Food Security: Lessons from the Middle East

by John Coulter,

Two things stand out in regard to recent happenings in Egypt and other Middle East countries:

1.The central role that the mismatch between population size and growth, and the resource

base required for population support has played in the genesis of political unrest and

2.The failure of most of the mainstream media to investigate and explain these links.

In 1960 Egypt’s population was 27.8 million. Egypt was a net exporter of food. By 2008 population had grown to 81.7 million and Egypt was importing 40% of total food consumption and 60% of its grain requirements. Only 3% of Egypt is arable almost all along the Nile Valley and that is where most population growth has taken place. Arable land per capita is .04Ha.

Future food security looks even bleaker with population growing at 2% pa which, if continued, would give Egypt a population of 164 million in 2046.

Most readers of this Newsletter would have read then description of modern industrial agriculture as ‘the process of using land to turn oil into food’ and nothing illustrates this critical link more clearly than Egypt’s recent history. Despite declining per capita food production, Egypt was able to maintain a supply of relatively cheap food because it was a net exporter of oil. But Egyptian oil production peaked in about 1996 and since then has fallen approximately 30%. In 2006 Egypt became a net importer of oil. While Egypt was a net exporter Hosni Mubarak was able to subsidise both

food and fuel; once Egypt became a net importer of oil this was no longer possible.

In the 1980s Saudi Arabia began growing irrigated wheat across its deserts using fossil ground water and depleting aquifers which for millennia had fed desert oases. The large green irrigated circles could be seen from the window of a high flying international jet. The cost of this wheat production was approximately four times the world price and its future was clearly limited. The fossil water is rapidly disappearing and Saudi Arabia will cease wheat production in about 2015. Meanwhile, the Saudis can continue to buy wheat and other foods on international markets trading oil for

food. When their oil runs down they will be in the same predicament as Egyptians today.

Yemen is further down this road of food and water insecurity. The fossil aquifer underlying the capital, Sana’a, has been almost totally consumed and Yemen’s small oil reserves are expected to be gone by about 2017. Population has increased from ~4 million to ~24 million in the last 60 years and the population growth rate is among the highest in the world, each Yemeni woman bearing, on average, 5 children. Libya is exploiting what is often described as ‘vast deposits’ of water under the Sahara in the south of the country. But like Saudi Arabia, these are fossil deposits which, when depleted will be gone forever.

For the moment Libya can import food using revenue generated by oil exports – but these are also finite. So while the arguments and turmoil over democratisation, political freedom and social justice, discussed at length in the mainstream media are important, the factor that is little discussed but which will ultimately determine the fate of these countries is population size, water, oil and consequently food. And what are the lessons for Australia? Compared with many other countries Australia has an apparently generous supply of arable land per capita. But our land is not nearly as productive. Wheat production in the decade between 1998 and 2007 varied between 0.7 and 1.5 tonnes/Ha compared with the US and UK at ~2.8 tonnes/Ha. Moreover, production varies widely from year to year: 24.3 million and 25.7 million tonnes being produced in 2001 and 2003 respectively, but only 10 million tonnes in 2002.

Our grain production is heavily oil and phosphorus dependent. These vital resources will come from

overseas in future and be dependent on sustainable export oriented production, not on the exploitation of non-renewable and finite resources as at present. Production is very likely to be adversely affected by climate change.

Compared with most industrialised countries we have rapid population growth, the deliberate policy of Federal and State Governments of both major parties. Peri-urban productive land is disappearing under houses, roads and associated infrastructure as a consequence. Vegetable imports  began to exceed exports in 2002-3 and fruit imports exceeded exports after 2006-7.

It is not too far-fetched to suggest that within the next decade or two we shall see serious social unrest in Australia the cause of which will be the deliberate policies of our present governments to pursue rapid population growth and pay scant attention to food security which in turn is closely linked to oil, phosphorus, water and climate change.

by John Coulter