‘Shortages Are on the Horizon’

Last week Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo asked Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to guarantee rice supplies to her country, one of the developing world's largest importers. To American biologist Robert Zeigler, the request underscores two global problems: rapidly depleting grain stockpiles, and the need for a new Green Revolution to satisfy food demand that is forecast to jump 50 percent by 2025. Zeigler heads the Philippine-based International Rice Research Institute, which helped pioneer techniques that began delivering huge gains in per-hectare yields more than 40 years ago. Yet he warns that yield growth has stalled, even as farmland is under increasing threat from urbanization, water shortages and climate change.

Biotech "isn't a silver bullet," Zeigler cautions, though it can deliver new breakthroughs necessary to avert catastrophic food shortages—provided it is sufficiently funded. He spoke by cell phone with NEWSWEEK's George Wehrfritz from Svalbard, a remote island chain off northern Norway, where Zeigler joined other leading biologists to inaugurate what has been termed a "doomsday seed vault," built above the Artic Circle, to preserve biodiversity. His institute alone deposited some 70,000 strains of rice. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What is the significance of Manila's request that Vietnam guarantee its rice supplies?
Robert Zeigler: It's very significant when you have two heads of state discussing [how to] assure the supply of a staple food of one country by another. That tells me that concerns about the availability of that staple food have reached the highest levels.

Is there a question today about the availability of rice and other staples? Is a major shortage in the offing?
Supplies have tightened quite a bit. Global stocks of rice have been declining over the past five years. That means we've been consuming more than we've been growing. That, obviously, is not something that can continue for very much longer. Rice stocks are now at levels of the late 1970s. So yes, it could be that shortages are on the horizon.

Why is this happening?
A number of forces are converging. There's been some unfavorable weather. We've had a stagnation of yield growth. We've had a cessation of [farm] area expansion, and some of the best land areas [in the world] are being converted for nonagricultural uses. Urbanization has taken up some of the best agricultural land in Asia, and we have competition for water between agriculture, urban areas and industry. Also, the diversion of some grains into biofuels has [pushed up prices] on the market, and we've had a major wheat crop failure in Australia. Cereals tend to be interdependent, and we are seeing a number of factors conspiring to [create] shortages.

How far away are we from a food crisis?
I don't want to be crying out that famine is on the horizon. But if we had a serious [crop] failure in China or India, for example, that could be quite a shock. Already Bangladesh is looking like [its rice harvest] will fall 3 million tons short [this year], which is quite a shock for them. Some of the shocks will likely be more local than global.