Ecological Dept: Cost of food going up (as well as the cost of the roof )

From last September:

... intuition tells me unless we focus sharply on sustainable living and renewable energy, we will approach a greater level of crisis with food shortages. I have seen a lot of evidence showing potential supply and demand problems in the way we market manufacture and distribute our food. I believe our food processing infrastructure is fundamentally unsustainable and this will show up dramatically as energy prices inflate along side unpredictable weather patterns.

I read two stunning articles today showing signs we could be heading towards food shortages if we're not careful:



Demand for rice threatens global food supplies

The run on rice is threatening to disrupt world food supplies as much as banks' lack of confidence in each other has seen global credit markets dry up. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/08/cnrice108.xml

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3140.shtml

The FAO warns that the explosive growth in acreage used to grow fuels and not food in the past three years is dramatically changing the outlook for food supply globally and forcing food prices sharply higher for all foods, from cereals to sugar to meat and dairy products. The use of cereals, sugar, oilseeds and vegetable oils to satisfy the needs of a rapidly increasing biofuel industry, is one of the main drivers, most especially the large volumes of maize in the US, wheat and rapeseed in the EU and sugar in Brazil for ethanol and bio-diesel production. This is already causing dramatically higher crop prices, higher feed costs and sharply higher prices for livestock products.


The problem is we are living beyond our means not just in money with credit - as mentioned in my last blog: What is money anyway?" but in ecological dept as well:



http://www.footprintnetwork.org reports: globally, we are demanding 1.3 planets to support our lifestyles this year, and yet we only have one planet earth.

BBC News: Science/ Nature from 2004 reports: "We are running up an ecological debt which we won't be able to pay off unless governments restore the balance between our consumption of natural resources and the Earth's ability to renew them."

Food for thought.... my time is up for tonight. Email feedback welcome: mdhp.animated@gmail.com