There are many ways in which we as individuals can impact biodiversity and ecosystem health. One simple positive change would be for households to change their monoculture grass lawns into biodiverse meadows. 

In Sweden, 52% of the urban green areas are lawns and in the United States lawns cover about 2% of the land area. Lawns may cover as much as 1.4% of the global grassland area and lawn grass is the largest irrigated nonfood crop. This is a extremely wasteful use of resources simply to maintain lawnscapes that does not promote biodiversity or food production.

Multiple stressors are converging to make the current industrial food system increasingly unsustainable and vulnerable to perturbations. Of course, the food system is in and of itself a leading cause to what is now threatening its future survival. Climate disruption, freshwater depletion, biodiversity loss, soil erosion and falling EROI on fossil fuels all point to the demise of industrial agriculture. This is well understood by biophysical economists and systems ecologists but often neglected in public or political discussions about food security. Most agricultural policies worsen the problem by making small-scale local agroecological farming unprofitable. Thus dooming large swathes of the population to become reliant on a dying system that costs more than it provides in terms of surplus energy.

There is a big misconception in the world about how modern technology has made us more efficient in agriculture. We think that big machines and lots of fertilizers are a better use of resources than employing more people. While large scale farming may seem efficient at first glance our perceptions are opposite of reality. How efficient the production of food is depends on the amount of energy expended on its development. The EROI, Energy Return on Investment, shows us the true nature of our efficiency in producing and consuming food. 

In hunter-gatherer societies, the relevant EROI metric is the caloric value of the food captured or gathered, versus the caloric expenditure of the hunt or gathering expedition. Studies of hunter-gatherers show an EROI of 10:1 to as high as 50:1 (Glaub 2015, Glaub & Hall 2017) depending on effort and final consumption. Large prey eaten directly by the hunting party only would yield a large energy profit while meat provided to support the hunters families would yield lower EROI ranging between 16:1 to 6:1. Nevertheless, this relatively large energy profit ratio probably allowed for the leisure time often associated with gathering societies. But limited capacity for food storage and settlement hinders development of a larger society. 

High population and overexploitation of resources was likely a driver of early domestication. In pre-industrial agriculture, dependent on peasant farmers, the EROI was 5:1 or less (Day et al. 2018) as it required intense efforts over long periods with often variable results. Much time was spent on production of food, fodder and fuelwood. But farming had the benefit of food storage which led to established settlements and concentrated labour. Fuelling population growth and specializations. 

Early industrialized societies benefited from high EROI from fossil fuels and large energy surpluses. Capital and energy substituted for labour. Food, fodder and fuel could be provided with fewer workers, permitting an expansion of non-primary sectors. The range of goods and services expanded. In the United Kingdom, energy and food expenditures fell to 20% as a proportion of GDP in 1830 from 50-80% prior to the industrial revolution (Day et al. 2018). But EROI of global oil reached its maximum value of 50:1 in the 1930s and has fallen since then to about 10-15:1 today (Court & Fizaine 2017). Modern industrial high-tech agriculture now consumes a staggering 10 calories of energy for every calorie of energy (food) delivered to the market, i.e. EROI of 1:10. Rending much of agriculture a net energy loss and completely unviable without fossil fuels.

We are in for another global oil supply crunch from 2018 onwards that many experts say will trigger another severe economic recession if not depression. A fragile global economy, with a massive debt overhang, cannot handle too high oil prices. A large portion of most countries budgets, and individuals budgets as well, are spent on fossil fuel energy. That's why rapid price increases (over $60 per barrel) crushes demand and flips the economy over into a recession. In turn, leading to the bankruptcy of non-profitable unconventional energy ventures like tar sands and fracking. Thus further reducing supply over the long term.

Since the early 1970s global energy costs have steadily increased. Even if oil prices have oscillated with recurring spikes and drops, as the economy tries to adjust, the overall trend is a steady increase. This is due to the fact that extraction has become increasingly difficult and costly, yielding ever lower return on investment. The problem of course is that we built our economies based on cheap energy that yielded relatively high net energy to society. But that is a thing of the past and now we are struggling to afford our current lifestyles. Thats basically why we started this massive global debt bubble, pulling forward future consumption with cheap credit. But costs will eventually have to be paid.

We have now reached a point when all the energy and resources available to society are required just to maintain our existing level of complexity. A phenomenon puzzling many commentators, calling it secular stagnation. All these factors have made the global economy so fragile that even small perturbations from climate change, wars or falling credit could tip the system over into a deflationary spiral. With economic inequalities already increasing, increasing social instability, this is a recipe for disaster. 

No economy will be able to recover unless it transitions to non-fossil fuel energy sources and writes down its debts. And even then net energy will likely be much lower, meaning that society still has to lower its overall consumption of energy and resources. Implying a voluntary measure to reduce organizational complexity in society. Something few previous civilisations managed, perhaps the British did when they dismantled their empire. 

Global food prices have increased steadily since 2005, about the time of global peak oil, now at 1970s highs or above. Further exacerbating the problem is booming populations, freshwater scarcity and climate change. 

Today’s population levels depend on fossil fuels and industrial agriculture. Especially vulnerable to rising food prices are people with low purchasing power and without subsistence farming to fall back on. We know that food price increases that reach 200 on the FAO index have led to riots and unrest.

Many countries in the Middle East are especially vulnerable due to convergence of several different crises. State revenue losses from falling oil exports, due to depleting resources and higher domestic consumption, with a need to cut food and fuel subsidies usually make people very upset. Especially when, as is the case in the region, people have no way of making a living coupled with overexploited water reservoirs and eroded soils. As if that wasn't enough, scorching heat and significant risk of recurrent droughts makes the entire region utterly unsustainable. Without energy they have nothing. The chances for further conflict and wars in the region are high. Massive, continuing, migration flows towards Europe is to be expected. 

The infamous ‘Doomsday Clock’ is again at two and a half minutes to midnight  -  the closest since 1953

Mohamed Ataya, a 31-year-old Syrian tends to his plants on the rooftop of his damaged building in the Syrian rebel-held town of Arbin, in the eastern Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus last week. Ataya, who used to be a professional football player before the war, cultivates seeds for sale. Reddit March, 2017.

People seem confused, deluded by mainstream media into to wishful thinking, about the current state of affairs in the world. But there is that uneasy feeling that all the alarming reports about peak oil, climate change, desertification, species mass extinction, freshwater scarcity, dying coral reefs, melting of polar ice caps and toxification of our environment are piling up. In fact, we are currently living in a time of a collapsing civilisation, the end to wasteful resource use and reliance on fossil fuels. Everything is becoming increasingly expensive leading to falling standards of living and a majority of the world's population who can barely afford food, shelter or gas for transport anymore. When food becomes too expensive people riot and revolt against the ruling elite. Conflict arises and sometimes it breaks out into wars. Syria being the prime example. For Syrians who are still within the country's borders a total and rapid collapse has long since been underway and is continuing to this day. Look at the man watering his seeds in a city of concrete ruins. Its utterly sad and beautiful at the same time. That is reality. And we will be seeing more of it as entropy starts moving in from the periphery of the global economy towards the centre.

Another great systems theory based book on why nations fail is out. This time its academic, journalist and writer Nafeez Ahmed, who long wrote for the Guardian but now has his own crowdsourced news site (Insurge-intelligence), who has delivered the goods. 

In his book, "Failing states, Collapsing systems: Biophysical Triggers of Political Violence", Nafeez presents the essential data on resource depletion, net energy decline, economic stagnation (debt bubble) and ties it nicely together with the acceleration of civil unrest around the globe. It's a big picture analysis of how the triple crises of energy, climate and food production impact societies around the world. A current example, according to Ahmed, of how these multiple stressors interact and can lead to systemic failure is war torn Syria. 

Syrian oil production peaked in 1996 while population, and thus consumption, kept increasing. By 2008 the government, who relied on petrol money for maintaining the state budget, had to slash fuel subsidies which tripled the price of petrol and food almost overnight. A huge deal to anyone already spending almost half of their income on food. At the same time as an ongoing drought in the eastern part of Syria devastated harvests and drove people from the countryside into the cities. Yemen experienced a similar fate of depleting resources, peak oil, and the resulting high vulnerability to shocks. Based on these two cases it takes about 15 years for a country that experiences its peak in oil production before additional pressures, such as climate change, contribute to systemic failure. 

It's not only the Middle East. Many other countries, for example Mexico,  are well on their way of having little to no extra oil to export for keeping their budget in balance or pay for subsidies that people depend on. And the counties who are still able to import some oil or have some mix of energy sources to depend on will be a target of immigrants looking to flee bankrupt and failing nations. Which in turn will fuel the nationalist sentiments and a grab for what's left, military interventions. Something we are already witnessing in Europe and the US.

For a summery version of the book, read "How global economic growth will drown in Trump's oil glut after 2018"

Venezuela has rapidly devolved into utter chaos as hyperinflation, black outs and lack of basic goods are having ever more serious effects on its inhabitants. Doctors are fleeing the country, people are looting grocery stores and killing cats, dogs and doves for food. 

Hunger destroys social order as desperate people take desperate steps to secure food for survival. If people go hungry for too long a revolution is likely. 

Relying on a ‘just-in-time’ delivery system in a period of financial collapse is like begging for social upheaveal in my mind. There is no redundancy at all if the food supply chain is interrupted, at most grocery stores keep some 3 days of inventory. After that, people start bartering and looting until the situation becomes so unbarable that they revolt or flee to another country.

Lack of food security is also caused by a shifting climate with more extreme weather events (e.g. stronger El Niño, more severe droughts) leading to crop failures and people flooding into already overpopulated cities. Creating social unrest as unemployment and crime grows. A situation that occured in Syria just before the civil war broke out. 

According to the latest Global Food Security Update (March, 2016) by the World Food Programme we can see (in the map below) how hunger hotspots are concentrated around the equator in very dry regions, in areas of conflict and countries vulnerable to changes in rainfall patterns due to El Niño. 

For example, food insecurity in Syria have reached alarming levels as most people struggle to find food or the money to buy food. Some 13.5 million people in Syria require protection and humanitarian aid. In Yemen, 56% of the population, i.e. 14.4 million people, are food insecure. In South Africa 31.6 million people have been affected by the poor rainy season due to El Niño. Ethiopia is also suffering from El Niño-induced droughts and some 10.2 million people are currently in need of food assistance.

Many commodity exporting countries relying heavily on oil for government income and spending (e.g. Venezuela, Niger, Iraq, Angola) are suffering major economic problems due to peak production, rising extraction costs and lower market prices. This is true also for countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Canada. The less diversified a country is the more vulnerable they are to market shocks.

Politicians, journalists and pundits have for many years used the number of 50% regarding Sweden’s self-sufficiency in agriculture. A new investigation from the agricultural magazine ATL, however, shows that this number without a doubt is incorrect. A protracted crisis with blockaded imports would result in a catastrophe.

Sweden has made itself vulnerable to shocks and disturbances in international trade by outsourcing production of basic commodities and relying on imports. The precarious global geopolitical situation have brought the question of self-sufficiency back on the political agenda. 

In 2002 the last reserves and warehouses with foodstuffs in case of a national emergency were dismantled. Ten years later we read in a report from LRF that about half of all the food Swedes consume comes from imports. People have therefore assumed that Sweden has a self-sufficiency level of 50%. 

But the relationship between imported and domestically produced food only shows a theoretical potential. Current stocks would only last for a maximum of 3 weeks if there is a true crisis. There are no warehouses with food and chemicals for water purification and our largest packaging plant was shut down last year, according to Therese Frisell at the National Food Agency. 

In other words, Sweden is not self-sufficient at all. According to Frisell our capacity is at zero. This is due to that Sweden is heavily reliant on imports for industrial agriculture, for example oil, fertilizers and protein for animal feed.

Researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences together with the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency claim that farmers can produce food in a time of crisis but that this would require a large scale transition. Farmers would have to rely less on machines, switch from cereals to root crop and from pigs and chickens to uncultivated pasture meat. Farmers can not do it alone, they would need extra manpower. And if the transition fails, Sweden would likely not be able to support its growing population. People would starve.

In 2013 the Swedish Institute of Agricultural and Environmental Engineering (JTI) released a report about potential impacts on the country’s food supply from sudden oil import shocks. JTI looked at three different scenarios, where oil imports would be redistricted (-25%, -50%, -75%) for a period of 3-5 years. Not enough time to make a transition to some other fuel. 

In the worst case scenario, where 75% of oil imports disappear, the authors stated that the diesel price could increase to some SEK 160/litre, and we would likely experience widespread starvation! Food supplies, in stores and warehouses, would only last for 10-12 days. Swedes don’t even know that the government has said that it’s up to the citizens themself to provide for their own food needs in a crisis situation. Most people seem to believe we still live in the 1970s when Sweden was a socialist country, not any more, not since the neoliberals came into office and started dismantling healthcare, defence, education etc. There is no emergency preparedness!

Without fossil fuels (oil and gas) we wouldn't be able to produce enough food in Sweden. This is partly due to our high food imports (50%)​, large-scale mechanisation of farms, loss of small-scale farmers and high costs (taxes) on farming. Most farm machinery runs on diesel while oil is used for heating and transportation. Areas like Stockholm and parts of Norrland are especially dependent on food imports. For example, the Stockholm region only produces some 5% of the milk consumed and less than 10% of the meat.

Today there are no food or fuel reserves, instead the entire country is totally dependent on “just-in-time” supplies. Again, in the worst case scenario, there will be no cooking oil, 75% less fruits and berries, 67-70% less grains, 40% less milk, and 64% less pigs, chickens and eggs. The only thing increasing is sheep and cow meat since a lot of land only will be used for grazing.

Swedes can be kept over the starvation line if only 25% of oil imports disappear, but we will experience food shortages and risk of starvation if a larger oil shock occurs (50-75%). Looking at the export-import data some commentators have estimated that 90% of all oil imports will be gone by 2030. And this is probably a conservative estimate since it doesn’t account for sudden shocks due to an economic crisis, conflict, and so on. 

In a recent opinion poll (2013) two out of every three (63%) Swedes stated that they wouldn't be able to handle a shorter crisis. People in Gotland, Öland (islands) and Småland were most worried about a future crisis (49% think they will experience a crisis). Most people (58%) can only manage for about one week but it's likely that the respondents underestimate how much resources are actually required for everyday life. For example, water (3 litres/day) and heating during the winter.

Sweden's food supply is in any case extremely vulnerable to a shortage in oil imports, and Swedes are not prepared despite a lacking government. Our dear politicians have absolutely no plan on changing this, instead they claim “we need to stay competitive” totally missing the point that growth is over! (0.3% per capita GDP growth the last decade). The situation is not made better by half of all our oil imports now coming from Russia that we are engaging in trade wars with (sanctions etc). 

Human pressure on the planet's ecosystems have in some cases lead to gradual changes but more often it has lead to surprising, large and persistent ecological regime shifts. Such shifts challenges environmental stewardship because it leads to substantial changes in ecosystem services at the same time as these shifts are hard to predict and reverse.

A new study in PLOS now indicates that the most common drivers to ecological regime shifts include: climate change, agriculture and fishing. Aquatic systems, such as kelp forests, have been most affected by regime shifts. The good news, however, is that 62% of identified drivers can be managed at local or national scales, while only 38% can only be managed internationally.

According to the study, food production and climate change are key drivers of regime shifts that are coupled with one another and have the potential to lead to large-scale cascading effects. Food production relates to a number of negative drivers such as resource depletion, pollution, habitat destruction, and deforestation which have the potential to be managed locally or regionally. While climate change drivers needs to be managed internationally. 

Most drivers of ecological change are increasing along with the exponential growth of the world's economy. So while reducing local drivers of ecosystem change can build resilience to continued global change over the short term, global changes will eventually overwhelm local management. Indicating that it is necessary but insufficient to act only on a local to regional scale.

Human pressure on the Earth’s Biosphere is so large that geologists have announced that we live in a new era, the Anthropocene, in which humanity is the largest driving force of global change. The mounting stresses on the biosphere to support 7,3 billion (to become 9 billion) people may cause collapses and major shifts in ecosystems, from local to global scales. The ability to generate social and economic well-being is now threatened. Freshwater is at the centre of this change.

Freshwater is the bloodstream of the terrestrial Biosphere. Greenwater (used by plants) and blue water (rivers and groundwater) are linked across all scales. It is a resource that supports human health, industry and energy generation. Many water systems have undergone ‘regime shifts’ whereby disturbances forces the water ecosystem to flip to an alternative stable state. For example, the Baltic Sea has gone from a low nutrient clear state to a high nutrient murky state due to eutrophication and overfishing. Potential future regime shift, with global implications, include the dieback of the Amazonian rainforest, Arctic ice loss and the Atlantic deep-water formation.

Food production is the world’s largest user of freshwater. In many countries such as Brazil and China diets are changing to include more meat and dairy product which increases food water requirements. Globally, as much as 40% of the grain produced is converted to animal feed. By 2050, currently available water for croplands will not be sufficient for producing enough food for humanity. Agricultural water management is key to lowering freshwater depletion rates and increasing farm productivity. Global consumptive use of blue water has been estimated at 2600 km3 per year. Several regions already suffer from the widespread impacts of the overuse of blue water. River basins with withdrawals exceeding more than 40-60% of available water resources experience severe water scarcity. The number of people living in areas which suffer from blue water scarcity is soaring. In 2005, about 35% of the global population where living in areas with chronic water shortage.

About half of the river water withdrawn for societal use has evaporated, literally consumed during use, and about 25% of the rivers on land are highly affected by overuse of blue water. River depletion is considerable in irrigated regions of the world and many economically important river basins are already surpassing their ecological limits. Blue water security is subject to a high level of vulnerability to change in both Asia and Africa. For example, the Indus and Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna basins upon which some 1.5 billion people depend are highly vulnerable to change. Zones of particular concern are north-western India, the north China plain, the Great Plains of the US and the Central Valley in California. At the national scale, 5 countries are withdrawing more groundwater than can be recharged in aquifers, these include: Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Pakistan and Iran. 

Until recently, humans have been able to assume that precipitation was relatively stable and predictable. However, new insights now show that this assumption no longer holds. Climate change is a major driving force of a changing water landscape and its projected that a 2 °C increase in average global temperatures will result in an increase of 40% of people living in absolute water scarcity. Floods and droughts will become more prominent and rainfall patterns could change. There are large uncertainties about future rain, monsoon and snow patterns that influence river flows. Glacial melt has been widely observed in the mountain water towers of the world, including the Himalayas, the Andes, the Alps and the Kilimanjaro.

Management

Conflict
Conclusion

Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic organisms such as fish, crustaceans, molluscs and aquatic plants. At the moment aquaculture is the fastest growing food sector in the world. From 1990 to 2010 cultivation of fish and shellfish in terrestrial and marine systems grew at an annual rate of 7.8% worldwide, a much higher rate than any other food commodity. Although there are many potential benefits to farming aquatic organisms such as increases in food and fuel supply there are also many potential drawbacks. In this post I will go through some of the latest scientific findings regarding the pros and cons of aquaculture from a global food security perspective.

Fig.1 Map over societies dependence (%) on fish for nutrition (2008)

Fish is an important food commodity and more than 3 billion people obtain ⅕ of their animal protein from fish. Some societies are more dependent on fish as a source of nutrition than others (Fig. 1). In 2012 the global fish market was valued at 129 billion dollars. However, global wild fish catches peaked around 2002-2003 and is now at a plateau (Fig. 2a and b), thus, there is an sense of urgency in the scientific and public policy community to match the gap in food needed with sustainable options.The international community's interest in aquaculture has thus become ever more present. And business is booming, roughly half of the fish consumed worldwide now comes from aquaculture and its share is expected to increase in the future as wild fisheries exceed their sustainable limits (Troell et al. 2014). Freshwater fish comprise the majority of aquaculture production today. These fish are raised in ponds, lakes, canals, cages and benefit from a wide range of inputs, technology and management.

The most common environmental problems include pollution of marine ecosystems, destruction of coastal habitats, enhanced disease and parasite transmission between farmed and wild fish populations, introduction of invasive species, increased stress on freshwater resources, and overfishing of wild fish stocks to feed farm fish. The use of wild fish in feeds can also have food security implications for low-income households that depend on low-trophic level fish as a key source for nutrition.

Since there are both major benefits and risks to aquaculture one way to make a risk analysis is to use a portfolio approach. The basic idea is to invest in a suite of assets or activities that collectively has lower risk relative to that of any individual asset. This will yield trade-off options between risk and returns and the trick is to diversify the asset bundle. The degree of risk depends on correlations between assets’ returns. When applying this approach to the global food systems one could think of the targeted return as the aggregate output of food commodities needed to meet human demands. Risks, then, involve temporary and irreversible declines in productivity captured by the variation and trend in food production and prices. Furthermore, the degree of food price volatility is indicative of the global food system’s resilience (or robustness) against a wide range of stressors such as pests, extreme weather events, climate variability and other market shocks related to changes in the energy and financial sectors. A pattern of higher and more variable prices over time would then suggest deteriorating resilience of global food supplies whilst a pattern of stable prices would indicate a more robust and resilient food system.

Source: Troell et al. (2014)

Diversify, diversify, diversify

Conclusion