New forecast: 'Mass starvation'

New forecast: 'Mass starvation'
Commodity analyst says crop failure would shock more than $150 oil

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Posted: June 19, 2009
8:39 pm Eastern

© 2009 WorldNetDaily




A commodities expert has launched a warning that the next major crop failure around the world could be a bigger shock than $150 oil and result in "mass starvation."

The forecast comes from Chicago-based Don Coxe, a leading agricultural industry expert, in a report in the Commodity Online publication.

"When we have the first serious crop failure, which will happen, we will then have a full-blown food crisis, which we will not be able to get out of because we will still be struggling to catch up (as a result of diminished crop yields)," he told the publication.

He suggested that even could happen this year.

Coxe explained climate change will make growing seasons shorter, generating lower crop production, which would squeeze supplies.

Coxe, whose credentials include analysis of agriculture interests for more than three decades in the U.S. and Canada, including management of Harris Investment Management, said the result would be a domino effect.

A crop collapse in North America would hit hard among international markets that depend heavily on U.S. exports.

The lower food production also is being aggravated, he noted, by governments in North America.

"We've got a situation where there has been no incentive to allocate significant new capital to agriculture or to develop new technologies to dramatically expand crop output," he said in a statement to BNW News Wire. "We've got complacency. So for those reasons I believe the next food crisis – when it comes – will be a bigger shock than $150 oil."

Coxe, a leader of the Coxe Commodity Strategy Fund, said farms operations around the world also have cut back on expansion plans because of the worldwide economic crisis, calling into question whether production could meet demand.

Already, he suggested, demand for staples is moving beyond supply.

"During this decade, the annual increase in hectares of global cultivated farmland has been roughly 1.5 percent, at a time global demand for grains and soybeans has been growing at double that rate," he told Commodities Online. "We will be dealing with mass starvation with the first serious crop failure. It could happen as early as this fall if for instance we have a killing freeze in Iowa in August."

He said a reduction of just four weeks in the growing season would "dramatically reduce yields."

Coxe said one only has to reach back 35 years to review an era when there were shortages because of poor crops. The surpluses that had existed suddenly were gone, he noted.

"In fact, the major inflation of the 1970s was driven more by food than by oil,” he said.

He suggested the next global food shortage could destabilize the world's political order, according to the Commodities Online report.

In a related development, the Associated Press reported a U.N. agency is confirming that already more than a billion people around the globe now are hungry as fallout from the worldwide economic turmoil and high food prices.

The report said the Food and Agriculture Organization said that figure is up 100 million from a year ago.

"The silent hunger crisis, affecting one-sixth of all of humanity, poses a serious risk for world peace and security," said Jacques Diouf, the agency's director.

The biggest problem is in sub-Saharan Africa, with some 265 million people who do not get enough food