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How can we coordinate a strategy to prevent a looming food crisis? - related to recent global food crisis

by | 02-01-2012 13:27



The whimsical food price has been becoming a big agenda at the summit of G-20 and the volatility in commodities, especially food has also been catching our attention. The United Nations said that food prices have touched the highest level since U.N.?s creation in 1990. Over the past 12 months, the price of wheat has gone up about 75 percent. Droughts and fires in Russia, Canada, and Australia hurt crop production and a particularly dry spring in Western Europe threatened food output last year. Consumption of the four staples that supply most human calories — wheat, rice, corn and soybeans — has outstripped production for much of the past decade, drawing once-large stockpiles down to worrisome levels.

Oxfam International, an international confederation of 15 organizations working in 98 countries worldwide to find lasting solutions to poverty and related injustice around the world, said that the global food system was having much pressure from climate change; population growth; rising energy prices; increasing demand for meat and dairy products; and intensifying competition for land due to biofuels, urbanization, and industrial needs. They warned that the prices for staple foods would double in two decades if immediate actions were not taken and projected that food prices would more than double by 2030 from today?s high levels, with climate change responsible for perhaps half the increase. As worries like that proliferate, some scientists are ready to go back to the drawing board regarding agriculture and climate change.

To solve this world-wide problem, Oxfam says, ?Each government needs to find a better food system by investing in agriculture, carrying out better food management, and promoting equal rights for woman that produce much of the world?s foods.? France, one of G-20 members, has asked international organizations like the World Food Program to make plans to reserve food stocks and to look at new products to reduce farmers? risks.

However, I believe these voices are empty, if we take immediate actions. The most urgent issue to resolve is ?Global Warming.? However hard we may try to prepare for food crisis, we cannot easily extinguish all fires across the world, irrigate all desert areas, or feed all the people in the global village. That?s why the world population must hit the ceiling and global warming must get out of our control. These two issues – population growth and global warming – must be the most significant ones for us to take immediate actions. Without a solution to these, we cannot prevent a looming food crisis. Considering all situations, I strongly believe that G-20 members put population growth and global warming on the top agenda. Global warming must continuously disrupt food production by creating abnormal weather pattern, whereas population growth must choke the earth. So, I believe that in the next summit of G-20, these two issues must be seriously discussed; the most practical solutions ever made must be created and executed; and G-20 must give up their short-term profits and think about how we human beings can survive in this planet.