There is no doubt that the current global financial system is detrimental to the poor, the environment and to ourselves, but the remaining fact is that this system is still our responsibility. The effect of climate change on the food system is noticeable in terms of rising food prices.
Canada Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada reports that “Canada and the United States enjoy the largest bilateral trading relationship in the world, with two-way trade in goods and services reaching $649 billion last year.” Agriculture and agri-food bilateral trade accounted for $35 billion of this total.
As of 2010, with a population of just over 34 million, 61% of Canadians are employed and out of that percentage,just below 10% of Canadian jobs (2 million) depend on trade with the U.S. In addition approximately eight million Americans depend on trade with Canada.
Furthermore, the increase in prices of necessities such as grain is a consequence of reduction in output due to apparent issues such as our changing weather.
Canada places 7th among the largest wheat producers of the world, earning the highest of all of Canada’s exported agricultural products amounting to approximately $5.4 billion in revenues.
Canada also places as the second-largest wheat exporter in the world after the United States. Increasingly over the past several years, Canada has been experiencing a tremendous reduction in wheat growth due to wet land, which was also a central issue to wheat production this past May.
Land is also an essential component to a country’s security of its resources when it comes to food scarcity, a progressively growing concern in first world countries, affecting food prices.
“Investor” countries have decided to promote deals such as “land grabs”, which are government-owned investments central to the dominance of private sector investments in the production of bio-fuel industry.Bio-fuel investments have been the key driving force behind initiatives portrayed as “food security concerns”.
The process of bio-fuel production is not only destructive to the environment through the increase of carbon emissions due to deforestation for land space, but is also an issue for possible water contamination through chemical infusion. Bio-fuel production consists of two major groupings of fuels achieved through the process of hydrolysis and fermentation in warm environment. Bioethanol is an alcohol created through the fermentation of carbohydrates in starch crops such as sugar cane and corn, and Biodiesel is made by causing a chemical reaction between vegetable oil and animal fat-based lipids and alcohol. The final production process yields results of ethanol and carbon dioxide.
Although governments promote finding “alternative” energy sources, the success of preserving energy without compromising our environment is still in question.
Policies are in place through taxation, banks, and sectoral legislation on land, just to name a few of some of the policies that make these government investments possible. The panic over the depletion of renewable energy sources along with aims of securing energy to maintain the current rate of energy consumption has lead governments toresort to such extraction methods as an increasing option for future investments.
International investors purchase hundreds of thousands of hectares of land in Latin America, Central Asia, South East Asia, and Africa for agricultural business production which not only deprive these citizens of their land, but also depletes their land.
Newly arising government policies are deeply rooted in the perpetuation of the current toxic economic system. A reformation of the global food system is needed and is possible starting with supporting local farmers and food growers. As a people we need to take back the system that governs us and take responsibility for what’s happening to our world.
If you’re interested in the intersections of Food, Climate and Gender and how they interplay in our global system, you might consider participating in a new KWIC/OXFAM working group that currently meets every Wednesday at 11am in the KWIC Global Education and Resource Centre, located in the Environmental Science Building, Room B101.
