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February 11, 2009 (LPAC)--The current drought in China and California, mark the fact that now harvests are threatened by bad weather, and lack of water infrastructure, in both Northern and Southern Hemisphere farm regions at the same time. This was not so over the past 18 months, when production in the Northern Hemisphere grain belts--China, Russia, France, the U.S. and Canada, somewhat "made up for" the drought losses down under in Australia, Argentina and Brazil. No longer. Add to this the impact of the farm credit crisis, commodity speculation and other factors associated with the financial collapse, and the makings of a food catastrophe are at hand.

This year's world grain production (all types, for July 2008 to June, 2009) is forecast by the U.S. Department of Agriculture at 2,223 million metric tons, which it considers being on a "neutral" path of rising somewhat from 2,122 mmt in 2007/8, and up from 2,005 mmt in 2006/7. This is the worse-than-typical bunkum, released today in the USDA's monthly "World Supply and Demand Estimate Report." First, world grain output needs to be doubled to be sufficient for consumption and reserves. Secondly, the persisting lack of water, and other problems in agriculture mean that losses on the level of famine are in the works. The International Grains Council, for example, forecasts a 5-percent drop in wheat in the next crop year, 2009-2010, over this year.

Two updates:

* China, the world's biggest producer and consumer of wheat, had over 40 percent of its winter wheat crop acreage, in the northern and central regions, parched by the lack of rain or snow from November until last weekend. Now some showers, and government emergency irrigation measures, may relieve the situation somewhat, according to announcements by government officials yesterday. But losses are inevitable.

* California. The Central Valley, one of the world's leading food-producing regions, is in the grip of severe drought, in which farmers are leaving two-thirds or more of their fields fallow for lack of water. An estimated 50,000 farm-workers will be out of work this year in the Valley. California is in the third year of drought; its reservoir levels are at barely 20 percent of capacity. Besides some high-yield irrigated grains, this region is a world-class producer of nuts, fruits and row-crop vegetables. To make matters worse, scarce water is being denied to farmers because of a green-fascist lawsuit, upheld by a Fresno Federal judge, guaranteeing water to a minnow considered endangered, the Delta Smelt.

What is called for, is an infrastructure mobilization in the scarce-water regions, for the nuclear-powered desalination operations, and the water diversion systems to simply provide the man-made "natural" water volumes to add to the resource base. It is estimated that the water required to produce food for one person for one day is 2000-5000 litres.

Instead of this approach to creating resources, there is an intense campaign underway to coerce nations to "manage" scarce water supplies. This is part of the countdown to the World Water Forum in Istanbul March 16-22. This will be the fifth such water summit, with 60 nations pledged to attend. By "managing" water, is meant, rationing-it-by-pricing, "sharing" it, etc. In other words, starvation and death.