October 17 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

The movie below is written and directed by Peter Joseph. It is 123 min long and offers a lot of food-for-thought. We welcome your comments.

Posted in Health Preparedness, Economic Issues, In The News, Identity, Security Measures, Environment, Food Security, Water Issues, Politics | No Comments »

October 9 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

The number of articles around the world that describe people’s reactions to the mounting financial crisis is on the rise. As the number of private and corporate bankruptcies grow so will the pressure on governments and societies affected by the crisis. The situation is of particular concern in the Northern Hemisphere given the approaching winter months and possible disruptions to just in time food deliveries.

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April 23 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

Forget oil prices; shortages of food, and in some places water, are rapidly becoming serious concerns. The bubble that is our Western world often prevents us from seeing the dangers posed by our system; distracted by fears of job loss, unmanageable personal debt and an unending supply of mind-numbing entertainment pumped into our homes through the intravenous that is mass media, we can’t see what difficulties our way come. Step away from immediate and local concerns for a second, scan the international headlines on an internet search and suddenly some alarming trends become apparent: food prices are soaring, the hungry are rioting and some food producing countries are moving towards self-protectionism.

So long as there is processed food across the street in some store’s freezer or selling products in our market is still more lucrative than in the country of origin, why have grounds for concern, right? How long, however, can economics be expected to trump survival; our post-Cold War mentality leaves us still believing in a capitalist system as if it were religion, some divine law of existence that will neither change nor disappear. It’s unthinkable for most people to even conceive that our current system could be any other than what it is. Indeed, just broach the topic with someone and prepare for a touchy backlash of, what else could it be: a dictatorship? communism? what else is there? 

This inability to accept that systems come and systems go leaves us incredibly vulnerable to change. Lacking creativity to even imagine that there should be change renders us incapable of ever preparing for it.  

As an industrialized society we moved en masse to urban centres. We bought into a system - buying food from a network of stores, taking water from a network of pipes, wearing clothes mass produced in distant lands - and in the process became entirely dependent. If suddenly there was a break in the system and we no longer had access to the things that we need, what would happen?

Despite the comparative luxuries some of us have heretofore enjoyed in the West, the time has for us to reconsider the viability of our system. Hopefully, this will occur before the current food shortages, which are only just beginning, truly come to affect us - which inevitably will happen given how connected the system, upon which we as individuals have become so dependent, has become to the wider global network.

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March 4 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

At last, a Western politician is aware of the looming threat posed by poor food security planning. Britain’s David Cameron is apparently pressing for measures that would foster the local production of food. His reasoning, which is quite correct, is that with increasing demands on food due to consumption and some types of biofuel production countries which depend upon other regions to feed them might find their citizenry are a whole lot hungrier than before. This isn’t rocket science, it’s a simple numbers game - so why haven’t other leaders come to the same conclusion? 

In a country such as Canada with a limited growing season, one would think that we would have a thorough national food security policy. A plan that encourages Canadians to stockpile should something nasty like a flu pandemic hit in the dead of winter, shutting down borders and airports effectively cutting off our winter food supply. Such a plan might have supported the small family farm, a now nearly extinct mode of production, to generate produce and livestock purely for local consumption. Or it might have put limits on factory farming techniques which aren’t flexible enough to cope during emergencies and are thought to heavily pollute the environment (to say nothing of its impact on human health). Heck, maybe it would just have any old plan, something other than telling the people through commercials to be prepared for a 72-hour period? Alas, it’s the local grocery store or nothing.

Food Security, I am afraid, like Pandemic Preparedness is lost on most Westerners. Few in the West, if any, can remember a real tangible crisis which threatened their lives. A couple brushes with recessions, outbreaks of disease and water contamination do little to smarten the bureaucrats and political leaders up.  It’s all easily forgotten when in the next minute they are on to the latest issue for which none of them were prepared.

Until we step back and see the bigger picture, we will be doomed to run around after each event trying our best to cope in the aftermath. We have been fortunate in a country like Canada that none of these issues has ever really spiralled out of control, too much, at least not in living memory. How much longer can we rely on the resiliency of the international system to maintain the current status quo? 

I certainly hope we don’t find ourselves only just rethinking things at the point of starvation. 

Posted in Food Security, Politics | No Comments »

February 26 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

Associated Press has reported that “A “doomsday” seed vault built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters opened Tuesday deep within an Arctic mountain in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.” At last the big boys are preparing for serious disaster, when will it be time for the average person to shift their perspective and take some responsibility for their own survival?

Currently, the average person acquires food from local stores, without much thought, for a few days ahead. Should anything minor and temporary happen (forget nuclear fallout, this could just mean border closures or a strike) food supply in a place like Canada would be considerably disrupted - particularly in the winter as we have become increasingly dependent on imports from California, Mexico and elsewhere. The convenience and monotony of grocery store procurement has blinded many of us to the fact that systems are not impermeable to disruption or collapse. Furthermore, the more complex and centralized the system the more vulnerable it is to threats and widespread destruction, much like a domino effect - such is the nature of a system that is reliant on say a central point of food distribution that ships products out across long distances to stores agreeing to carry said produce exclusively. Attack the centre and it all falls down.

Unfortunately, most people don’t want to think about such things. Thus, it’s easier to just continue as they always have, dependent on a wider system ignorant of the dangers that such dependency creates. If only more people would entertain the possibility of these threats and make plans, (obviously not on the scale of the Norwegians,) to truly guard their own interests the world might be that much more stable.

Posted in Disasters, Food Security | No Comments »

January 22 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

The Age in Australia has published an article discussing Professor Julian Cribb’s recent report The Coming Famine. A kind thank you to Professor Cribb for sharing his report with us:

“Humanity is eating more food than it is producing.As world food prices soar to record levels, scientists are warning that global food supplies are rapidly diminishing due to water shortages, fiercer and more intense droughts, soil loss, increased land competition from crops grown for biofuel and humanity’s apparently insatiable appetite for meat.

According to leading science writer Julian Cribb, the greatest challenge this century will be to double global food production with less land, less water and less nutrients — all in drier and hotter conditions.

Speaking yesterday at a Melbourne conference, Professor Cribb said that while public awareness of climate change had grown exponentially, the world had remained relatively ignorant of the fact it was entering a prolonged period of food shortages.

According to his discussion paper, The Coming Famine, there will be about 9.3 billion people living in the world in 2050 who will eat as much food as would 13 billion people at today’s levels. The UN’s environmental program estimates global food output must rise by 110% to meet demand for food in the coming 40 years.” Click here for more.

Posted in Water Issues, Food Security | No Comments »

January 21 2008 by The Systemic Analyst.

Here is a phenomenal article that ran in the Geelong Advertiser today highlighting the limitations of “silo-view” in assessing threats. The article was written by Julian Cribb, adjunct professor at University of Technology, Sydney.

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December 13 2007 by The Systemic Analyst.

The Jerusalem Post has reported that “Desalinated water…lacks many essential plant nutrients, and is more harmful than helpful in irrigating certain crops…While water experts had long thought that desalinated water’s low mineral content was beneficial to crops, new research reveals that it actually damages plants like tomatoes, basil and certain varieties of flowers due to a lack of magnesium and calcium.”

The referenced research comes from Dr. Alon Tal of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for Desert Research on the Sede Boker campus of BGU and several other scientists published in a recent report, “Rethinking Desalinated Water Quality and Agriculture”.

Although science will undoubtedly be able to assist humans in answering our problems, there are some aspects of nature which just cannot be copied effectively. The only viable solution to our pending water crisis is to change our current approaches to water management (or waste, rather) today.

Posted in Water Issues, Food Security | No Comments »

November 1 2007 by The Systemic Analyst.

Every week International Perspectives receives Google Alerts on a variety of topics, from Russia to Food Security and many things in between. Not once have these alerts brought in notice of an article on Food Security in the Western world.

This is not to suggest that the alert itself isn’t comprehensive. Indeed, every week on any given subject there are at least 10 major news stories, and several blog postings. Notwithstanding the limitations of using English-only search terms, each story contained in the Food Security alert talks only of the problems facing developing countries, suggesting only those countries that have truly known recent hardship seem concerned with food security.

This is very alarming in the context of increasing acceptance for the concept of global warming. If, in fact, Western nations feel that global changes to the environment are not just inevitable but are already occurring, it stands to reason that topics such as food and water security might be of more interest to the media as well as leaders. Indeed, arguments over to what degree emissions should be reduced seem ludicrous in comparison to the potential impact of climate change on the food supply.

Although food, if much of what is sold in North American grocery stores is worthy of the name, is at present in abundance in Western countries how prepared are we should the climate of areas currently producing much of our food change? For example, what if California continues to experience droughts and higher temperatures? If the state hailed as the #1 food and agriculture producer in the U.S. gradually becomes an arid waste land, is there a back up plan? Are new crops being considered for the Canadian prairies should the climate there witness a permanent 5-10 degree temperature increase?

It seems unlikely that the above questions or anything similar are being asked at a high enough level in countries where centralized food processing is still being ruthlessly pursued despite being an outmoded and insecure means of production. It is regrettable that what remains of a news-reading public will be left ill-informed of the risks facing them as a result of poor Food Security planning.

If only the average person knew how important access to even a small personal supply of food might be, we might not have to worry about the follies of greater systems.

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August 6 2007 by The Systemic Analyst.

Here is an interesting clip on food security risks from The Guerilla News Network. It’s a very glitzy way to get an important message across to segments of society that otherwise might not be so interested.

There are currently over 786 million hungry people on planet Earth. And while few would deny that world hunger is one of the most important issues facing mankind today, if the solution is left to companies like Monsanto, Aventis, Dow, and DuPont, we may face even greater challenges to the security of our global ecosystem.

With the second Green Revolution well under way, the world’s food supply is slowly being transformed by a radically improvised agricultural paradigm. Genetically engineered crops have been introduced into the market without the rigorous testing that many scientists feel is required. The history is instructive:

In 1986, U.S. biotech companies began testing the first genetically engineered food products. In 1993, the FDA declared that GM food was “not inherently dangerous,” which gave a green light to biotech corporations who had been developing GM seeds. One year later, the first GM food product, Flavr Savr tomato, was released to enthusiastic U.S. consumers.

Please click here for more.

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