Securing the global food supply

The food riots of recent years look set to become more frequent as short-run seasonal problems intersect with a raft of long-run demand pressures to drive prices higher. This year the pressures appear to be greater than those that led to the riots in 2008, prompting the World Bank to warn of "dire consequences for poverty".

Higher food prices have played a role in the unrest in the Middle East and North Africa and, while this has seen dictators toppled, these factors could also destabilise democracies in Australia's region. The Food and Agricultural Organisation says in its latest report that prices are set to remain "stubbornly high" into next year.

In the 1990s and until about 2005, grain and meat prices were largely in the doldrums as rising productivity across the world boosted food production. It's no coincidence the food price boom since 2005 has mirrored the price spikes for coal, iron ore and oil; the modernisation of Asia that demands more minerals and energy also goes with higher grain-fed protein and calorie consumption.

Poor harvests in Russia and North America last year have contributed to dwindling stock levels and supply shortages for wheat and other grain commodities. This has pushed global prices for grain above the peak reached in 2008 just before the global financial crisis, according to FAO data.

The Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences' chief commodity analyst Jammie Penm tells Inquirer that three broad trends are behind higher food prices. First, agricultural productivity growth has shown signs of slowing in many producing countries, including Australia's broadacre farms, and this is an "even more important factor in the presence of climate change". Second, competition for land and other factors of production are becoming more intense, thus contributing to slower output growth. Third, rising income levels in emerging economies, especially those in Asia, will lead to higher food demand, such as for meat, which in turn puts pressure on grain through stock feed.

These factors are all putting upward pressure on prices and they make global markets prone to experiencing price spikes when short-term supply is disrupted.

Penm says Australia doesn't have a food security problem, given that we export about 60 per cent of our food production, but clearly problems are emerging in poor countries where rising prices create hardship. Many of the world's poorest, especially the almost one billion people living on less than $US1.25 a day, spend most of their income on food.

Sydney Urban Growth and Decline: Student observations updated ...

Last November I published the first of these wordles, by way of summarising the language used by my students who had written reports on a field study project conducted earlier in the year. My students completed a field study around the Sydney Harbour foreshore from Darling Harbour to Circular Quay.

This was part of a major unit of work within the syllabus topic: Issues in the Australian Environment. A description of my approach is found here .

After the students had completed a report on this activity, as part of an assessment task, I merged two student reports as the base document for a Wiki on urban processes. Both papers are now published on an urban proceses wiki for further refinement by all students who participated.

Here’s a wordle based on the two papers.

Not long ago we repeated the field study.  My feeling is that this years students really understood the issues at a deeper level than last years. Here’s the wordle from the two best students reports.

Why a stronger result this year Several factors operated to produce a stronger result overall, this year. I think the first of these was my own confidence. Last year the field study was run as part of a DER Research project. I was probably over ambitious in what I attempted to achieve and also less familiar with the software and what students might be able to achieve with it. Last year there was also an extraordinary amount of time pressure on the process. Another critically important factor was that all assessment was reduced to pen and paper work whereas this year a significant component of the assessment was digital. This last change reflects changing culture within the school and the increasing prominence of digital approaches, thanks to the DER 1:1 laptop program.

Scope of the Project This report focuses on indicators and impacts of urban growth and decline identified in a field study that was undertaken along the foreshore of Sydney Harbour. Participants investigated a variety of the geographical issues related to change in land use along the foreshore of Sydney Harbour how they are being resolved. Specifically the field study aimed to answer a set of research questions concerning: • the ways in which impacts are being addressed.

With these questions as a focus participants gathered data at four separate locations: Pyrmont Bridge and King St Wharf; Millers Point; Walsh Bay; and Circular Quay West.

Slums, Urban Decline And Revitalisation (pug-7)

The challenge of slums, global report on human settlements, 2003

Urban decline and the future of American cities

Modelling urban development with geographical information systems and cellular automata

New Zealand geographer