Resource depletion includes groundwater supplies. Biodiversity, forests and raw materials – everything needed to maintain solid and sustainable food production.
Globally 70% of all freshwater is used for agriculture and food systems that feed the world’s populations. Much of fresh water supplies are on the decline for the following reasons:-
(1). Increased global temperatures result in increased evaporation rates which in turn lower the globe’s water levels (water tables).
(2). Changing rainfall patterns may decrease annual precipitation rates in specific areas. Increased frequency of droughts may result in insufficient water supplies in crop areas.
(3). Runoffs from glacial melt peaks during the summer and decreasing glaciers result in decreased melt-water volumes. This reduction impacts water supplies in downstream ecosystems, habitats and agricultural watersheds.
(4). Ground water depletion is primarily caused by sustained ground water withdrawals and over pumping.
Further concerns are water quality and water contamination of the global water supply.
If water is depleted, so too has our soils. Soil erosion and runoff of nutrients to water reservoirs increase with more extreme downpours, extensive droughts and damaging high winds.
Increased temperatures impact the soil’s organisms and microbial networks. These factors find soils releasing organic carbon into our air and ecosystems.
Rising temperatures cause droughts, which affect forestry by super drying the ecosystem, making it privy to forest fires. Global deforestation is not sustainable.
Food production and consumption use a significant amount of raw materials throughout the agricultural process chain.
Furthermore food packaging consumes significant raw materials and energy such as paper, chalkboard, aluminum, glass, plastics too. Many of these items are not sufficiently recycled today, nor designed to conform to a circular economic principle.
Climate change is a major indicator of how important it is to have global changes made within our society’s food growth and production.
A well-managed, planned system is needed, where business is not the main decision makers, but merely a participant in an economically charged essential system including governments, social organisations and NGO participants.
The world’s food production has been managed by and through the capitalistic system, a system that does not provide the rights of humanity to safety and sufficient food supply.
Business exists to achieve financial gain, a purpose that cannot recognise the Human Rights of their fellow Citizens to also be fed, educated, employed in a significant fashion.
If there was a time where Governments, Trade Unions and Business Sectors need to unite it is now. We must reimagine our economic system and all its purposes to exist.
Will our system work for the benefit of all, or allow a sector of that economy to continue its historically unimaginative controlling methods?
Steven Kaszab
Bradford, Ontario