Japan’s Hunger Becomes a Dire Warning for Other Nations
April 22nd, 2008One-straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka
Via: BusinessDay:
“In the past, Japan was a rich country with a powerful yen that could easily buy cheap imports such as wheat, corn and soybeans,” said Mr Shibata, who directs the Marubeni Research Institute in Tokyo. “But with enormous competition from the booming Chinese and Indian economies, that’s changed forever. You also need to take into account recent developments, including the damage to crops caused by drought and other disasters in exporting countries like Australia,” where the value of wheat exports has tumbled from $3.49 billion to $2.77 billion in the past three years.
The situation has been compounded by a surge in demand for bio-fuels such as ethanol, made from maize, encouraging farmers around the world to divert their efforts away from wheat and barley and into maize, further driving up prices.
Arguably Japan’s biggest concern, however, is its weakening ability to sustain its population with domestic produce. In 2006 the country’s self-sufficiency rate fell to 39%, according to the Agriculture Ministry. It was only the second time since the ministry began keeping records in 1960 that the population derived less than 40% of its daily calorie intake from domestically grown food.
Shinichi Shogenji, dean of the University of Tokyo’s graduate school of agricultural and life sciences, said Japan’s meat consumption had increased by 900% since 1955, in part because expanding incomes had enabled families to supplement the sparse national diet of rice, fish and miso soup with more Western-style food.
This trend, combined with rapid ageing and declining rural populations, had placed the country’s self-sufficiency at a perilously low level, Professor Shogenji said.
“Japan’s meat consumption had increased by 900% since 1955, in part because expanding incomes had enabled families to supplement the sparse national diet of rice, fish and miso soup with more Western-style food.”
Many, many news articles have been focusing on Food As Fuel being the driving force behind rising prices, however, one of the studies I’ve recently seen (can’t find now) claims only about 5% of the rise in grain prices can be attributed to Food As Fuel. However, the rise in meat consumption in China over the last year accounted for 85% of the rise. Considering that it takes 10 bushels of grains to feed animals for every 1 bushel equivalent of calories for meat, even a small increase in meat consumption will have a multiplier effect on grains. Our current food shortages aren’t due to Food As Fuel, it’s due to the Chinese eating more meat.
Feeding grains to cows is dumb, regardless of how many people are eating meat.
But most beef in the U.S. these days is produced on an assembly line basis in agri-factories. So obviously, they will be grain fed. The answer of course is to only buy beef produced by farmers with grazing cattle. But try telling that to all the McWhopper eaters, who have been scarfing down hamburgers that taste like they were produced in a test tube for so long that, smothered in enough guck, they taste good to them …
But try telling that to all the McWhopper eaters…
No thanks. The zombie consumer death urge is far too strong. I’d be wasting my time.
We often hear the arguement that we could feed more people and save lives if everyone became vegetarians. Aside from the guilt trip this attempts to lay on people and aside from the fact that some of us get unwell if we don’t eat meat there’s an even greater problem.
It’s the same problem as finding a new energy source to replace oil gives us – if we get more resources we’ll just keep going until we use them us as well.
A few decades back we had the ‘green’ revolution where chemicals were used to increase the amount of food that our dying topsoil could produce – and it worked very well – it undoubtably saved lives *then* but the world’s population has continued to grow and now we have an even greater number of people facing certain starvation. If we all converted to become vegetarians it’s a sure bet that our insane culture would just continue on merely for another generation until an even greater number of people discovered the cupboard was bare.
It’s also worth noting that the only consistently sustainable cultures our planet has produced (so called primitive cultures) usually are meat.
The belief that vegetarianism is somehow related to saving the planet is just about as dumb as feeding grains to cows.
The vanity dieters deserve the McDeath burger zombies. They’re great for each other.
Great comments all…but what we REALLY need to start doing now (and this never should have been a problem to begin with) is STOP wasting food already prepared! Stop throwing away older leftovers and either store them before they get too old or eat them. You remember what your mother used to say when you didn’t want to eat whatever: “Think of the starving people in China (or wherever).”
As for factory farm cattle etc., they do eat grains but they also eat garbage and other animal scraps…but even range fed cattle eat some grains, especially out here in dry west Texas (and other dry areas of the southwest) where it is acres per cow not cows per acre.
As for overpopulation, that only applies to some areas. Japan is definitely overpopulated (and being islands they do have a conundrum), however Canada, Russia, and even the US in some areas might even be underpopulated. Population is not the problem…agenda-driven scarcity (not actual scarcity) is.
I have discussed what grass fed beef cattle means with a coworker who grew up on a farm in northwestern PA. He said that cattle in PA need to be sheltered during the winter, and that they need to be fed something- and that his family fed their beef grain.
If the cattle need shelter (can’t forage) what would one feed them, if not grain during the winter? Is hay sufficient nourishment for cattle that need shelter in the winter months?
@ Eileen
In a word, hay.
When I talk to some kiwi farmers about the dependence on grains for raising dairy and beef cows in the U.S., they think I’m joking. In NZ, it’s pretty simple: The stocking rates for the farms are determined by how much grass the farmers can grow. They don’t really have the option to use grains because it’s just not economic.
“Make hay when the sun shines.”
Kevin,
Sweet. Thank you for your answer.
I guess someday I’ll have to educate this gun toting, chew chomping yankee as to the one thought thinking.
I guess that means I can raise cattle.
I love it. Make hay. That has a few connotations. Hahaha
Oops, for those who are a little confused by the last sentence in my comment above, here it is the way I meant it to be.
“It’s also worth noting that the only consistently sustainable cultures our planet has produced (so called primitive cultures) usually ATE meat.”