The reasons are obvious enough – In a politics-obsessed world, the human basics have gone to hell over the last few decades. Food is just one of the issues, but it’s huge, and could destabilise many poorer nations easily.
The WFP is pointing at a cascade of issues:
1. Starvation
2. Destabilisation
3. Migration
Of these nasty things, destabilisation and migration are the most likely to trigger further crises. “Destabilisation” means anything from social collapse to civil wars to multiple national dysfunctions. “Migration” could mean huge movements of people which would dwarf anything in recent years.
The pandemic isn’t helping. The world’s virus-addled economy has kept going largely due to stimulus packages. Dithering about cost is one of the problems. After all- How expensive would a global economic meltdown be?
The fact that the world’s biggest economy has left itself so vulnerable isn’t much of an asset to managing the global economy, either. The utter incompetence of the US response to the virus is beyond criminal in more ways than actively killing a quarter of a million Americans.
The net effect of this imbecile “effort” has arguably been worse, encouraging other countries to be lax and inefficient at managing it. The result has been chaotically stupid on all levels.
In this economic environment, the global economy is far more vulnerable than it should be in any situation short of a nuclear war. Things can get very ugly, very fast in this cheapskate, penny-pinching crap festival.
The environment going haywire isn’t helping either
As mentioned endlessly for the last 20-30 years, environmental problems have also been playing havoc with food supplies. Loss of water resources, mostly ineffectual water policy babblings, +drought, and the geriatric response to water crises are making it worse. All this of course feeds directly into the food supply issues.
Most of the world can’t feed itself through its own agriculture. The global population is way too big. The environmental hits like huge unprecedented bushfires in Australia and the US, big, long droughts, and similar events have made things a lot tougher. (These were also predicted in the 1990s and earlier.)
Global warming is merrily exacerbating the problems. At a certain temperature, crop plants are adversely affected, with or without water issues. The carbon and water cycles are also basically trashed, affecting fertility. This is grade school stuff, and it obviously hasn’t been factored in to the management of any of the catastrophic issues now arising.
Now – Add the helplessness of creeping poverty to this kid’s birthday cake of situations. Sound like fun? That’s what’s coming. People who are already desperate will get scared, with good reason. The rest, unless someone gets something right, is likely to be real history.
Remember also that environmental problems snowball. What’s affecting your neighbour will be affecting you tomorrow. There’s no escape from the real effects of serious environmental issues, not even in the tiny minds of denialists.
Now – How irresponsible can the world be?
After four years of bliss dominated by America’s mindless attacks on itself, this is the big question. Can the rest of the world achieve these lofty levels of irresponsibility? Short answer, yes.
Add the antiquated pre-globalization geopolitics now being played out by other major nations, and you have the perfect scenario for total non-cooperation and non-coordination around the world. You can fix a faulty tap by sticking a dinosaur in it, right? You might as well be. Geopolitics is irrelevant if the geo goes ballistic.
How about a nice war or several? Usually works to keep people fully employed in front of cameras making things worse, doesn’t it? How about a trade war, to really add that invaluable bureaucratic bean-counting starving people really love?
The record so far is no achievements at all on any of these issues. It’s a sparkling vista of wilful ignorance, highlighted by occasional stupor-novae of stupidity. This is the result.
How can the world help?
The world can’t do much if a major global famine hits in such a short timeframe. To give a bit of a picture – My own country, Australia, can feed 75 million people. That’s 3 times our population. With some current-tech upgrades and high efficiency, we could feed about 250 million. Compared to the billions of people potentially at risk, it’s barely a drop in the bucket.
Food stockpiling does help. It’s been helping for thousands of years. Again, with the huge populations, it can only help so much. Given that these famines could go on for decades, it’s a big ask.
Famines can do cumulative economic damage. As global productivity shrinks, prices are affected. Everything becomes more expensive. That’s the story of famines, where people sell everything for a few spuds. You can expect a huge food black market overnight, and it won’t be cheap.
The cumulative damage kicks in as follows:
1. Instant poverty affecting X million people.
2. Total lack of assets lost during the famine.
3. Slow, painful recovery from the famine, if at all, takes generations.
4. Massive hit to the wider economy.
The solution is simple enough – Prioritize upgrades to food production, preservation, and stockpiling. Stimulate the economies to prevent them from going into shock.
While you’re at it – Get food supplies properly protected and assured. Fix the water issues and stop the warming. After all, you’re supposed to look “busy”, aren’t you, you adorable bastards? Do something useful for once instead of just taking up media space.
