Hard on the heels of Krugman's recent column, connecting global warming with large-scale food shortages, comes this news:
HONG KONG — The United Nations’ food agency issued an alert on Tuesday warning that a severe drought was threatening the wheat crop in China, the world’s largest wheat producer, and resulting in shortages of drinking water for people and livestock.The state-run news agency is calling this the "worst drought in 60 years":
China has been essentially self-sufficient in grain for decades, for national security reasons. Any move by China to import large quantities of food in response to the drought could drive international prices even higher than the record levels recently reached.
“China’s grain situation is critical to the rest of the world — if they are forced to go out on the market to procure adequate supplies for their population, it could send huge shock waves through the world’s grain markets,” said Robert S. Zeigler, the director general of the International Rice Research Institute in Los Baños, Philippines.
Shandong province has seen only 12 millimeters of rain since last September, fifteen percent of the normal level.In another report from the same source, Shandong province, "one of the country's major grain producers, is bracing for its worst drought in 200 years."
The Chinese, with deep currency reserves, can buy what they need, but with low inventories, the effect on prices could be devastating:
World wheat prices are already surging, and have been widely cited as one reason for protests in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world.In yet another attempt to show how climate trends (as opposed to climate events) finger global warming as the culprit, Krugman offers this high-school freshman explanation. Click through; this is a very clear explanation. And very scary.
GP
