http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0831-01.htm
Published on Sunday,
August 31, 2003 by the lndependent/UK
'A foretaste of what will happen as global
warming takes hold'
Hot Summer Sparks Global Food Crisis
by Geoffrey Lean
[ See
photograph from original article... ]
CAPTION:
"Youngsters inspect River Elbe's low tide in Neu Darchau,
Germany.
Shifting harvests in Europe this year, triggered by extreme
but local bouts of rain, heat and drought, eerily foreshadow
predictions made last year that warn global warming will
reshape European agriculture. (AFP-DDP/File/Jochen Luebke)"
This summer's
heatwave has drastically cut harvests across Europe,
plunging the world into an unprecedented food crisis, startling
new official figures show.
Separate calculations by two leading
institutions monitoring
the global harvest show that the scorching weather has severely
reduced European grain production, ensuring that the world
will not produce enough to feed itself for the fourth year
in succession, and plunging stocks to the lowest level on
record. And experts predict that the damage to crops
will be
found to be even greater when the full cost of the heat is known.
They say that, as a
result, food prices will rise worldwide,
and hunger will increase in the world's poorest countries.
And they warn that this is just a foretaste of what will
happen as global warming takes hold.
Sunshine and warmth
are, of course, good for plants and
there were hopes that this year's good summer would produce
a bumper harvest. But excessive heat and low rainfall damage
crops, and the heatwave - which brought temperatures of more
than 100F to Britain for the first time, and gave France
11 consecutive days above 95F, killing more than 1,000 people
- has done enormous damage.
The US Department of
Agriculture has cut its forecast for
this year's grain harvest by 32 million tons, mainly because
of the European crop reductions. On Thursday, the International
Grains Council - an intergovernmental body - reduced its own
prediction even further, by 36 million tons, as a result of
"heat and drought, particularly in Europe."
The damage has been
most severe in Eastern Europe, which
is now bringing in its worst wheat crop in three decades:
in Ukraine, the harvest has been cut from 21 million tons
last year to five million, while Romania has its worst crop
on record. Germany is the worst-hit EU country: some farmers
in the south-east have lost half their grain harvest. Official
British figures will not be published until October.
The final tally of
the summer's damage is likely to be worse
still. Lester Brown, the president of Washington's authoritative
Earth Policy Institute, predicts that it will cut another 20 million
tons off the world harvest, making this a catastrophic year.
It
has come at a time when world food supplies were already at
their most precarious ever. The world has eaten more grain than
it has produced every year so far this century, driving stocks
well below the safety margin to their lowest levels in the
40 years that records have been kept. The amount of grain
produced for each person on earth is now less than at any
time in more than three decades.
Until about a month
ago, this year had been expected to produce
a reasonable harvest, allowing some recovery. But the heatwave
has now ensured that it will make things even worse, and experts
say that the crisis will deepen as global warming increases.
Grain
prices have already increased, and Mr Brown warns that
in coming years they may move to a permanently higher level.
This would encourage greater production, he says, but at the
expense of the world's hungry, who could then afford even
less food, and of the environment, as farming intensified.
© 2003 Independent
Digital (UK) Ltd
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