Food Plight

Countries are having a tougher time feeding more and more people (earth's population is now increasing by 90 million persons annually). This year Mexico must import nearly six million tons of corn; three years ago Mexican farmers produced enough corn for its people's needs. This crisis has been fostered by severe drought, peso devaluation, and GATT and NAFTA trade rules. If Mexico looks to the U.S. to fill its need, it will find that our own corn stocks are at a record low.

Extreme weather has threatened or destroyed crops the world over. In June, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) forecast that world wheat stocks would, by the end of this season, hit their smallest volume since 1980-81. In the U.S., this year's winter wheat harvest is the lowest in eighteen years. And, as a result of droughts and floods, 2,269 of America's 3,218 farm counties have been designated disaster areas.

Fish harvests, the world's fifth largest agricultural commodity, are not much better off. Of world stocks, one-quarter are overfished, according to a report by the International Food Policy Research Institute. They expect worldwide demand for fish to exceed supply well into the next century.

David Pimentel, Ph.D., of Cornell University notes that, if the earth's population doubles by 2050, as projected, people in the U.S. will get 15% of their diet from animal products (down from the current 50%), and food will cost up to 50% of each paycheck.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, of the University of Toronto, says, "Most of the ingenuity that is going to be particularly useful in solving scarcity and food production problems is going to be locally generated, by people familiar with local geography, social relations, and resources." [Reported in the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Global Food Watch, June 1996; and Science News, 6/8/96 and 6/22/96]