WORLD GRAIN STOCKS FALL TO 57 DAYS OF CONSUMPTION:Grain Prices Starting to Rise

Water tables are now falling and wells are going dry in countries that contain half the world’s people, including the big three grain producers—China, India, and the United States. In China, water shortages have helped lower the wheat harvest from its peak of 123 million tons in 1997 to below 100 million tons in recent years. Water shortages are also making it more difficult for farmers in India to expand their grain harvest. In parts of the United States, such as the Texas panhandle and in western Oklahoma and Kansas, depletion of the Ogallala aquifer has forced farmers to return to lower-yield dryland farming.
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Perhaps the most dangerous threat to future food security is the rise in temperature. Among crop ecologists there is now a consensus that for each temperature rise of 1 degree Celsius above the historical average during the growing season, we can expect a 10 percent decline in grain yields. When describing weather-reduced harvests, crop analysts often refer to the crop prospect when weather returns to normal. They fail to realize that with the earth’s climate now in flux, there is no longer a norm to return to.
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