1. Reduce Amount of Grain going to Fuel Cars in the US: “The most important thing we can do to restore some semblance of stability to world grain markets and the world food economy, is to reduce the amount of grain going into fuel cars in the United States. And that’s something the US government has to do.”

2. Stabilize Population: “Sooner rather than later,” says Brown. “And that means attacking the poverty issue, as well as providing reproductive health care and family planning services.”

3. World-Wide Effort to Raise water Productivity: Seventy percent of our water is used for agriculture, and we can use that water much more effectively; by using drip irrigation instead of sprinklers, or flooding methods, for example.

Another possibilty is to shift to more water-effective crops. Egypt grows rice for export, but rice is very water intensive. If Egypt switched to wheat, it could double the amount of grain per unit of water used. Industry can also improve the way it uses water, and many industries are capable of re-using their water over and over again. With new technologies, and rising costs, these practices will spread.

Cities can also recycle water. “We have a primitive system,” says Brown, “Water comes in the city clean, gets used once, and leaves the city polluted and a problem.” One response to the ‘flush and forget’ method, is to replace traditional toilets with dry waterless, composting toilets. We’re seeing that here in some cities, colleges, and LEED-certified buildings, but there are already a hundred thousand of these toilets being used in northern China where water is in short supply. “These technologies are available and on the market, but not yet incorporated in the market in a major way.”

4.  Move Down the Food Chain: We live very high on the food chain in affluent societies. While the average Indian consumes 200 kilos of grain per year, American diets consume 4 times that amount. “We could move down the food chain and have healthier diets, and a substantial impact on world food supply,” says Brown. “One way could be to have a meat tax in affluent societies.”

We can also reduce the amount of wasted food we generate in the developed world. “We need to begin to rethink restaurant marketing,” says Brown, and introduce more variations in portion size, as increased costs are prompting some restaurants to do.

A New Security Budget
“In this current situation we have hundreds of millions of people trapped between rising food costs and low wages. And they’re becoming desperate.”

The Earth Policy Institute has just released the latest version of “Plan B” which calls for stabilizing population, eradicating poverty and restoring the earth’s natural systems.  It includes major initiatives to cut carbon, increase efficiency and promote renewable sources of energy. With a budget of close to $200 billion a year, Lester Brown admits that it sounds like a lot of additional expenditures.

“But the cost of not doing these things is far greater,” he insists.

“When we look at threats posed by climate change, deforestation, and water shortages – these are threats to security. So in essence, this is a new security budget.” Given that the world spends over a trillion dollars a year on global military security, “this is one-fifth of that, and yet threats from climate change are far greater than those from conventional sources.”

When asked if he see signs of any serious political will to deal with these issues, Brown says no. Nor is the problem simply lack of will; it’s also lack of understanding.

“They think it’s another one of those surges that’s happened in the past, and then things will go back to normal. But this is not, it’s a systemic problem, and unless we can mobilize worldwide to eradicate poverty, reduce grain going to ethanol, and raise water productivity, there may not be a humane solution to this."

"I don’t think the world has yet grasped this,” says Brown.

 Photo Courtesy of the New York Daily News