Image of the Day: Drought in Egypt

What Happened to my Rice?

An Egyptian rice farmer shows his drought damaged rice crop and cracks in the rice terrace soil caused by more than 30 days of no rain in a village near Balqis, 260 km northeast of Cairo. EGYPT: June 17, 2008. Reuters. Photo by NASSER NURI. Image may be subject to copyright. See FEWW Fair Use Notice!

Mother Nature 3 – NZ 0

Electricity Shortages in New Zealand

New Zealand is facing electricity shortages unless sufficient rain recharges its hydro catchments, the government [sic] said.

“Unless we have some increased inflows in the South Island hydro catchments in the next three weeks, further conservation measures will have to be looked at,” the Energy Minister [sic] said.

South Island hydro power facilities provide about two thirds of New Zealand’s electricity. According to a wholesale electricity market operator, storage in hydro-electric lakes is about 40 percent below average. As a result the price of electricity jumped by 30.6 percent to $215.26 per megawatt hour.

Location map of Taupo, New Zealand

In the 2003 power crisis, the government had planned to cut residential hot water supplies, followed by rolling power cuts for residential users, and blackouts.

Rio Tinto’s Tiwai Point aluminum smelter, located in New Zealand’s South Island, consumes about 15 percent of the country’s electricity.

Farm Produce

Earlier this month Bloomberg reported that the prolonged drought in New Zealand, the worst in 20 years, had cut farm production and more than doubled the power prices this year. New Zealand’s energy demand peaks June through August during the hemisphere winter months due to heating use. Hydro-power lakes have been below average since November 2007.

In April 2008, lake Taupo was 18 percent below average. Lake Pukaki was 40 percent below average. Lake Manapouri, which is used to supply Rio Tinto’s Tiwai Point aluminum smelter, was 45 percent below its usual levels.

Continuing drought in New Zealand and Australia, as well as a falling production in the UK and a weak dollar, are raising the prices of milk and dairy products globally. In the past 12 months the price of milk has increased by 32 percent, eggs by 40 percent and wholewheat bread by 26 percent.

Earthquake hit south of Macquarie Island

Meanwhile, in a triple whammy, a 5.9-magnitude quake hit 2100 km (1300 miles) S of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, earlier today close to a major fault line. Recent increased seismic activities N, NW and SE of New Zealand do not bode well for the country. The earthquakes may result in a period intense volcanic activity in New Zealand in the coming weeks.

Related links:

• NZ govt eyes power-saving measures after dry spell
• New Zealand Rain Fails to Ease Risk of Power Shortage (Update1)
• Volcanoes, Santorini Eruption and Crops Failure in China
• Mt Ruapehu Eruption Alert

santorini

Only One Guess Allowed!

Who said:

• “I think that ethanol is the most popular whipping boy in the agricultural world at the moment”

• “So to say that biofuels are the culprit clearly underestimates the demand and really shows a gross misunderstanding of the world food situation,”

• “We have to grow more food. We have to increase yields”

Hint: To increase yields, farmers are forced to buy lots and lots more fertilizers!

Related links:

• Fatal Harvest
• Keep Mine free …!
• The Center for Food Safety

Related Reading:

• The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth One
  Industrial agriculture will feed the world

• The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth Two
  Industrial food is safe, healthy, and nutritious

• The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth Three
  Industrial food is cheap

• The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth Four
  Industrial agriculture is efficient

• The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth Five
  Industrial food offers more choices

• The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth Six
  Industrial agriculture benefits the environment and wildlife

• The Seven Deadly Myths of Industrial Agriculture: Myth Seven
  Biotechnology will solve the problems of industrial agriculture

See the tags for the answer!

Are the poor terrorists?

Delivering Climate Security: International Security Responses to a Climate-Changed World

According to the above-titled report written for Britain’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), governments around the world have hugely underestimated the potential conflicts resulting from climate change. The highlights of the report are:

• If climate change is not slowed and critical environmental thresholds are exceeded, then it will become a primary driver of conflicts between and within states

• In the next decades, climate change will drive as significant a change in the strategic security environment as the end of the Cold War,” said Mabey.

• If uncontrolled, climate change will have security implications of similar magnitude to the World Wars, but which will last for centuries

• A failure to acknowledge and prepare for the worst case scenario is as dangerous in the case of climate change as it is for managing the risks of terrorism or nuclear weapons proliferation

• Unless achieving climate security is seen as a vital and existential national interest it will be too easy to delay action on the basis of avoiding immediate costs and perceived threats to economic competitiveness

Source

Would the world elite brand the poor and starving masses as “terrorists” in order to eliminate them?

Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.” According to a report by New York Sun.

News Reports:

• U.N. Security Council must act preemptively – on climate change – this global threat requires a war-room mentality

• Security risk from climate said underestimated
• Sam’s Club, Costco limit bulk rice purchases
• Sam’s Club, Costco Ration Rice Amid Hoarding Worries
  

Special Links:

• Future in the Making
• Index of Human Impact on Nature (HIoN) March 2008
• The First Wave of World’s Collapsing Cities
• Giga Trends
• World Problems: The Root Cause Matrix

Country in Focus: Philippines

Philippines population climbs as food problems worsen

Philippines Facts

Population

• 93,411,554 (FEWW August 2008 est.)
  92,681,453 (CIA World Factbook July 2008 est.)

• The population grew at a rate of 2.34 percent annually between 1990 and 2000, and by than 2.04 percent since 2000.
• The population growth rate for 2008 could be as high 3.4% (see FEWW calculations)
• The population reached 88.57 million in August 2007 (census), up from 76.5 million in 2000.
• The average population growth rate in Asia is 1.1 percent (UNPF).

Politics and Religion and Politics

• Philippines is the biggest Catholic nation in Asia.
• In Manila, the capital, the conversion of agricultural land for property development has been halted to meet the food needs of the nation.
• The church forbids artificial birth control.
• President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo came to power in 2001 with the backing of the Church.

The Economy

• About 36 percent of the population are poor and the numbers of poor is growing faster than the population.
• Recent government data revealed that 28 million people subsisted on less than $1 per day in 2006 (up 16 percent from 2003). Report
• Estimated per capita GDP: $3,300 (Rank: 159th) 2007
• Unemployment rate for 2006: 7.9 percent
• Labor in agriculture: 36 percent (2003 estimate)

Population below poverty line

• 36% (2008 est.)
• Household income or consumption by percentage share:
  
  • lowest 10%: 2.4%
  • highest 10%: 31.2% (2006):

Armed soldiers deployed as security escorts during rice distribution, watch a large crowd of residents waiting to buy cheap priced government rice outside the National Food Authority warehouse in Manila on April 11, 2008. A senior UN official visiting Manila said April 11 that food riots from soaring food prices have hit 33 countries and warned that the Philippines, one of the world’s largest rice importers, could be next if the government mishandled the issue. Meanwhile the International Rice Research Institute warned that rice prices are likely to keep rising for some time as production fails to keep up with soaring demand.
4:25 a.m. ET, 4/11/08. Photo Credit: ROMEO GACAD / AFP/Getty Images – Image may be copyrighted. See FEWW Fair Use Notice. (Caption: MSNBC)

Geography

• Total area: 300,000 sq km
• Land: 298,170 sq km
• Water: 1,830 sq km

Land Use

• Arable land: 19%
• Permanent crops: 16.67%
• Other: 64.33% (2005)

Freshwater Withdrawal (Domestic, agricultural, industrial)

• Total: 28.52 cu km/yr (17%/9%/74%)
• Per capita: 343 cu m/yr (2000)

[Note: The Philippine archipelago is made up of 7,107 islands; favorably located in relation to many of Southeast Asia’s main water bodies: the South China Sea, Philippine Sea, Sulu Sea, Celebes Sea, and Luzon Strait]

Environmental issues

Uncontrolled deforestation especially in watershed areas; soil erosion; air and water pollution in major urban centers; coral reef degradation; increasing pollution of coastal mangrove swamps that are important fish breeding grounds. (Source: CIA- The World Factbook)

Comments by EU External Relations

The Philippines is ranked as a lower Middle Income Country, but is beset by extreme inequality of wealth distribution. While the Philippines is not a poor country, it is nevertheless a country with a lot of poor people: about [36] % of its total population, some [33] million people, live below the National Poverty Line. The country has not achieved sufficient economic progress over the past decades to substantially reduce poverty, due mainly to high population growth, lack of employment creation, rampant corruption, feudal politics and insurgencies, one communist-inspired, the other triggered by Islamic separatism. Combined with the lack of a national policy to slow its 2.3% annual population growth, its ability to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is seriously compromised. The Philippines lags economically behind the rest of the region and has recently been facing a severe fiscal crisis, with the highest deficit in the region of 5 % of GDP. At the same time it needs to service a national government debt of 78% of GDP The Philippines is witnessing an erosion of confidence in elected government and political institutions, coupled with a feeling of impotence to achieve substantial change towards a more equitable distribution of wealth. Although some measures to redress the fiscal balance have been taken, more economic reforms are necessary to sustain the momentum.

The main challenges for the Philippines are to:

• reduce poverty through stronger job creation and better access to services, especially social services, as well as to employment and income earning opportunities for the poor;
• achieve a more equitable distribution of wealth through economic, social and political and reforms.

Related Links:

• Emerging Food Crisis

• Philippines was one of the richest countries in the Asia until the 1960s