We’re not the only ones facing a food crisis. A story I read this morning indicates that Japan is finding its shelves emptied of certain commodities as well:
MARIKO Watanabe admits she could have chosen a better time to take up baking. This week, when the Tokyo housewife visited her local Ito-Yokado supermarket to buy butter to make a cake, she found the shelves bare.
“I went to another supermarket, and then another, and there was no butter at those either. Everywhere I went there were notices saying Japan has run out of butter. I couldn’t believe it — this is the first time in my life I’ve wanted to try baking cakes and I can’t get any butter,” said the frustrated cook.
Japan’s acute butter shortage, which has confounded bakeries, restaurants and now families across the country, is the latest unforeseen result of the global agricultural commodities crisis.
A sharp increase in the cost of imported cattle feed and a decline in milk imports, both of which are typically provided in large part by Australia, have prevented dairy farmers from keeping pace with demand.
While soaring food prices have triggered rioting among the starving millions of the third world, in wealthy Japan they have forced a pampered population to contemplate the shocking possibility of a long-term — perhaps permanent — reduction in the quality and quantity of its food.
A 130% rise in the global cost of wheat in the past year, caused partly by surging demand from China and India and a huge injection of speculative funds into wheat futures, has forced the Government to hit flour millers with three rounds of stiff mark-ups. The latest — a 30% increase this month — has given rise to speculation that Japan, which relies on imports for 90% of its annual wheat consumption, is no longer on the brink of a food crisis, but has fallen off the cliff.
According to one government poll, 80% of Japanese are frightened about what the future holds for their food supply.
To me, this again highlights the massive vulnerabilities of globalization. I appreciate that the Japanese want to eat more than rice and fish and seaweed (although their sushi diet is a contributing factor to the country having the longest life-expectancy on earth) but the large-scale migration to non-native food sources help to create these problems.
The global food supply is sort of like a long chain of dominoes. Miscalculate, and the motion will stop at even the slightest gap.
Last week, as the prices of wheat and barley continued their relentless climb, the Japanese Government discovered it had exhausted its ¥230 billion ($A2.37 billion) budget for the grains with two months remaining. It was forced to call on an emergency ¥55 billion reserve to ensure it could continue feeding the nation.
“This was the first time the Government has had to take such drastic action since the war,” said Akio Shibata, an expert on food imports, who warned the Agriculture Ministry two years ago that Japan would have to cut back drastically on its sophisticated diet if it did not become more self-sufficient.
[snip]
Arguably Japan’s biggest concern, however, is its weakening ability to sustain its population with domestic produce. In 2006 the country’s self-sufficiency rate fell to 39%, according to the Agriculture Ministry. It was only the second time since the ministry began keeping records in 1960 that the population derived less than 40% of its daily calorie intake from domestically grown food.
I’ll keep saying it, even if I don’t have a good idea how to accomplish it: self-sufficiency is key here. We NEED to have access to local sources of food and goods, even if “local” means within, say, a 250-mile radius.
Urban population centers obviously cannot be self-sustaining, but if they can draw from a distributed network of suppliers based in the surrounding areas for even a good portion of what they consume, it would be a start.
It’s like reducing dependence on foreign oil. We NEED domestic energy and fuel alternatives. Whatever we can do in this regard that doesn’t create more problems than it solves should be an urgent priority. These problems aren’t going to go away. While these things tend to be cyclical, they aren’t just a cycle. Oil prices may come down and grain supplies may increase again, but this trend shows the huge weakness in the system, and it’s likely that each cycle finishes with prices higher than they were when the cycle began.
In evaluating candidates and political platforms, I think we need to start making an effort to be aware of how these things figure in. Perhaps in the immediate future, they won’t get much play, but in the long term they absolutely need to be given more attention.
