Can the world support the aspirations for food and energy of the 7 billion people that now inhabit it? Will we meet the needs of the additional 2 billion people that we expect will be here by 2050? More than ever, the answers to these questions depend on how wisely we use the world's fresh water resources -- to both meet our own needs and to sustain the basic water requirements of all life that inhabits our blue planet.
In the late 20th century, as a result of the Green Revolution, global grain yields surged dramatically. However, the higher energy intensity required (largely for fertilizers production and pumping ground water) along with associated water resource degradation has emerged as a serious challenge to the movement. Water tables in many countries, including the USA, India and China have dropped significantly in the last 20 years, indicating that we have exceeded our renewable water budget and are unsustainably mining the resource.
Water is a renewable resource, whose availability varies from place to place, and by month and year. Droughts and floods are omnipresent hazards for most societies, leading to loss of crops, property and lives; as the earth's climate changes, experts believe the frequency of both may increase. Places that are arid may become more so, while the frequency of intense precipitation may increase almost everywhere. Thus, understanding, predicting and adapting to climate is critical for water and food security. Adaptation requires water and food storage, and also judicious choices as to what to grow where, from a global and from a regional perspective.
In the last few years droughts and floods led to low grain production in key producing nations, causing a dramatic jump in global food prices and revealing how thinly traded the global food market is. Only about 10 percent of wheat and rice production is actually traded globally, which means that small deficits in production have significant impacts as nations restrict exports in the interest of domestic food security. Given their water and productivity constraints, the Chinese have been securing land and promoting cultivation of crops that they need in Africa and South America, thus creating a secure import supply chain in the face of the volatility in global markets.
Agriculture consumes more than 70 percent of the freshwater we use, but depending on how it's computed, globally the average water use efficiency of farming is only 10 to 30 percent. At the same time, crop yields per acre in the most productive parts of the world are often 10 times greater than those in many developing countries. These developing countries, especially in Africa, are expected to contribute the bulk of global population growth. Therefore, meeting future food needs without further stressing global water resources actually appears quite feasible, if water use efficiency can be improved and crop yields increased in the most vulnerable parts of the world.
This gap between the most and least productive and water-efficient agriculture poses an interesting opportunity for the United States. Not only is the US relatively well endowed with water, it also has some of the highest productivity in agriculture, high rates of innovation, and is a major net agricultural exporter. Indeed, while biofuels are debated, they are already a significant component of agricultural production, speaking to the high overall productivity in US agriculture and food security.
In the late 20th century, the US transitioned from a high tech economy to a high finance one, sparking economic bubbles that eventually burst. At a time when the economic future of the country is unclear, jobs are hard to get, and the country is questioning its national competitiveness, we need to ask whether the US expertise in climate, water, agriculture, food processing and energy technologies provides a new opportunity to position it as a global leader that can prosper on the strength of its innovations in these basic resource areas.
Unlike China, whose agricultural expansion abroad appears to be a strategic government initiative to meet domestic needs, US efforts have been largely targeted toward agricultural development through the USAID and USDA programs. Whereas the success of the US programs has varied depending on local uptake and capacity, the Chinese are following a model closer to leasing land and managing production, thus potentially controlling productivity more tightly. Once we see the problem through the lens of global food and water security risks in the face of climate dangers, a growing population and energy/environment constraints, it follows that given its resources, the US can and should play a greater strategic role in shaping the water and food future of the planet.
In addition to the inevitable political maneuvering, this new global strategic role requires focused development and implementation of appropriate soft and hard technologies.
The soft technologies would facilitate the selection of the most optimal locations and practices to grow specific crops to make the best use of water and energy resources to meet global and local food needs; the identification of when and how to store food or water; predictions of climate and weather to anticipate and ameliorate the effects of drought; how to manage trade so that producers are delivered high stable value, while reducing price volatility and shocks from shortages.
The hard technologies would facilitate improvements in productivity and efficiency across the board, and their deployment in a global context would strategically address the limitations in many parts of the world where poverty leads to barriers in implementation of high technology.
The world is growing ever closer and more densely populated. The search for a utopia where collaborative, equitable solutions regarding access to and the use of resources and products needed for the survival of all is an imperative that the US is well positioned to address from a technology and a policy perspective.
The US led the Green Revolution in the 20th century. It is time to do it again, but for the global good. The stakes are higher. The global water crisis is upon us, and it is time that the US played a direct role in the sustainable development of the world's water and food. It would help not just the global poor and freshwater ecology. It would strengthen the backbone of the US economy, and provide an avenue for our youth to be global emissaries with a sense of purpose.
Barbara Frost, Matthew Frost and Chris Bain: Why the Poorest Will Have to Wait for Water
Katherine Marshall: World Water Day: A Call to Faith
C. M. Rubin: The Global Search for Education: Water
Rabbi Jack Bemporad, Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski and Susan Barnett: A Sermon for Water
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/crisis-civilization/
No doubt. Well said.
The US still has the financial and technical resources to make a major contribution toward solving the world's population, food, water and energy problems, but it might be better were we to get our own house in order first. That in itself would be a major contribution.
Increasing our capacity to feed people doesn't cause the population to grow in of itself, although it does facilitate it. Would you rather we not increase the capacity to feed the world and have people go starve?
Lots more news and info, and the OTEC projects already happening at The On Project.
http://www.theonproject.org/?utm_source=huffpost&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=mscomment
Not sure you need the government to help you out. I would recommend your first call be to the evil agri-businesses advising them that your corporation wants to help solve water inefficiencies with crop production and that you need some funding to help them drive down their costs of production.
100% watering efficiency vs. 30% in crop production is a more than intriguing prospect for a company that problem spends an ungodly amount on their water bill
Read the earliest reports of the "best and brightest" about bringing an end to hunger and poverty through improved technology. I'm sure the reports of various government agencies like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are available from years back.
Or just Google "The Green Revolution". Look for the earliest articles and see how they are almost identical to this one posted today, 3/22/12.
The only thing I can compare this failure to change is to read the propaganda from the government of North Korea from the 50's and 60's and compare it today. Now do the same thing with the USAID agriculture reports.
For an up to date (up to the second) report on the status of lost arable land on Planet Earth, see:
www.worldometers.info. It's in real time. Heavily referenced. It is the most valuable site on the Web (completely non-commericial).
Also check out World Factbook, which is a CIA publication. Go to India. Find out the 42% of the children in that country are undernourished.
A triumph for the Green Revolution?
It follows the tradition of all the "best and brightest" who refuse to recognize that the Earth has only a limited carrying capacity, that the we are now pushing against.
To introduce Death Control without simultaneously providing humans with safe, inexpensive, and convenient methods of birth control must, must, inevitably lead to disaster.
But hey, the "best and the brightest" cetainly don't want to mention human sexuality.
Joel E. Cohen, a Mathematical biologist and the head of the Laboratory of Population at Rockefeller University and Columbia University. “How Many People Can the Earth Support?”
“Providing modern family planning methods to all people with unmet needs would cost about $6.7 billion a year, slightly less than the $6.9 billion that Americans are expected to spend for Halloween this year”.
The New York Times, Op-Ed October 24, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/opinion/seven-billion.html?pagewanted=all
The decision will naturally be made for us of course (we will not collectively make it ourselves... it's just not in our nature), but in the meantime, sure, let's try to do all we can for all the people we can in terms of water, food, happiness, etc. It's really the only thing we realistically can do.
Don't get me wrong - It's nice a thing when the U.S. and ordinary citizens can help people in other countries. But there are also plenty of issues and problems and people suffering right here at home: Money, manpower, innovation, and technology are needed within the U.S. too.
There are about 200 different nation-states out there (give or take). Maybe we should not be sticking our noses in on every issue at every turn?
I know, it's a crazy notion to only have 2.3 children per couple but if they don't, and want to have more than that, oh well, bear the folly of your actions!