Peak wheat is the concept that agricultural production, due to its high use of water and energy inputs,[1] is subject to the same profile as oil and gas production.[2][3][4] The central tenet being that a point is reached, the "peak", beyond which agricultural production plateaus and does not grow any further.[5] In fact production may even go into permanent decline.
Based on current supply and demand factors for agricultural commodities (e.g. changing diets in the emerging economies, biofuels, declining acreage under irrigation, growing global population, stagnant farm productivity growth), some commentators are predicting a long-term annual production shortfall of around 2% which based on the highly inelastic demand curve for food crops could lead to sustained price increases in excess of 10% a year - sufficient to double crop prices in 7 years.[6][7][8]
According to the World Resources Institute, global per capita food production has been increasing substantially for the past several decades.[9]
Contents |
Water is a necessary input for food production. Two billion people face acute water shortage this century as Himalayan glaciers melt.[10] Water shortages in China have helped lower the wheat harvest from its peak of 123 million tons in 1997 to below 100 million tons in recent years.[11] Of China's 617 cities, 300 are facing water shortages. In many, these shortfalls can be filled only by diverting water from agriculture. Farmers cannot compete economically with industry for water in China.[12] China is developing a grain deficit even with the over-pumping of its aquifers. Grain production in China peaked in 1998 with 392 million tons, but it fell below 350 million tons in 2000, 2001, and 2002 and has been falling since. The annual deficits have been filled by drawing down the country's extensive grain reserves and now has been forced to turn to depend on the world grain market.[13] Some predict that China will soon become the World's largest importer of grain.[14]
In Japan, Korea and Taiwan, agricultural output plummeted as industrial output rose - a combination of the loss of arable land and competing claims by industrial processes on water for irrigation.
Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan are ensuring that their own markets have wheat. To do this they have restricted exports and levied tariffs on wheat. Higher prices are not meeting any opposition from desperate buyers.[15]
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||