As stocks run out and harvests fail, the world faces its worst crisis for 30 years
By Geoffrey Lean
 Food supplies are shrinking alarmingly around the globe, plunging the world into its greatest crisis for more than 30 years. New figures show that this year's harvest will fail to produce enough to feed everyone on Earth, for the sixth time in the past seven years.
| Just in time for me to go on that diet ... |
Humanity has so far managed by eating its way through stockpiles built up in better times - but these have now fallen below the danger level.
Food prices have already started to rise as a result, and threaten to soar out of reach of many of the 4.2 billion people who live in the world's most vulnerable countries. And the new "green" drive to get cars to run on biofuels threatens to make food even scarcer and more expensive. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which produce the world's two main forecasts of the global crop production, both estimate that this year's grain harvest will fall for the second successive year. The FAO is still compiling its latest crop forecast - due to be published next month - but told The Independent on Sunday late last week that it looked like barely exceeding 2 billion tons, down from 2.38 billion last year, and 2.68 billion in 2004, although the world's appetite has continued to grow as its population rises.
| So how much grain do we need? We can make a little less ethanol and pull back payments we make to farmers to idle land. I see opportunity here, but then again, I'm a capitalist. |
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