Russia's agony a 'wake-up call' to the world

The heatwave in Russia that decimated the country's crops and provided the trigger for soaring food prices is a stark reminder of the vulnerability of food supplies to climate change.

Stephen Leahy

A WIND turbine on an acre of northern Iowa farmland could generate $300,000 worth of greenhouse-gas-free electricity a year. Instead, the US government pays out billions of dollars to subsidise grain for ethanol fuel that has little if any impact on global warming, according to Lester Brown.

'The smartest thing the US could do is phase out ethanol subsidies,' says Brown, the founder of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, in reference to rising food prices resulting from the unprecedented heatwave in western Russia that has decimated crops and killed at least 15,000 people.

'The lesson here is that we must take climate change far more seriously, make major cuts in emissions and fast before climate change is out of control,' Brown, one of the world's leading experts on agriculture and food, told Inter Press Service (IPS).

Average temperatures during the month of July were eight degrees Celsius above normal in Moscow, he said, noting that 'such a huge increase in temperature over an entire month is just unheard of'.

On 9 August, Moscow reached 37oC when the normal temperature for August is 21oC. It was the 28th day in a row that temperatures exceeded 30oC.

Soil moisture has fallen to levels seen only once in 500 years, says Brown. Wheat and other grain yields are expected to decline by 40% or more in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine - regions that provide 25% of the world's wheat exports. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced in early August that Russia would ban all grain exports.

Food prices will rise but how much is not known at this point, says Brown. 'What we do know, however, is that the prices of wheat, corn, and soybeans are actually somewhat higher in early August 2010 than they were in early August 2007, when the record-breaking 2007-08 run-up in grain prices began.'

Climate calamity

Emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels trap more of the sun's energy. Climate experts expected the number and intensity of heatwaves and droughts to increase as a result. In 2009, heat and fire killed hundreds in Australia during the worst drought in more than a century, which devastated the country's agriculture sector. In 2003, a European heatwave killed 53,000 people but as it occurred late in the summer crop, yields were not badly affected.

If a heatwave like Russia's were centred around the grain-producing regions near Chicago or Beijing, the impacts could be many times worse because each of these regions produces five times the amount of grain Russia does, says Brown. Such an event could result in the loss of 100 to 200 million tonnes of grain with unimaginable effects on the world's food supply.

'Russia's heatwave is a wake-up call to the world regarding the vulnerability of the global food supply,' he said.

The global climate is warming and most food crops are both heat- and drought-sensitive. Rice yields have already fallen by 10-20% over the last 25 years in parts of Thailand, Vietnam, India and China due to global warming, new research has shown. Data from 227 fully-irrigated farms that grow 'green revolution' crops show significant yield declines due to warming temperatures at night, researchers found.

'As nights get hotter, rice yields drop,' reported Jarrod Welch of the University of California at San Diego and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 9 August. Previous studies have shown this result in experimental plots, but this is the first under widespread, real-world conditions.

With such pressures on the world's food supply, it is simply wrong-headed to use 25% of US grain for ethanol as a fuel for cars, said Brown.

'Ethanol subsidies must be phased out and real cuts in carbon emissions made and urgently,' he said. - IPS                              

*Third World Resurgence No. 240/241, August-September 2010, p 35