Empty Plates Tomorrow?

About the Book

Food and water supplies will diminish during the 21st century. Environmental degradation will cut crop yields. The end of cheap oil will raise the costs of industrial farming. Global warming, fanned by carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, is already altering climatic zones and weather patterns, creating new dangers for farmers.

Empty Plates Tomorrow? considers the global outlook for food production, with detailed examples from two contrasting nations. Firstly, Wales, where globalisation has made environmentally-friendly mixed farming totally uneconomic, and secondly Cuba, where in the 1990s the socialist government promoted urban farms to overcome hunger, but has since drawn back from promoting food self-sufficiency in favour of using cheap oil from Venezuela to fuel industrial growth. The oil will not last forever. It may not last more than 30 or 40 years. In coming decades the fossil energy to make synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, and to power farm machinery and freight vehicles, will have diminished to an uncertain trickle. We will not be able to take anything for granted: not fresh water, not rainfall, not even the land we live on if it is anywhere near sea level, because melting glaciers will pour vast quantities of water into the oceans. A hotter world will make farming hugely more difficult. We can take some steps to moderate the impact of these threats to our food security, including re-localising food production to minimise food miles, and returning to organic farming to cut applications of energy-guzzling synthetic fertilisers and pesticides. More of us will need to work in agriculture, and all of us will have to slash the amount of energy we use. Empty Plates Tomorrow? highlights the damaging interactions between fossil fuel extraction, industrialisation, environmental pollution, climate change, and political and business power, but also points to the vital role of individual pioneers who can transform public opinion.

About the Author

The author is a graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, has a master's degree from the Open University and a doctorate from Manchester Metropolitan University. She lives in rural West Wales.

Dodd Racher & Partners provides business and economic analysis and forecasting.