Global food crisis: getting prepared now

It crept up so quickly and quietly that most people have been caught off guard ... within the space of just a few months it seems the world’s food stocks are seriously low. Hungry people are already rioting.

While it’s a big enough deal to get the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to hold a crisis meeting with finance chiefs from across the world – how real is the risk for New Zealanders?

Eco advocate Linda Shaw has been making it her business to find out. Ever since swapping a career in corporate management last year to focus on environmental issues, Linda has been researching, investigating and talking with people across New Zealand about such pressing global issues.

“Within five years New Zealand could be facing the pressure of food and water refugees as large areas of the world become unsustainable for populations,” says Linda. “We have soils and a climate where we won’t starve but many of us have relatives overseas who are struggling already.

“How many refugees would New Zealand be prepared to take? Two million? We have the space ... but do we have the generosity of spirit?

“Globally we are coming to a tipping point with food. We can grow enough food to feed the world, but at the moment either the wrong types of food are being grown to meet global needs, food is being grown unsustainably or food production is being used for bio fuels for cars.

“We need to eat lower down the food chain – a much heavier focus on plant food sources, rather than animal proteins.”
Taking a precautionary approach to food stocks, Linda suggests New Zealanders can:

• Start planting gardens now
• Plant an edible plant for every week of the year – four million people times 52 weeks equal 208 million edible plants
• Visit garden centres to learn and get assistance - enrol in night school or weekend gardening classes
• Formulate a plan within your larger family/friend group – on how to share food growth/production
• New Zealand’s horticultural industry needs to gear up quickly - last year most garden centres ran out of fruit trees to sell
• Large businesses could develop staff food co-operatives – as part of their commitment to retaining staff
• Businesses with land could give staff time off to tend gardens
• Individuals and businesses could reconfigure grey water output to irrigate tanks for the garden and use effective trickle irrigation
• Seed stocks need to be protected – people can purchase seeds from heritage seed stock organisations like Kohanga gardens (many modern seed hybrids need chemical applications to grow)
• Awareness needs to be kept on seed companies developing monopolies of any seed stocksdeveloping monopolies of any seed stocks

“Nutrition affects the health of the nation,” says Linda. “Many low income families and elderly were already at borderline survival before the impact of the last six months of food prices.

“There is urgency to this situation that our politicians need to grasp. Mortgage stress, fuel poverty, energy usage reduction, insurance premium rises, rising credit card debt and now food crisis. New Zealanders deserve to know the truth so we can act sensibly to change the way we live.”

Like to hear more of Linda’s initiatives about protecting our food sources? Need more information or a photo? Please contact Kimberley Paterson at Soul PR on 09 4244218 or kimberley@soulpr.com