Such as, new tools of biotechnology to develop crop varieties with greater tolerance of drought, water logging, heat, and cold…. and which shall carry traits that will improve nutrition and health. But worrisome is the report that the budget of the International Rice Research Institute was cut in half as it faces the problem of climate change and the menace of the brown plant hopper multiplying by the billions while “chewing through the rice paddies in East Asia.” Borlaug holds out some hope but concludes ominously: -The world has the technical capacity and financial resources to assure food security for ten billion people. The more pertinent question is whether it has the political and ethical will to do so…. Lest we forget, peace will not be built upon empty stomachs or human misery. If we are not able to rise to the challenge, large but overcrowded cities with starving inhabitants will degenerate into jungles ruled by crime and violence. But it is another authority, General James Cartwright, Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, who advances two “mega trends” that will push us to the edge: the continued changes in population and demographics, and ironically, the advance of modern technology which can be both boon and bane. (Deciphering the Megatrends”). The bulk of the increase in population from 6.5 billion today to 10 billion in fifty years will happen in the littoral regions of the Third World namely, Central and South America, Africa, the Middle East and Central and Southeast Asia, oftentimes referred to as the “Arc of Instability.” And while the rapid increase in computing power has facilitated remarkable advances in Industry, Medicine and Agriculture, the Information Age, with the “free flow of information through cyberspace connecting peoples throughout the world, will continue to erode the powers of Nation-States.” Nation-States will have to “deal with non-state actors, “intermediate” entities that don’t have large infrastructures but have the power, credibility and authority to act like or influence Nation-States….They will have to contend with decentralized, networked threats from non-state enemies…. Leveraging the tools of technology so readily available to everyone, the enemies will seek to beat us at our own game. They will be able to change, react, and mutate in minutes and hours, not days, weeks, months or years. We have seen this happen in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In the suicide-bombings in London. Where the people weren’t starving even. And in the explosions at the LRT…and the Glorietta…before the food crisis. In the next part, “What should we do in the Philippines?” F.C.Payumo was three-time Representative of the 1st District of Bataan and former Chairman and Administrator of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority.