Recent newspaper articles from New Straits Times (4 Feb. 2011) and The Star (Feb. 7, 2011) highlighted that world food prices in January this year have risen to levels even higher than that in mid 2008. Recent food riots on the streets of Tunisia have recently brought down the Tunisian government. And similar food protests have started in Jordan, Algeria, Morocco, and Egypt.

Such scenes are frighteningly a replay of the food crisis in 2008. Several countries around the world back then such as Egypt, Haiti, Mexico, Burkina Faso, Somalia, Mozambique, Indonesia, Philippines, India, and Pakistan experienced street riots and rallies by their respective citizens protesting on high food and fuel prices. At the peak of the food crisis in mid 2008, food prices skyrocketed by between 100 to 200% in just a spate of two years.

News about the recent global financial crisis might have overshadowed news about the high food prices, but it would be wrong to insinuate that the food crisis has somehow been resolved. Far from it. The crisis of high food prices has never left us.  Although food prices have dipped since 2008, they remain worryingly high, and, as revealed by recent news reports, food prices have steadily increased again.

From the FAO website, I obtained the world food prices for several essential food items. Plotting their prices for 1990 to 2010, I obtained the following three charts.

These charts show two trends. Firstly, prices for food items prior to 2000 generally fell every year between 1990 to 1999. Secondly, since 2000, prices for all food items have instead increased, peaking in 2008. Both these trends are particularly evident when the average annual change in food prices for the period 1990-99 and 2000-10 are plotted as follows.

Prior to 2000, the overall food price decreases by an average of 1.6% per year. Since 2000, however, the overall food price increases by an average of 5.9% per year. Likewise, since 2000, prices for meat, cereals, oils, dairy, and sugar increase every year by an average of 3.2, 6.8, 8.3, 9.4, and 13.1%, respectively. If these trends persist, food items by 2020 would be about two times more expensive than today.

But what are causing escalating food prices? Unfortunately, if you ask some agriculture lecturers here at my university, the reasons given for the high food prices are food hoarding (by food suppliers) and natural disasters (such as floods and wild fires that decimate crops over a large area). Though these reasons are valid, they are only short term causes of high food prices.

Instead, the causes for the persistent, long term high food prices are: 1) over dependency on fossil fuels by agriculture, 2) falling crop productivity, 3) increasing world population, 4) increasing demand for meat, 5) climate change, and 6) competition between biofuel crops and food crops.

Over dependency on fossil fuels

Fossil fuels (such as coal, gas, and petrol) are the lifeblood of the world’s economy. Agriculture, like any industry, depends strongly on fossil fuels mainly in two ways: 1) heavy reliance on fertilizers and pesticides to increase and protect crop yields, and 2) transportation to process and market agricultural products.

Production of fertilizers and pesticides require large amounts of energy from fossil fuels. Nitrogen fertilizers, for example, require huge amounts of heat and pressure to convert the very stable nitrogen gas into plant-usable forms of ammonium nitrate and urea. And the energy needed to generate that required high amount of heat and pressure is derived from fossil fuels.

In a farm, typically one-third of its production cost is due to the purchase of fertilizers and pesticides. So, it is no wonder then that when the price of fossil fuels increase, food production cost would likewise increase and in turn, cause high food prices. Agriculture’s dependency on fertilizers and pesticides show no signs of abating.

The use of fertilizers in the world increased by 55% from 1971 to 2007. Malaysia, however, saw a much higher growth rate of fertilizer use by 66% in just a period of ten years from 1995 to 2005, making Malaysia one of the fastest users of fertilizers in the world.

Moreover, pesticide use in the world grows by between 2 to 3% annually, whereas Malaysia by a higher annual rate of between 3 to 9% per year. The world sprays an average of 2 kg of pesticide active ingredient per hectare. Malaysia, however, sprays ten times more than the world average: a whooping 23 kg of active ingredient per hectare.

Inefficient food distribution system is another reason why agriculture depends strongly on fossil fuels. Consequently, food items travel huge distances from the farm to the processing plant, to the market, and finally to the consumer homes. In the US, for example, grapes, broccoli, and asparagus travel an average of about 2,000 miles to reach their consumers.

The world price of crude oil has been increasingly steadily since 2000, and forecasts expect the price of crude oil to hit and even exceed USD100 per barrel within a year. With higher fuel prices, food prices would no doubt increase in tandem.

Falling crop productivity

The Green Revolution in the late 1960s and 1970s brought huge jumps in world crop yields. Wheat and rice yields in India, for example, jumped by a spectacular 200% with the introduction of high-yielding crop varieties. From a starving nation that depended on world aid for its food,  India is now one of the largest exporter of rice and wheat in the world. In Mexico, wheat yields increased by a fantastic 500% compared to yields the country used to obtain prior to the Green Revolution.

Because of the success of Green revolution, world grain yields increased impressively throughout the 1970s and 1980s. To many, the problem of world food shortages appeared to have been solved – and food prices fell. Today, however, grain yield increases are no longer as impressive as before. Before 1984, for instance, total grain production increased 3% per year. Now, it is increases by an average of only 1.6%. In 1961-1980, the annual yield increase for rice, wheat, and maize were 2.1, 3.2, and 2.7%, respectively. But today, the annual yield increase for rice, wheat, and maize have fallen to 1.3, 1.7, and 2.2%, respectively.

Even though the world uses increasingly more fertilizers every year (as discussed previously), crop yields are not increasing at the same impressive rates as before. Experts are beginning to believe that we may have reached the plants’ photosynthetic and physiological limits. In other words, adding increasingly more fertilizers  only continues to strain the plant’s capability to produce increasingly more yields. Worryingly, what the world agriculture is experiencing now appears to be the saturation or near saturation of crop yields.

Increasing world population

World population currently stands at nearly 7 billion, and it is expected to hit 9 billion in 2050. In 1984, grain production per person peaked at 346 kg. Today, it has fallen to less than 300 kg per person. Based on current world growth trends in population, grain production, and food demands,  it is expected that grain production per person will continue to fall to 247 kg in 2020 and to less than 180 kg in 2050.

Increasing demand for meat

Not all food that is produced are for human consumption. About one-third of the grains that are produced in the world are diverted from human consumption to animal feed. For every 1 kg of beef, pork, chicken, and fish requires 7, 4, 2, and 1 kg of grain feed, respectively.

Why are part of our grains being fed to animals? Grains are rich in energy, so feeding grains (in particular maize) to animals quickens the animals’ growth rates. So, when the demand of meat increases, increasingly more animals are raised and increasingly more grains are diverted from human consumption to animal feed. This causes increasingly less grains to be available for human consumption, which would, in turn, escalate food prices.

The world is consuming more meat than before. This is partly due the widely established fact that the wealthier a person is, the more meat the person consumes. In 1970, for example, the average person in China consumed 4 kg of meat a year. The growing prosperity in China (double digit economic growth rate for over a decade) has seen that the average person in China in 2008 consuming 49 kg of meat a year, an increase by 12 times. In the same period, meat intake per person per year in the US and Europe increased by about 1.5 times. Malaysia, likewise, sees the same trend. Chicken, beef, and fish consumption in Malaysia have increased by 141, 120, and 100%, respectively, from 1985 to 2000. On the whole, the world meat intake per person per year from 1950 to 2000 doubled from 17 to 38 kg.

Climate change

According to IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change), the world is experiencing warmer temperatures by between 0.13 to 0.23 degree Celsius per decade. Specifically, Malaysia experiences increasing temperature by 0.19 degree Celsius per decade.

The increased in temperature is brought about by increased emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere which entrap increasingly more heat on Earth. Before the pre-Industrial period (1750), atmospheric CO2 levels were at 275 ppm (parts per million). Today, CO2 levels are at 389 ppm, increasing at a rate of 1.7 ppm per year. CO2 levels today are at the highest in the last 400,000 years. For every 40 ppm increase in CO2 level brings about 1 degree Celsius increase in air temperature.

Greater temperatures are often detrimental to crop yields. However, because plants require CO2 in photosynthesis, greater CO2 levels would increase the photosynthesis rate and in turn increase crop yields.

So, it is possible that the negative effects of higher temperatures be counteracted by the positive effects of higher CO2 levels on crop yields? The effect of climate change on crop yields is actually much more complex than studying just these two factors (temperature and CO2). Nevertheless, model simulations reveal that crops grown in Malaysia such as rice, rubber, and cocoa are detrimentally sensitive to climate change. Rice, for example, is predicted to have reduced yields by 9 to 10% for every 1 degree Celsius increase in air temperature despite the beneficial effects of higher CO2 levels.

Other model forecasts show that overall crop yields in countries in the lower latitudes, especially those in the tropical regions, would see reduced crop yields. Malaysia, for example, is expected to see an overall fall of crop yields by between 10 to 15% by the end of this century due to climate change.

As mentioned earlier, greater levels of CO2 would increase crop yields, but recent field experiments have shown that the beneficial effects of CO2 may have been overrated. When CO2 levels were first increased, crops initially responded by giving higher yields. However, after prolonged exposure to high CO2 levels, these crops responded increasingly less to higher CO2 levels. In other words, these crops adapted and became less sensitive to the higher levels of CO2. In addition, higher CO2 levels lowered the nutrient content in the crop yields. So, higher CO2 levels may increase crop yields, but the drawback may be crop yields of lower (poorer) quality.

Competition between biofuel crops and food crops

Increasing crude oil prices are pushing up the demand for biofuels. Currently, biofuels are obtained from the same crops grown as food. So, increased demand for biofuels encourages more farmers to grow increasingly more crops for biofuel purposes. In other words, less food becomes available because crops are grown for biofuel, not for food. This competition to use crops either for biofuel or food are driving food shortages and pushing up food prices.

Large amounts of biofuel are needed. For instance, the amount of maize required to fill up an SUV (Sports Utility Vehicle) fuel tank just once is equivalent to feeding a person in Africa for a year. Also consider this: planes running on 100% oil palm biofuel would require two oil palm trees for every 1 km flight. Moreover, to support the world aviation industry for a year, the amount of oil palm biofuel required has to come from a total oil palm land area that is larger than the whole of Malaysia.

Closing remarks

The world is simply not producing enough food. World demand for food increases at a rate of 2.5% every year, but grain yields are only increasing at a lower rate of 1.6% a year. Clearly, we have a problem.

Agriculture today faces enormous challenges. It must find ways to increase food production and yet do this without destroying the natural support systems in the environment and without causing further climate change. And even if crop productivity were to improve further, an additional 400 to 500 million hectares of agricultural land are needed between today and 2020.

There is no silver bullet. Tackling high food prices would require an assortment of new and innovative technologies, methods, and thinking. So, in the meantime, high food prices are here to stay — and most likely for the long term.