Laura Wellesly: 'Increasing trade dependence, weather volatility from climate change, and underinvestment in infrastructure all place the world in greater danger of a humanitarian crisis brought on by a breakdown in the global food system'

Choking On Our Harvest: Threats Loom Over Global Food Trade
Alan Bjerga, Hannah Dormido, Cindy Hoffman and Adrian Leung May 18, 2018

The ability of global trade to feed the world is one of the great success stories of the past generation. More than 1 billion people faced hunger on a planet of 5.6 billion a quarter-century ago; that number has fallen to 800 million, even as the population has grown to 7.6 billion. Trade has brought much of that progress: Shippers and exporters have become better and better at getting affordable food from places of surplus to regions of scarcity.

But the planet is at rising risk of choking on its good fortune.

The shipping of farm commodities by road, rail and sea—the basics of how a harvest gets from Point A to Point B—remains concentrated on increasingly vulnerable trade routes that, when disrupted, become “chokepoints” in the global food supply, suddenly raising food prices and cutting off supplies when they fail. From aging locks and dams on the Mississippi River and days-long traffic delays in the heart of Brazil to political unrest on routes serving the Black Sea, the Middle East and China, transit networks are strained from growing agricultural shipments.

Global farm-commodity trade volume nearly tripled from 2000 to 2016, to 1.66 billion tons, according to UN data. Nearly half of all soybeans, almost a quarter of all wheat and more than an eighth of all corn is traded internationally, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Of 14 potential chokepoints worldwide identified by research firm Chatham House, only one has been free of disturbance in the past 15 years. “There has been little attention paid to the physical risks that you find along international supply chains,” said Laura Wellesley, a research fellow with London-based Chatham House. Increasing trade dependence, weather volatility from climate change, and underinvestment in infrastructure all place the world in greater danger of a humanitarian crisis brought on by a breakdown in the global food system, she said.

Trade will become only more important, especially as climate change makes weather more volatile and increases the need for different regions to shore each other up when harvests fail.

Some country and company efforts, from China’s Belt and Road Initiative to new ports on existing routes, are emerging to meet the challenge. New routes may also emerge, from a railroad connecting Brazil to the Pacific Ocean to (less fortunately) the North Pole, as warming temperatures make it more navigable. Yet most farm goods still pass through networks increasingly at risk of buckling under the strain.

Here are the biggest chokepoints that make feeding the world a tougher task—and what’s being done (or not done) to make the deliveries that feed the world more certain.

more... https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-food-trade-chokepoints/