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In the midst of an obesity epidemic, surrounded by super-sized meals, and backed by half a century of agricultural overabundance, it’s hard to imagine the possibility of a food shortage. But while the US continues to overindulge, the rest of the world is facing a global food crisis.  The United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is organizing a special meeting this month to tackle the current instability of the global food market and the rising wheat prices that recently caused riots in some countries (and even led to protesters’ deaths in Mozambique).

Reading about this reminded me of an interesting interview I saw with one of the authors of the book Empires of Food, Evan Fraser.  The book shows how our food system is repeating the history of doomed civilizations by tracing the rise and fall of past empires. The Romans, Mesopotamians, and medieval Europeans, for example, all had agricultural systems that, much like ours, were linked to complex technology and intricate trade networks. And each of these societies eventually failed because they didn’t account for  growing population, soil erosion, and weather changes.

In the interview, Fraser stated that his biggest concern is climate change. Most empires expand in times of good weather, then fail when the weather goes bad. The Romans specialized in wheat until around 300 AD when the weather dropped and the empire collapsed. The same thing happened in medieval Europe. In the late 14th century, the warm period ended and there were huge famines.

In our case, we’re not facing cooling, but warming is just as problematic for agriculture. The current food crisis was triggered by a persistent drought in Russia, a major producer of wheat. Because of the low yield, Russia has put a ban on exporting wheat, causing wheat prices to skyrocket.  According the the UN, “Wheat prices experienced their biggest monthly rise in almost a year in August, according to the FAO’s Food Price Index, climbing by 5 per cent following persistent drought in Russia and that country’s subsequent restriction on sales.”

Interestingly, one of the first signs that things were about to go wrong in both the medieval period and the Roman period was that food prices started to rise. Demand was going up, but yields stagnated. We have a strong parallel with that today. Between 2006 and 2008, we had a threefold rise in the price of food. The price of wheat has risen faster in the last six months than at any time in the last 32 years. From 1950 to 2000, the price of food decreased every year, but since 2000, it’s been increasing. Fraser says, “Our system looks a lot like Rome in the year 250.”

And, unfortunately, all of the safeguards we’ve come up with to combat crop failure are fossil-fuel intensive.  Chemical fertilizers, irrigation systems, dams, and transportation all take energy to produce. With a rise in oil prices (which is inevitable since oil is a finite resource), these solutions will become increasingly more expensive.

Furthermore, instead of rotating our crops, we’ve started growing the same crop over and over again on the same piece of land. This very quickly strips the soil of its nutrients. (This is why crop rotation is important.) This means that our system is already very brittle and fragile, and climate change will only weaken an already weak system.

The Mesopotamians, just like other empires, grew into an extremely developed culture because their farmers produced excess food, stored it, transported it and exchanged it in the urban marketplace. They developed cities by creating irrigation canals, which allowed them to have high yields. And they made the same mistakes that we are making today: They relied heavily on food produced during good weather and they overspecialized their farms, growing only one type of crop on each field, instead of rotating them.

The soil became infertile from the monocultures and salinized as the irrigation canals left behind a deposit of salt when the water evaporated.  During a sudden hot, dry spell, the Mesopotamians irrigated the soil even more heavily. This created a short-term yield boost, but in the long term, it was unsustainable. (The drop in crop yields led to a drop in the economy, which led to a drop in tax revenues, which led to a weakened military, which led to an overthrow.)

The modern parallel with this is our usage of chemical fertilizers. It has allowed us to boost our yield temporarily, but the underlying problem of soil erosion hasn’t been fixed.

Some argue that technology, like chemical fertilizers and genetically modified crops, have helped increase our crop yield and protect us against famine.  But, Fraser explains that “highly productive varieties” actually require more water, so now even a small drought can create an extreme food shortage.

In the US, with an overabundance of food at very cheap prices, food has become a luxurious sensory experience instead of a necessity. “In order for us to produce food locally, or use fewer fertilizers, or pay better wages, we need people to be more interested in what they’re eating and where it’s coming from. We need them to be invested in food without trivializing it,” says Fraser.

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Breakfast: Smoothie with a peach, a banana, and almond milk.

Lunch: Black bean tacos from Taco Cabana

Dinner: Brussels sprouts and homemade mashed potatoes (with soy milk, olive oil, garlic, and fresh chives from my balcony)

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