Eureka! I Think I've Got It
Current predictions say that the world population will rise by 2.5 billion by 2050, resulting in a massive increase in demand for food. Food security is going to be a huge problem as farmers the world over struggle to expand production at the pace required to meet this unprecedented demand.
Add to that climate change, and the fact that we are now turning our food into the very same fuel that causes that climate change and we are clearly heading for one enormous pot of trouble. Or are we?
Well, there's certainly no sign of a global food shortage right now is there? In fact forewarned by the experts that an impending crisis is just around the corner we've already started to ramp up production before shortages kick in.
There has to be something wrong when 15 MMT (or thereabouts) of India's wheat buffer stocks lie rotting in the fields as the next harvest begins. There also has to be something wrong when the Indian government are buying new crop wheat at an unsurprisingly astonishing rate because the minimum floor price that they've set is miles above world levels.
Ditto Brazilian corn. Millions of tonnes of government owned old crop corn is filling the silos of Mato Grosso, leaving no room for newly harvested soybeans. Meanwhile farmers in Mato Grosso have just increased second crop "safrinha" corn plantings by 19% despite cash prices of R$ 7 to R$ 9 per sack being below the cost of production. Why would they do that? Because the government will buy everything they can produce at R$ 13.95 per sack.
So we've got a global wheat mountain and a global corn mountain sat waiting for a global population explosion to come along and gobble it all up before it rots out in the open. So what shall we do about this imbalance?
Kick start the global population explosion of course. A kind of worldwide sponsored sh@g is what I am proposing. Ant and Dec would host it, obviously. Or maybe we could go a bit more upmarket and get Brucie involved. The Procreation Game we could call it. On the conveyor belt tonight we have, a sack of corn, twenty bushels of wheat, some forged Indian customs documents, a court summons....
Or maybe we should go down the "I'm a celebrity, force feed me some Indian wheat until I explode" route? Vanessa Feltz obviously springs to mind as a contestant for that one.
Add to that climate change, and the fact that we are now turning our food into the very same fuel that causes that climate change and we are clearly heading for one enormous pot of trouble. Or are we?
Well, there's certainly no sign of a global food shortage right now is there? In fact forewarned by the experts that an impending crisis is just around the corner we've already started to ramp up production before shortages kick in.
There has to be something wrong when 15 MMT (or thereabouts) of India's wheat buffer stocks lie rotting in the fields as the next harvest begins. There also has to be something wrong when the Indian government are buying new crop wheat at an unsurprisingly astonishing rate because the minimum floor price that they've set is miles above world levels.
Ditto Brazilian corn. Millions of tonnes of government owned old crop corn is filling the silos of Mato Grosso, leaving no room for newly harvested soybeans. Meanwhile farmers in Mato Grosso have just increased second crop "safrinha" corn plantings by 19% despite cash prices of R$ 7 to R$ 9 per sack being below the cost of production. Why would they do that? Because the government will buy everything they can produce at R$ 13.95 per sack.
So we've got a global wheat mountain and a global corn mountain sat waiting for a global population explosion to come along and gobble it all up before it rots out in the open. So what shall we do about this imbalance?
Kick start the global population explosion of course. A kind of worldwide sponsored sh@g is what I am proposing. Ant and Dec would host it, obviously. Or maybe we could go a bit more upmarket and get Brucie involved. The Procreation Game we could call it. On the conveyor belt tonight we have, a sack of corn, twenty bushels of wheat, some forged Indian customs documents, a court summons....
Or maybe we should go down the "I'm a celebrity, force feed me some Indian wheat until I explode" route? Vanessa Feltz obviously springs to mind as a contestant for that one.