Feeding the Devil

John Battle MP

Reports that children in Bangladesh are surviving day to day on food pies made of mud, a little butter and salt, because their parents can no longer afford to buy them a portion of rice, appeared in the press this month. At the same time it was reported that we in Britain throw away a third of the food we buy, on average £610 per family a year. Whilst rising world food prices are linked to both fossil fuel price rises (oil and gas) and the shift to biofuels, if we were to buy less and eat up what we buy, we would as a country cut back on 18 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions - the equivalent to taking a fifth of our cars off the road. In other words, our waste of food is contributing more to climate change than our use of private cars.

The Dutch university of Turente has come up with a water footprint calculator to work out the water use in the manufacture and transport of everyday foodstuffs. It spells out how much water has been used in the manufacture of the products we buy. A slice of white bread takes up 40 litres, a burger 2,400 litres, a kilogram of cheddar 5,000 litres, a pint of beer 160 litres, a 125ml glass of wine 120 litres, and a pint of milk 1750 litres. And non-water based products such as wheat or barley absorb much more. Perhaps not surprisingly a kilogram of beef has a water footprint of a massive 3,900 litres. Our everyday, developed foodstuffs are using up excessive resources.

Wasting food is not only environmentally damaging in its disposal and decomposition, it is throwing away valuable water resources. No wonder in years past leaving food on your plate at a family meal was referred to, particularly in poorer families finding it hard to make ends meet, as ‘feeding the devil’.

Meanwhile according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, 37 developing countries are desperate for basic foodstuffs, unable to cope with high wheat and rice prices. World food stocks are at record lows, and exporting countries such as Australia have experienced drought and implemented wheat export bans. There have been food riots in Bangladesh, Burkino Faso, Cameroon, Uzbekistan and China. Tragically the cyclone flooding of the Irrawaddy delta in Burma has come at the worst time - overrun by salt sea water at precisely the time that the next rice planting should be undertaken. There are already wheat exporting bans from producing countries such as Argentina, Sudan, Russia, India and China.

Of course there is a connection to record world oil prices, though in fact there is no real shortage of supply. OPEC are holding back supplies from the market. Middle East countries are all benefiting from high oil revenues at the present time. As usual it is net oil importers, particularly developing countries, that are now being driven deeper into poverty. High oil prices are undermining local agriculture which needs oil and its products for cultivation, irrigation power, transportation and fertilizers and pesticides. Food production depends on oil-based petrochemicals, so if the cost of these imports rocket farmers are unable to get a good crop yield.

But pressure of basic wheat and rise prices has other causes. Firstly, both India and China have been going through a period of exceptional economic growth, and as their populations have got better incomes and moved into towns and cities there has been a significant shift in eating habits from rice to meat-based meals (beef and chicken). But both beef and chicken absorb massive amounts of wheat or corn in their production. Cows are fed maize and the food footprint shift from rice to meat has put pressure on wheat and corn stocks. Corn stocks in the grain silos of America are at record lows. Meanwhile the world rice price has increased by 74% in the last twelve months, along with 40% increases in corn, 87% in soya, and 140% in wheat prices.

There has also been a another key shift affecting food prices, namely the conversion of basic food stocks such as grain into oil to produced corn-based ethanol as an alternative fuel to oil and gas. The demand for biofuels has not only meant using up land to grow grain, but has put pressure on the grain price itself.

It would be the ultimate tragedy if twenty-first century mass famine was to be the outcome not only of commodity price speculation, but of misconceived and failed efforts to address both climate change and unchecked economic growth. The great optimism of economic trickle-down is rapidly evaporating into an unprecedented world hunger crisis while basic food is beyond the reach of millions. As the great English poet-critic William Empson put it, ‘The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.’

This article first appeared in The Universe.