The Green Gap

In the Cold War, we feared a Missile Gap was a strategic weakness. Nowadays, we must awaken to the fact that the Green Gap is true strategic weakness: the nations whose economies will thrive in the coming years will not be those with the biggest factories, but those with the most sustainable, efficient, and ecological markets. What we require is a Strategic "Green Reserve" of ecological design to weather the coming changes that both climate and resource scarcity will force on the international economy.

Sunday 17 March 2013

More farming issues

A few links for you:

The era of cheap food may be over (overview)
If the World Bank's projections are anything like accurate, further massive productivity gains from agriculture are going to be needed over the next two decades. There will be an extra 70m mouths to feed every year, which will result in a 50% increase in demand for food by 2030. Meanwhile, the amount of arable land per person will continue its long-run downward trend.

Britain's farming crisis: 'People don't realise how tough everything is' (cost of feed due to scarcity)
So they had to turn to higher volumes of concentrates than usual, where costs have shot up too, because of grain price rises on the international markets. "Feed has gone up by £50 or £60 a tonne." With each animal consuming a couple of tonnes of concentrate a year, that's a major cost. "As a result, the milk price is still below the cost of production because of the cost of that feed."

UK farmers face disaster as 'perfect storm' strikes (environmental pressures)
Farming faces a perfect storm. Appalling weather – 2012 was the second wettest year on record in England – has coincided with disease in livestock, including bovine TB and Schmallenberg in sheep, which causes birth defects. On top of this there are commercial pressures, with retailers driving prices down because of the state of the economy, combined with the cost of animal feed needed to replace poor quality silage due to the weather, shooting up by 40%.
This summer is probably going to be pretty expensive to shop for food.

No comments:

Post a Comment