section_path: Risk of future famine
section_name: Risk of future famine
paragraph_text: Risk of future famine
  
  The Guardian reports that, as of 2007, approximately 40% of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded. If current trends of soil degradation continue in Africa, the continent might be able to feed just 25% of its population by 2025, according to UNU 's Ghana-based Institute for Natural Resources in Africa. As of late 2007, increased farming for use in biofuels, along with world oil prices at nearly $100 a barrel, has pushed up the price of grain used to feed poultry and dairy cows and other cattle, causing higher prices of wheat (up 58%), soybean (up 32%), and maize (up 11%) over the year. In 2007 Food riots took place in many countries across the world. An epidemic of stem rust, which is destructive to wheat and is caused by race Ug99, has in 2007 spread across Africa and into Asia.
  
  Beginning in the 20th century, nitrogen fertilizers, new pesticides, desert farming, and other agricultural technologies began to be used to increase food production, in part to combat famine. Between 1950 and 1984, as the Green Revolution influenced agriculture world grain production increased by 250%. Developed nations have shared these technologies with developing nations with a famine problem. However, as early as 1995, there were signs that these new developments may contribute to the decline of arable land (e.g. persistence of pesticides leading to soil contamination, salt accumulation due to irrigation, erosion).
  
  In 1994, David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell University, and Mario Giampietro, senior researcher at the National Research Institute on Food and Nutrition (INRAN), estimated the maximum U.S. population for a sustainable economy at 200 million.
  
  According to geologist Dale Allen Pfeiffer, coming decades could see rising food prices without relief and massive starvation on a global level. Water deficits, which are already spurring heavy grain imports in numerous smaller countries, may soon do the same in larger countries, such as China or India. The water tables are falling in many countries (including Northern China, the US, and India) due to widespread overconsumption. Other countries affected include Pakistan, Iran, and Mexico. This will eventually lead to water scarcity and cutbacks in grain harvest. Even while overexploiting its aquifers, China has developed a grain deficit, contributing to the upward pressure on grain prices. Most of the three billion people projected to be added worldwide by mid-century will be born in countries already experiencing water shortages.
  
  After China and India, there is a second tier of smaller countries with large water deficits – Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Mexico, and Pakistan. Four of these already import a large share of their grain. Only Pakistan remains marginally self-sufficient. But with a population expanding by 4 million a year, it will also soon turn to the world market for grain. According to a UN climate report, the Himalayan glaciers that are the principal dry-season water sources of Asia's biggest rivers – Ganges, Indus, Brahmaputra, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween and Yellow – could disappear by 2350 as temperatures rise and human demand rises. Approximately 2.4 billion people live in the drainage basin of the Himalayan rivers. India, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar could experience floods followed by severe droughts in coming decades. In India alone, the Ganges provides water for drinking and farming for more than 500 million people.
  
  Evan Fraser, a geographer at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, explores the ways in which climate change may affect future famines. To do this, he draws on a range of historic cases where relatively small environmental problems triggered famines as a way of creating theoretical links between climate and famine in the future. Drawing on situations as diverse as the Great Famine of Ireland, a series of weather induced famines in Asia during the late 19th century, and famines in Ethiopia during the 1980s, he concludes there are three "lines of defense" that protect a community's food security from environmental change. The first line of defense is the agro-ecosystem on which food is produced: diverse ecosystems with well managed soils high in organic matter tend to be more resilient. The second line of defense is the wealth and skills of individual households: If those households affected by bad weather such as drought have savings or skills they may be able to do all right despite the bad weather. The final line of defense is created by the formal institutions present in a society. Governments, churches, or NGOs must be willing and able to mount effective relief efforts. Pulling this together, Evan Fraser argues that if an ecosystem is resilient enough, it may be able to withstand weather-related shocks. But if these shocks overwhelm the ecosystem's line of defense, it is necessary for the household to adapt using its skills and savings. If a problem is too big for the family or household, then people must rely on the third line of defense, which is whether or not the formal institutions present in a society are able to provide help. Evan Fraser concludes that in almost every situation where an environmental problem triggered a famine you see a failure in each of these three lines of defense. Hence, understanding how climate change may cause famines in the future requires combining both an assessment of local socio-economic and environmental factors along with climate models that predict where bad weather may occur in the future.
  
  The COVID-19 pandemic, alongside lockdowns and travel restrictions, has prevented movement of aid and greatly impacted food production. As a result, several famines are forecast, which the United Nations called a crisis "of biblical proportions", or "hunger pandemic". This pandemic, in conjunction with the 2019-20 locust infestations and several ongoing armed conflicts, is predicted to form the worst series of famines since the Great Chinese Famine, affecting between 10 and 20 percent of the global population in some way.
  
  Western nations suspended humanitarian aid to Afghanistan following the Taliban 's takeover of the country in August 2021. The United States has frozen about $9 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central banks, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars held in U.S. bank accounts. In October 2021, more than half of Afghanistan's 39 million people faced an acute food shortage. On 11 November 2021, the Human Rights Watch reported that Afghanistan is facing widespread famine due to collapsed economy and broken banking system. The UN World Food Programme has also issued multiple warnings of worsening food insecurity.