Temperature Rising: A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself

Dr. Singh, a wheat breeder, grabbed seed heads that should have been plump with the staff of life. His practiced fingers found empty husks.

“You’re not going to feed the people with that,” he said.

But then, over in Plot 88, his eyes settled on a healthier plant, one that had managed to thrive in spite of the drought, producing plump kernels of wheat. “This is beautiful!” he shouted as wheat beards rustled in the wind.

Hope in a stalk of grain: It is a hope the world needs these days, for the great agricultural system that feeds the human race is in trouble.

The rapid growth in farm output that defined the late 20th century has slowed to the point that it is failing to keep up with the demand for food, driven by population increases and rising affluence in once-poor countries.

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. The imbalance between supply and demand has resulted in two huge spikes in international grain prices since 2007, with some grains more than doubling in cost.

Those price jumps, though felt only moderately in the West, have worsened hunger for tens of millions of poor people, destabilizing politics in scores of countries, from Mexico to Uzbekistan to Yemen. The Haitian government was ousted in 2008 amid food riots, and anger over high prices has played a role in the recent Arab uprisings.

Now, the latest scientific research suggests that a previously discounted factor is helping to destabilize the food system: climate change.

Many of the failed harvests of the past decade were a consequence of weather disasters, like floods in the United States, drought in Australia and blistering heat waves in Europe and Russia. Scientists believe some, though not all, of those events were caused or worsened by human-induced global warming.

Temperatures are rising rapidly during the growing season in some of the most important agricultural countries, and a paper published several weeks ago found that this had shaved several percentage points off potential yields, adding to the price gyrations.

For nearly two decades, scientists had predicted that climate change would be relatively manageable for agriculture, suggesting that even under worst-case assumptions, it would probably take until 2080 for food prices to double.

In part, they were counting on a counterintuitive ace in the hole: that rising carbon dioxide levels, the primary contributor to global warming, would act as a powerful plant fertilizer and offset many of the ill effects of climate change.

Until a few years ago, these assumptions went largely unchallenged. But lately, the destabilization of the food system and the soaring prices have rattled many leading scientists.

“The success of agriculture has been astounding,” said Cynthia Rosenzweig, a researcher at NASA who helped pioneer the study of climate change and agriculture. “But I think there’s starting to be premonitions that it may not continue forever.”

A scramble is on to figure out whether climate science has been too sanguine about the risks. Some researchers, analyzing computer forecasts that are used to advise governments on future crop prospects, are pointing out what they consider to be gaping holes. These include a failure to consider the effects of extreme weather, like the floods and the heat waves that are increasing as the earth warms.

A rising unease about the future of the world’s food supply came through during interviews this year with more than 50 agricultural experts working in nine countries.

These experts say that in coming decades, farmers need to withstand whatever climate shocks come their way while roughly doubling the amount of food they produce to meet rising demand. And they need to do it while reducing the considerable environmental damage caused by the business of agriculture.

Agronomists emphasize that the situation is far from hopeless. Examples are already available, from the deserts of Mexico to the rice paddies of India, to show that it may be possible to make agriculture more productive and more resilient in the face of climate change. Farmers have achieved huge gains in output in the past, and rising prices are a powerful incentive to do so again.

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Voices From the Storm | Bob and Anna Simpson, La Center, Ky.: Uprooted by Rising Waters, but Not Ready to Walk Away

 

Hunched by age but ginger on his cane, Mr. Simpson, 94, bought the land some 40 years ago, thinking he would retire here from his lifelong home across the river in Cairo, Ill., the collapsed city that now sits threatened by the overfed Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.

“I’m still thinking about it,” said Mr. Simpson, who with his wife, Anna, 92, heeded a mandatory evacuation order and is now staying with their daughter and her family at the farm. “Right now, we’re just sponging off them.”

Leaving Cairo might seem like an easy choice to some. Mr. Simpson has witnessed his town, once home to more than 15,000, go from “the hustlin’-est, bustlin’-est town you’d ever seen” to its current state — with less than 3,000 residents, one physician, no dentist and a surfeit of torched and abandoned buildings. Homeless dogs roam the streets, sinkholes yawn from the asphalt and the river remains dangerously high.

Mr. Simpson even concedes that he and his wife, who has long wanted to leave, would like to be closer to their daughter here, who could more easily drive them to medical appointments and handle household chores.

Still, he cannot commit to leaving — at least not yet.

The couple remains independent. Mr. Simpson continues to serve as the chief of Cairo’s auxiliary fire department, a position he has held for the past 54 years. He was known to occasionally ride trucks to fire scenes until injuring his back in a fall last year. He is the town’s institutional memory, and over the decades he has consulted with mayors on everything from flood prevention and economic development to city schools and civil defense.

“If it was left up to me, I’d have still been there,” Mr. Simpson said while tucking into a lunch of ham and pineapple rings at a local diner. “They said at our age, they would feel better if they knew we were out of Cairo.”

Perhaps most important, Mr. Simpson — like his hometown — has so far withstood the worst the river has had to offer. He did not decamp when, at 10, he saw a paddleboat pushing its way up a flooded road during the Great Flood of 1927. When the waters rose again 10 years later, Mr. Simpson avoided an evacuation order by ingratiating himself to the town’s mayor, walking the levees and fetching lunch for local officials.

“I figured: ‘I’m a pretty good swimmer. I’ll find a high spot somewhere,’?” Mr. Simpson said. “Leaving Cairo didn’t even enter my mind.”

But where these earlier disasters failed, the Great Flood of 2011 has succeeded, and the Simpsons, now sipping coffee in the safety of the diner, fled with nothing more than a few days’ clothes.

 

Bank Warns of Effects of Rising Food Prices on Asia

BANGKOK — Sharp rises in food prices are a threat to economic growth in Asia and could push millions of people into extreme poverty, the Asian Development Bank said in a report to be released on Tuesday.

Food prices in Asia have increased an average of about 10 percent so far this year, which the bank calculates could force 64 million people below the poverty income threshold of $1.25 per person a day if prices remain at current levels.

“Whenever we say that Asia’s growth rate is booming and Asia is a new global growth center, people misunderstand the point,” said Changyong Rhee, the chief economist of the bank, which is supported by governments and helps finance infrastructure projects around the region, among other activities. “Asia is home to two-thirds of the world’s poor. There is still a long way to go.”

Asia is a major contributor to global inflation and is vulnerable to its effects. Growth in China and India is blamed for pushing up prices of many commodities. The region’s population density and uneven income distribution make people there especially susceptible to spikes in food prices, Mr. Rhee said. The poor in Asia typically spend about two-thirds of their income on food.

A continued rise in prices for food and fuel could leave Asia’s consumers with less disposable income to spend on electronics, clothing and other products. Inflation could also spur central banks to further raise interest rates. Taken together, this could slow down economic growth by as much as 1.5 percentage points this year, the development bank has calculated.

Much depends on whether prices continue to climb. On Monday, Barclays Capital, a securities firm, reported that food prices in Vietnam, one of the countries worst hit by inflation, rose 24 percent over the last 12 months, the fastest pace in more than two years.

But Prakriti Sofat, the analyst at Barclays who wrote the firm’s report, predicted that prices in Vietnam, especially for rice, would fall in the coming months as farmers who were hoping for even higher prices sold off their stocks with the arrival of a new harvest.

“We believe rice prices should taper off as the spring harvest begins in May,” Ms. Sofat said.

Mr. Rhee of the Asian Development Bank also expects a moderation in food prices later this year, but he fears it could lull governments into inaction.

“It’s time for us to talk about long-term investments in food to make sure this problem is not recurring,” he said.

Poor countries that are net food importers are the most vulnerable to the increases, Mr. Rhee said, citing Bangladesh, the Philippines, India and Sri Lanka.

In theory, the winners from higher food prices in Asia are countries like Thailand, a major food exporter. Indeed, the countryside in Thailand has shown some signs of vitality.

Car dealerships in regions heavy with plantations have reported sharp increases in sales as a result of rising prices of palm oil and rubber. Sales of pickup trucks nationwide were up 25 percent in March from a year earlier.

But farmers were also being hit by the rising price of oil, both for fertilizers made from petroleum products and fuel for their machinery.

 

Rising Hispanic Population Transforming Texas

 Greg Flakus | Houston, Texas ?April 08, 2011

Census figures show the population of non-Hispanic whites is increasing at a much slower pace than that of Hispanics in Texas

Recently released data from the 2010 U.S. census shows significant growth in the nation's Hispanic population.? And nowhere has that growth been more dramatic than in the southwestern state of Texas, the state with the biggest overall population increase during the past decade.? Experts say the demographic shifts pose a challenge for the state and that its future prosperity will depend on how Texas meets that challenge.

Not long ago, the annual Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Luncheon was the city's biggest Hispanic business event of the year.? Now it is the biggest business event of any kind in the city, drawing many non-Hispanic figures from industry and government as well as Latino business owners.

During the past four years, under the leadership of President and Chief Executive Officer Laura Murillo, the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has experienced a 600 percent growth in membership.? She says Houston's young population, its location and the business-friendly environment in Texas all help.

"Our chamber, for example, has attracted many sponsors that had traditionally gone to Miami or Los Angeles," noted Murillo.? "They are coming to Houston now because they have found that the economy of Houston is so much stronger than it is in other parts of the country."

Many businesses here see an advantage in hiring local Hispanics who can help them build links with Latin America.

Francisco Grados works for an accounting firm whose workforce is now 30 percent Hispanic.

"We have several clients from Latin America, Spain," said Grados.? "And even though they speak English, they feel more confident, secure speaking Spanish.? And it is an advantage to be bilingual."

Rice University sociologist Steve Murdock says the future of Texas depends on Hispanics, because they are the fastest growing segment of the state's population.

"Sixty-five percent of the [population] growth in Texas was due to the Hispanic population," said Murdock.

Census figures show the population of non-Hispanic whites, often called Anglos in the Latino community, is increasing at a much slower pace than that of Hispanics.? Very few Texas counties are experiencing Anglo population growth, while most others show a decline.? The opposite is true for Hispanics.

Although immigrants account for most Hispanic population growth in other U.S. states, sociologist Steve Murdock says the growth in Texas comes mostly from a natural increase within an already established population.

"Most Hispanics in Texas are not immigrants; they have been here for multiple generations," said Murdock.? "And remember, there are parts of Texas that have been Hispanic longer than they have been Anglo."

But Murdock says census figures show a looming problem for Texas in that minorities, especially Hispanics, tend to be less educated and earn much less on average than non-Hispanic whites.

"The modal minority is a Hispanic male, 25 to 29 years of age, with less than a high school level of education and making about $35,000, down about $3,000, in real dollar terms, from 1999 to 2009," he added.

Murdock says the state's economic future depends on how well Texas educates this dynamic young population.

"If we could meet that challenge, what some of us call the Texas challenge, we could have a younger population than most other parts of the country in a time period when aging of the population is going to be a major problem," Murdock noted.

The Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce's Laura Murillo says education of young Hispanics is the key to this state's future.

"We will be the economic engine, not only of the city of Houston, but of Texas.? And that will require a more educated Hispanic community," said Murdock.

But politicians in the Texas capital, Austin, are struggling with a deficit of more than $20 billion, and they are cutting rather than expanding some educational programs.

Being raised by Mexican-American parents who emphasized the value of education helped bank executive Michelle Hitchings find success.? She says she sees it as the best investment the state can make.

"It is a huge mistake cutting education funds, especially early childhood education, which, now we know, is more important than ever," said Hitchings.

Hitchings says she knows that many young Latinos could be inspired by her example and she spends time working with the Girl Scouts and other community groups to encourage children to aspire to great things.

Partly because of these role models and their influence, Laura Murillo says she is optimistic about the role Hispanics will play in the future of Texas.

"I see a Texas that is truly going to be a model for what the rest of the United States will look for in terms of a state with a predominant Hispanic community that Texas will be the model for the rest of the states to follow," Murillo added.

Laura Murillo calls the city's Hispanic business people the "leaders of Houston's new majority."

08-04-2011 KB (USA)

Thank you for doing a story about Hispanics in the U.S. that is not negative. Nice!

09-04-2011 (USA)

I like the hispanic people as long as they are here legally. They are hard working people.

09-04-2011 James R. Brown (Texas)

I'm a European-American guy -- a so-called "Anglo" as Hispanics call us. I'm dating a Hispanic-American woman and I know that Hispanic-Americans are the future of our country. In addition to immigration, they just have a lot more kids then other Americans. Best of luck to the Hispanic-American community! You will be running the U.S. in no time!

09-04-2011 (USA)

Great article! We a lot of work ahead in terms of education and that requires the support of every single person that lives in this state

09-04-2011 Mason

Its a wonderful feeling knowing the ?We can be spoken of like this. I'm so very Happy.

09-04-2011 (USA)

What is the reaction to having a "white" or "caucasian" chamber of commerce. When ethnic groups organize under their banner, they are fostering divisions!

10-04-2011 Gary (USA)

It is not hard to see that the future of Texas will be controlled by Hispanics. They have done a great job without any organizational ability. Just think, in a short period of time, Texas will look just like Mexico. On the other hand, I thought that was why they sneaked into the Us, to get away from Mexico.

10-04-2011

"What is the reaction to having a "white" or "caucasian" chamber of commerce. When ethnic groups organize under their banner, they are fostering divisions!" There hasn't needed to be a "white" or "caucasian" chamber of commerce because they haven't been at such a collective disadvantage.

10-04-2011 Sid Richaard Morris (USA)

Congratulations on an informative, interesting and important article. Let's work together to develop that "early child-hood education" city-by-city ... block-by-block. SRM

11-04-2011

Registered voters have political power! Register to vote now to be sure your voices are heard. With more than 100$ per barrel of oil,Houston can't be any better.

11-04-2011

Mexicanos, Hispanic or not, we are all here in the USA, we all work together as US citizens.

13-04-2011 Trevor (TX, US)

Firstly, neither am an Anglo, nor Hispanic ,before few may jump to conclusion/s. The article was interesting and was glad to see people of many cross sections support the same.I too, like another here support whole heartedly who came here legally.OTHERS, I DO NOT !! Respectfully, TK

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