China’s drought threatens global food security

[GliderGuider]

China’s drought threatens global food security

(TibetanReview.net, Feb12, 2011) China’s $2.85 trillion in foreign exchange reserves and the serious drought it is facing in its wheat producing north pose a serious danger to global food security, especially in the food importing developing world, according to a www.nytimes.com report Feb 8.

“They can buy whatever they need to buy, and they can outbid anyone,” it quoted Robert S. Zeigler, the director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, in the Philippines, as saying. That will obviously mean serious trouble for other developing food-importing countries.

The report noted that world wheat prices were already surging, adding that they had been widely cited as one reason for protests in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. It cited a separate United Nations report the week before as saying global food export prices had reached record levels in Jan’11.

For now, China is talking more about bringing water to the drought plagued north, rather than importing wheat. China Daily online Feb 10 said the country would spend $1 billion to battle the drought and another at least 6.7 billion yuan ($1.02 billion) to divert water to affected areas, to construct emergency wells and irrigation facilities, and to take other measures.

So China is being forced to use fossil-fuel-driven industrial measures to mitigate droughts caused by climate change that are threatening the wheat supply that may impact food security in other food-importing nations. This tune seems vaguely familiar...

[WatsonT]

1. I wonder if burning our corn had any impact

on global food prices?

[GliderGuider]

2. There are too many competing influences to tell for sure.

Climate change, the recession, speculation - they all play a role. I do know that burning corn or soybeans is one of the shittiest ideas the corporate "environmentalists" have ever come up with.