00:00Could food insecurity spark large-scale conflict?
00:02Food is a very, very potent reason for driving civil unrest and getting people out on the streets.
00:11Extreme heat and drought have impacted harvests in many European countries this summer.
00:15And while experts say there's no immediate threat of food running out on the continent,
00:19environmental groups are urging governments to do more to prepare for the effects of climate change on crop production.
00:25As food security expert Tim Benton points out,
00:28insecure and unequal access to food have driven wars and uprisings in the past.
00:33Well, one of the contributory causes of the French Revolution was the food price inflation caused by bad weather at
00:40the time.
00:40And if you look back in the 2007, 2008, 10, 11 food price spikes,
00:44food price inflation was a major determinant around the world of civil unrest and riots.
00:49If we don't deal with this, then it's kind of inevitable that inequality will continue to grow
00:56and people will get disaffected.
00:59Professor Benton says things are likely to get worse, with 2027 forecasts to be even hotter,
01:04as well as the strongest ever El Nino predicted.
01:07So if we have a bad year next year and the Iran war is escalating and the Ukraine war is
01:13escalating
01:14and something else happens, then we could be in for a very sticky year from a food price perspective
01:20and availability perspective.
01:22So what does Benton suggest as potential solutions?
01:24For one, he says we need a more resilient trade system to avoid future wars over food.
01:29You're preferentially trading with allies, not foes.
01:32And that comes with the cost that you're building up food stocks in your home or your locality
01:40or your country or your region, that you're diversifying your trade routes
01:46so that you don't put all your eggs in one basket and rely on goods from a country
01:52that might in turn be hit by climate change in a given year.
01:55He also says the world has been putting off the large-scale fundamental changes to agriculture
02:00that are required.
02:01You kind of need diversity.
02:03You need to grow different things in different ways,
02:07probably integrate livestock into arable and horticultural landscapes
02:11so that you're not reliant on imported fertilizer and all the rest of that.
02:17It's perfectly possible to imagine a world which could be food secure
02:22with a different sort of farming.
Comments