Sunday, June 29, 2014

Peak Water


The world is in transition from an era of  water and food abundance to one of scarcity. 

Over the last decade, world grain reserves have fallen by one third. World food prices have more than doubled, triggering a worldwide land rush and ushering in a new geopolitics of food. The basic factors behind shortages in the food supply are increasing demand, rising costs of energy, and soil and water depletion.

Groundwater supplies are diminishing as are glaciers and surface water supplies. The High Plains aquifer system is one of the world's largest. It covers an area of approximately 174,000 square miles, and serves as an example of global water problems.

Tapping this groundwater source for agricultural production is clearly not a sustainable option at today’s usage rates. Cattle and corn crops account for the majority of water usage in the US, and the High Plains Aquifer supplies 30 percent of US irrigated groundwater.

It is this extensive underground aquifer that allowed farmers to grow crops in what was previously known as ‘the Great American Desert.’ It was also in this area where the rush to clear out the area’s natural grasslands and replace them with plowed soil lead to one of the greatest man-made ecological disasters of all time.

Following a decades-long drought in the 1930s, farmers began to use groundwater pumping and sprinkler irrigation to grow corn and wheat in what is now more commonly known as the US ‘dust bowl,’ using the vast aquifer freely. Now, however, the draw has proved to be too intense and this once seemingly inexhaustible source of groundwater is quickly being depleted.

It’s not only the Plains states that are in danger of running aquifers dry and depleting available water sources. The average American uses 150 gallons of water every day, yet those in developing countries can scarcely find five gallons, and just don’t have access to safe, clean drinking water.

The High Plains aquifer system is an example of a "fossil aquifer" that is thousands or even millions of years old. Fossil water is, by definition, a non-renewable resource. Aquifer drawdown or overdrafting and the pumping of fossil water increases the total amount of water in the hydrosphere, and may be responsible for up to one quarter of the Earth's total sea level rise since the beginning of the 20th century.

Though it took hundreds of thousands of years to create the The High Plains aquifer system, just about 50 years of overdrafting has caused many wells to fail. As the water table receded, some wells were repeatedly extended deeper to keep the pumping, but many are running dry. Water is heavy and the cost of fuel to operate the pumps began to approximate the worth of wheat and corn that could be produced by irrigation. Ever rising fuel costs and ever deeper wells is causing a crisis.

At a depth of almost 1,000 feet, many small farmers were forced out of business. They were bought out by large companies, and the large got larger quickly and also gained political clout and very big government subsidies.These giant agribusinesses are not just involved in local farming, but also in the distribution, processing, storage and retail of farm products nationwide. They are integrated with multinational corporations that control very large shares of the international markets for grains, fertilizers, pesticides and seeds, farm equipment manufacturers, and hedge funds and other investment firms which are rapidly creating a global market for agricultural land, bringing other powerful actors into the food system.  These companies shape government food policy.  They squeeze out small farmers, promote energy-hungry industrial agriculture and create an unsustainable system of production and distribution.

Small farm income has dropped while production expenses rose. “According to the Census of Agriculture,” a United States Department of Agriculture report revealed, “the number of U.S. farms fell sharply until the early 1970s after peaking at 6.8 million in 1935…By 2002, about 2.1 million farms remained.... The American Farmland Trust estimates an acre of U.S. farmland goes into development every two minutes...."

From around the post-war period onwards, a new phenomenon developed in the relationship between humankind and animals: The arrival of industrial capitalism in the agricultural world and the distortion of methods of cultivation, food processing and raising livestock. Living beings of use to humans have returned to being considered things, and there has been no limit to their exploitation. This was the beginning of the "factory food" era.

In a stunning new report, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is warning that poor people around the world are already feeling the pain of high food prices. The price of important crops such as rice, which is a key staple in many poor countries, spiked more than 400 percent last year. Food riots broke out in many third world countries last year when people could suddenly not feed their families. - See more at: http://disasterandemergencysurvival.com/archives/food-crisis#sthash.Ngih1jWo.dpuf

Global warming affects evapotranspiration—the movement of water into the atmosphere from land and water surfaces and plants due to evaporation and transpiration— which is expected to lead to:
  • Increased drought in dry areas. In drier regions, evapotranspiration may produce periods of drought—defined as below-normal levels of rivers, lakes, and groundwater, and lack of enough soil moisture in agricultural areas. Precipitation has declined in the tropics and subtropics since 1970. Southern Africa, the Sahel region of Africa, southern Asia, the Mediterranean, and the U.S. Southwest, for example, are getting drier. Even areas that remain relatively wet can experience long, dry conditions between extreme precipitation events.
  • Expansion of dry areas. Scientists expect the amount of land affected by drought to grow by mid-century—and water resources in affected areas to decline as much as 30 percent. These changes occur partly because of an expanding atmospheric circulation pattern known as the Hadley Cell—in which warm air in the tropics rises, loses moisture to tropical thunderstorms, and descends in the subtropics as dry air. As jet streams continue to shift to higher latitudes, and storm patterns shift along with them, semi-arid and desert areas are expected to expand.
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"An unprecedented combination of high temperatures and scarce rainfall has scientists predicting an extension of the severe drought that's now crippling the western half of America. Texas, which is withering under its worst drought since record-keeping began over 100 years ago, is expected to see no relief in the foreseeable future. The idea that desert cities like Las Vegas, Tucson and Phoenix may become uninhabitable is no longer a far-fetched vision from a science-fiction novel. Even places like England that are normally cool and rainy are suffering under a drought that's affecting their crop yields, says Neena Rai in the Wall Street Journal.

Scientists, politicians and business leaders worldwide are faced with drought and a severe shortage of fresh drinking water, as well as water that's essential for industry, transportation and agriculture...An estimated one billion people -- that's one out of every seven people -- don't have daily access to safe drinking water, according to One Drop, an international water-rights advocacy group. An additional 2.5 billion people lack basic sanitation, and increased industrialization in developing countries like China, India, Brazil and in sub-Saharan Africa has resulted in severe pollution of once-viable sources of fresh drinking water.

It's causing serious problems on every inhabited continent, in rural areas and major cities alike. China has been forced to develop a plan that call for diverting six trillion gallons of water each year to stem the southerly march of the Gobi desert, according to Edward Wong of The New York Times. The nations of Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Lebanon -- the area once known as the "Fertile Cresent" -- are reeling under the forced migration of hundred of thousands of water refugees. Bolivia, which once produced nearly all of its own food, now has to import much of its food supply because of a combination of drought, floods and government policies.

"...if some predictions are realized. A 2011 report from Oxfam estimates that the average cost of food staples will rise as much as 180% by the year 2030, due in large part to water shortages. The potential for an international food crisis has caused the G20 nations to examine measures that will prevent famine, food riots and other catastrophes."
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The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is warning that poor people around the world are already feeling the pain of high food prices. The price of important crops such as rice, which is a key staple in many poor countries, spiked to such an extent that food riots broke out in many third world countries when people could suddenly not feed their families. We could very well be on the verge of the worst outbreak of starvation and hunger in the history of humanity.
In a stunning new report, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is warning that poor people around the world are already feeling the pain of high food prices. The price of important crops such as rice, which is a key staple in many poor countries, spiked more than 400 percent last year. Food riots broke out in many third world countries last year when people could suddenly not feed their families. - See more at: http://disasterandemergencysurvival.com/archives/food-crisis#sthash.Ngih1jWo.dpuf

In a stunning new report, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations is warning that poor people around the world are already feeling the pain of high food prices. The price of important crops such as rice, which is a key staple in many poor countries, spiked more than 400 percent last year. Food riots broke out in many third world countries last year when people could suddenly not feed their families. - See more at: http://disasterandemergencysurvival.com/archives/food-crisis#sthash.Ngih1jWo.dpuf
The reality is that the world is running out of food and people are hungry right now.
  • 1 billion people in the world go to bed hungry every single night.
  • Every 3.6 seconds someone starves to death and 3/4 are children under the age of 5.
  • More than 2.8 billion people, close to half the world's population, live on less than the equivalent of $2 a day.
  • More than 1.2 billion people, or about 20 per cent of the world population, live on less than the equivalent of $1 a day.
  • About one-third of all children in the world under the age of five suffer from malnutrition.
  • The top fifth (20 per cent) of the world's people who live in the highest income countries have access to 86 per cent of world gross domestic product. The bottom fifth, in the poorest countries, have about one per cent.
  • The assets of the world's three richest men exceed the combined gross domestic products of the world's 48 poorest countries.

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