Green Daily

Before you take a big mouthful of that organic peanut butter on whole wheat, consider this - worldwide stocks of grain are down to 53 days worth of supply, the lowest since record-keeping began back in 1960.

William Doyle, CEO of fertilizer giant Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan said in an interview this week that growing demand for grain from people and livestock could lead to famine in the near future. Doyle said "We need to have a record crop in 2008 just to stay even with this very low inventory situation'', and further noted that a failure of grain crops on the part of any major producer, such as the US, would be disastrous for the world food situation.

The dwindling supplies are caused principally by two factors - the skyrocketing human population, and a shift of food preferences in India and China from mostly vegetarian meals to a more meat-based diet. It requires far more grain to raise livestock for food than to feed the cereal crops to people directly.

The implications for us and the planet are serious. Even if we manage to avoid famine - or as official spinmeisters would likely euphemize it, "unscheduled weight loss opportunities" - the price for keeping us all in Big Macs could be paid by the environment. A couple of ways being touted to deal with the problem are increased use of eco-unfriendly fertilizers to boost yields from existing farms, and the planting of new crop land in Brazil.