Food Security

Imagine an oil tanker plowing through the ocean, hauling valuable cargo from resource-rich nations of the world to the countries that need it: but instead of oil, the tanker holds millions of gallons of fresh water.

It's not a vision from some futuristic film or doomsday novel, but the present-day intention of companies trying to launch the bulk water export business. The idea has been around since the 1990's, yet no one has succeeded in making it a practical reality.

But last July, the US company S2C Global Systems, Inc. became the latest bulk water wanna-be by announcing it would begin shipping water from Alaska to India within the next six to eight months. Using large class vessels that can hold 50 million gallons at a time, S2C plans to sell the water for both manufacturing and drinking purposes to countries around the Arabian Sea.

"I think it's a dream," said Peter Gleick, a scientist and international water expert, in an interview with SolveClimate News. Gleick is President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security. "I don't think bulk water transfers of any significant volume are ever going to happen, because the cost of moving water, especially across the ocean, is so high."

Rod Bartlett, managing partner of Alaska Resource Management (a partnership between S2C and True Alaska Bottling), told SolveClimate News that S2C is finalizing legal issues and logistics for a "World Water Hub" on the western coast of India. Once it's built, the hub will be a distribution point from which the company plans to deliver water to target destinations in the Middle East and northern Africa.

"Every nation within a four-day target of the hub is a potential customer or client that will need fresh water," said Bartlett. Without revealing specific details, Bartlett added that S2C has received both spoken and "written expressions of interest."

The water S2C plans to export will come from Alaska's Blue Lake near the city of Sitka, about 90 miles southwest of Juneau. Since 1999, Sitka has promoted itself as a source for bulk water exports; True Alaska Bottling owns the water rights to 8 million gallons per day from Blue Lake.

As to why humans would want to move water around the world, Bartlett explained: "(You move the water) because you can't move the population." Most of the world's freshwater is found near the Poles, while most people live closer to the equator.

Population growth, urbanization and irrigation place are creating increasing demand for water. But climate change is exacerbating the problem of supply, most notably in the Himalayan region, often referred to as Asia's water tower.

According to a report from King's College in London, about two-thirds of the Himalayan glaciers are shrinking, and decreased runoff will affect water levels in ten major rivers. All together, the rivers' drainage basins are home to 1.3 billion people—close to one-fifth of the world's population.

Many of them live in India. S2C originally chose to build their hub there because they couldn't find an appropriate port in the Middle East. But now, said Bartlett, "as you continue to look at the potential in India, it's going to be a natural place to sell water soon, no question about it."

Desalinated Water 18 Times Cheaper
The idea of moving vast quantities of water is hardly new. The Romans did it with aqueducts; today, California pipes the Colorado River's water hundreds of miles into its cities and farms. But when you ship water more than 1000 or 1500 miles, said Gleick, "the diesel costs kill you."

International water shipments do occur on small geographic scales. In 1997, Greece began shipping water to the island of Aegina, 13 miles from the Greek coast. Singapore currently imports freshwater from Malaysia but vowed to build desalination plants for increased water security. A plan for Turkey to sell water to Israel was recently suspended due to political tension between the two nations.

What S2C has proposed—moving water halfway around the world, 50 million gallons at a time—is on a scale that dwarfs existing bulk water transfer efforts.

The biggest problem, said Gleick, is that S2C will be competing with desalination plants, which are very popular in the Middle East. "Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are almost completely dependent on desalinated (sea)water."

Water from desalination plants costs about $1/cubic meter (this price includes the cost of building and running the plant), said Gleick. According to Bartlett, it will cost S2C $18/cubic meter to move the water from Alaska to India.

The latest satellite data establishes that the North Atlantic Current (also called the North Atlantic Drift) no longer exists and along with it the Norway Current. These two warm water currents are actually part of the same system that has several names depending on where in the Atlantic Ocean it is. The entire system is a key part of the planet's heat regulatory system; it is what keeps Ireland and the United Kingdom mostly ice free and the Scandinavia countries from being too cold; it is what keeps the entire world from another Ice Age. This Thermohaline Circulation System is now dead in places and dying in others.

This 'river' of warm water that moves through the Atlantic Ocean is called, in various places, the South Atlantic Current, the North Brazil Current, the Caribbean Current, the Yucatan Current, the Loop Current, the Florida Current, the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Current (or North Atlantic Drift) and the Norway Current.

It is a university level physics experiment to use a tub of cool water and inject a colored stream of warm water into it. You can see the boundary layers of the warm water stream. If you add oil to the tub it breaks down the boundary layers of the warm water stream and effectively destroys the current vorticity . This is what is happening in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Atlantic Ocean.

The entire 'river of warm water' that flows from the Caribbean to the edges of Western Europe is dying due to the Corexit that the Obama Administration allowed BP to use to hide the scale of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster. The approximately two million gallons of Corexit, plus several million gallons of other dispersants, have caused the over two hundred million gallons of crude oil, that has gushed for months from the BP wellhead and nearby sites, to mostly sink to the bottom of the ocean. This has helped to effectively hide much of the oil, with the hopes that BP can seriously reduce the mandated federal fines from the oil disaster. However, there is no current way to effectively 'clean up' the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, which is about half covered in crude oil.

...


Almost a month ago, we broke the story that the Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico had effectively died. We quoted Dr. Gianluizi Zangari, who first discovered the damage to the Thermohaline Circulation System:

"As displayed by both by the sea surface maps and the sea surface height maps, the Loop Current broke down for the first time around May 18th and generated a clock wise eddy, which is still active. As of today the situation has deteriorated up to the point in which the eddy has detached itself completely from the main stream therefore destroying completely the Loop Current. .."
"It is reasonable to foresee the threat that the breaking of [such] a crucial warm stream as the Loop Current may generate a chain reaction of unpredictable critical phenomena and instabilities due to strong non-linearities which may have serious consequences on the dynamics of the Gulf Stream thermoregulation activity of the Global Climate." —Dr. Gianluigi Zangari,

The Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico ceased to exist a month ago, the latest satellite data clearly shows that the North Atlantic Current is now GONE and the Gulf Stream begins to break apart approximately 250 miles from the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The Thermohaline Circulatory System, where the warm water current flows through a much cooler, much larger, ocean, effects the upper atmosphere above the current as much as seven miles high. The lack of this normal effect in the eastern North Atlantic has disrupted the normal flow of the atmospheric Jet Stream this summer, causing unheard of high temperatures in Moscow (104F) and drought, and flooding in Central Europe, with high temperatures in much of Asia and massive flooding in China, Pakistan, and elsewhere in Asia.

Anglo-Australian mining giant BHP Billiton made an unsolicited $38.6 billion offer for the world's largest fertilizer producer, Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc., in an aggressive wager that developing economies will drive up demand for the world's food supply.

Potash is an important nutrient that replenishes soil and increases farmland's crop yield. Global potash supplies are relatively limited, and Potash Corp., based in the prairies of central Canada, controls approximately 20% of the supply.

The offer is likely to set off a long struggle for the fate of the Canadian company, a crown jewel of the country's natural-resources-based economy.

Potash's board rejected the BHP offer of $130 a share in cash, a 16% premium to Potash's Monday closing price, calling it "grossly inadequate."

In trading Tuesday, the fertilizer company's shares soared far above the offer, a sign traders expect BHP to raise its bid or other suitors to emerge. Potash shares closed at $143.17, up $31.02, or 27.7%.

The company's chief executive, Bill Doyle, said the board wasn't opposed to a sale, "we just don't expect someone to come steal the company."

People familiar with the matter said BHP would decide in the next few days whether to take its offer directly to Potash shareholders, a move that would officially make BHP's unsolicited offer a hostile one.

Potash adopted a shareholder-rights plan on Tuesday that puts a 20% ceiling on any single stakeholder.

Such a "poison pill" may be less effective in Canada than in the U.S. because a hostile bidder can lobby Canadian securities regulators to have the target company eliminate its plan and allow a tender offer to shareholders.

BHP's shares closed Tuesday at $70.21, down $1.73, or 2.4%, in trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Wednesday morning in Australia, shares fell 3.7%.

Analysts speculated that mining rivals Vale SA of Brazil, and the Anglo-Australian company Rio Tinto PLC could consider counteroffers. Vale, which not long ago made a $3.8 billion purchase of fertilizer assets, declined to comment. Rio Tinto didn't immediately return a call.

Mr. Doyle of Potash declined to say what might be a suitable offer. People close to the company, based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, said an offer would need to factor in Potash's record high of nearly $240 in mid-2008. The offer from BHP was made in a letter Aug. 12 that Potash disclosed on Tuesday.

Looming over any merger negotiations is a national debate in Canada about open markets and foreign takeovers.

Over the past decade, the country has seen most of its big natural-resources companies and many industrial ones taken over by buyers from the U.S., Europe and South America.

The deals included the sales of aluminum and nickel mines to Brazil's Vale and Switzerland's Xtrata, the purchase of Canada's biggest steel producer by U.S. Steel Corp., and the piecemeal sale of struggling tech giant Nortel Networks Corp. to buyers from the U.S. and Europe.

While demand for commodities has fueled Canada's economic growth, there is lingering worry among some that the country is losing its corporate mettle.

In 2009, Canada amended its foreign-takeover code, raising the size of deals that require scrutiny but allowing the government explicit power to veto deals thought to pose a danger to national security.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the government would review any transaction but otherwise declined to comment.

As the world's largest mining company, BHP has remained unbowed by a costly and ultimately unsuccessful attempt in 2008 to take over Rio Tinto, its big Anglo-Australian rival.

For BHP's chief executive, South African Marius Kloppers, a play for Potash fits into a broader theme of economic development, particularly in China and India.

"World GDP and GDP development is being driven by...new people entering the modern industrial age...by massive urbanization processes," Mr. Kloppers said in an interview in 2008. This, he said, is "having a huge knock-on effect in demand for our products."

A deal for Potash would represent a shift for BHP, which specializes in minerals and metals and has limited experience with customers who buy fertilizer. Potash is the common name for fertilizer derived from potassium, and includes potassium carbonate and other salts. It is one of the common fertilizers farmers use, along with nitrogen and phosphate.

There are plenty of reasons to expect rising demand for fertilizer. The world is projected to add an average of 57 million people a year between 2000 and 2050, leading to a population of 8.9 billion in 2050, according to United Nations projections. Rising incomes in growing economies will also push up demand for diverse diets, and fertilizer is a sure way to increase food production.

Such long-term global trends have turned Potash Corp. into a highflying stock that has soared since 2005.

BHP is also counting on China and other rapidly growing nations placing a premium on producing more food, to be independent from foreign suppliers.

Meeting such a basic need is critical, as vividly demonstrated in 2008, when a sharp rise in the cost of food kicked off riots in some parts of the world. This summer's scare over wheat supplies amid a Russian drought provided another reminder.

"It's just a bet that food is going to continue to be precious, and become more precious," said Emerson Nafziger, a professor of agronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "It's a bet that the whole world is going to need to replace nutrients in the soil as crops are removed."

China produces only about roughly half as much corn as the U.S. on a given amount of farmland. U.S. farmers generate more than 10 metric tons per hectare (2.47 acres), while China produces just over five and India just over two.

While there are various reasons for such gaps in production, including water and use of genetically modified seeds, fertilizer use is one of the factors.

USDA forecasts released last week show the world will likely consume more grain through next year than farmers are able to produce, which will inevitably shrink the globe's grain reserves again.

A federal judge's decision Friday to undo the government's five-year-old approval of genetically modified sugar beets, from which roughly half of U.S. sugar is derived, won't disrupt supplies for at least a year, but could pose headaches for food companies after that.

The order by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White—who had concluded in September 2009 that the U.S. Department of Agriculture hadn't lived up to its obligation to fully consider whether the weedkiller-tolerant sugar beets might harm the environment—effectively blocks farmers from planting the seed next spring, but leaves alone the crop already in the ground, which can be harvested this fall, processed and sold as sugar.

"In the short term, at least, we're aren't going to see any disruption in the marketing of this year's crop," said Luther Markwart, executive vice president of the American Sugarbeet Growers Association, a Washington, D.C., trade group.

However food companies that depend on a steady supply of U.S. sugar face uncertainty over where they will source their sugar beets after next year.

It is far from clear how soon U.S. sugar-beet farmers can return to planting the seeds, which are genetically modified the same way as the vast majority of the corn, soybeans and cotton grown in the U.S. The plants are genetically modified with Monsanto Co. genes that give them immunity to glyphosate-based herbicide, which the St. Louis biotechnology company sells as Roundup weedkiller.

The Roundup-resistant trait is popular with many farmers—it is present in 95% of the sugar-beet plants grown in the U.S.—because it enables them to chemically weed their fields without harming their crops, saving time and the expense of mechanical cultivation.

Monsanto licenses several sugar-beet seed companies to use its herbicide-tolerance gene in their breeding programs. The business isn't big enough to be material to the company's financial results.

The lawsuit against the USDA was filed by activist groups including the Center for Food Safety and the Sierra Club, among others. Biotechnology critics worry that the transplanted gene could spread to conventional sugar-beet plants through cross-pollination, and that the herbicide-tolerance trait permits a heavy enough use of Roundup to spur the evolution of weeds that can survive glyphosate, the active ingredient in the weedkiller.

Glyphosate-tolerant weeds are already appearing in southeast U.S. farm fields where farmers have long grown Roundup-tolerant cotton and soybeans.

Sugar-beet industry officials say it would be difficult for U.S. farmers to quickly switch back to non-genetically modified seed. Some farmers have already sold off their cultivation equipment—which kills weeds by digging into the dirt—and it isn't clear how much conventional seed is available anymore.

Genetically modified sugar-beet seed won't be legal to plant again until the Agriculture Department repeats its regulatory review process. Sugar-industry officials widely expect the USDA's biotechnology regulators—who are charged with protecting U.S. agriculture from plant pests—to come to the same conclusion and eventually re-clear the seed for planting. But getting there again will include the time-consuming process of writing the environmental-impact statement ordered by Judge White, who sits in San Francisco.

The draft environmental-impact statement that the USDA published in December on Roundup–tolerant alfalfa, for example, ran to about 1,500 pages. The USDA has estimated that completing an environmental-impact statement on Roundup-tolerant sugar beets could easily take until April 2012.

Sugar-industry officials say they believe the USDA has the authority to implement interim measures to permit some planting of the genetically modified sugar beets. A USDA spokesman said the agency was "reviewing the judge's order in order to determine appropriate next steps."

Moscow, Russia (CNN) -- A quarter of Russian crops have been lost in the recent drought, leaving many farms on the brink of bankruptcy, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday.

The government should prevent increases in the price of grain and fodder, which will eventually affect the prices of food products like flour, bread, meat, and milk, Medvedev said at a government agriculture meeting in the southern Russian region of Rostov.

"Right now, everybody is of course thinking about it -- farmers as well as officials responsible for agriculture," Medvedev said in comments broadcast on Russian state television. "But we also understand that regular people, too, are thinking about what will happen after this extremely tough summer, how it will affect the prices on staples food."

He said government authorities should closely monitor food prices on a daily basis, "otherwise there will always be someone who would want to capitalize on this situation. There are such cases already."

Large parts of Russia have suffered this summer from excessive heat, drought, and a spate of wildfires that have also created stifling smoke and smog. Hundreds have died in the combined disasters.

Alexander Frolov, who heads the Russian meteorological service Roshydromet, said this week that virtually no rain is forecast in Russia this month.

The situation is so bad in some regions that there is "no reason" to start planting winter crops, Frolov said.

Roshydromet forecasts a 30 percent drop in Russia's harvests due to the drought, he said.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has already announced a ban on grain exports that will begin August 15 and could last until December 31, based on uncertainty over this year's farm production.

Some regions won't be sowing winter grain at all this year, he said.

Researchers in the US have found new evidence that genetically modified crop plants can survive and thrive in the wild, possibly for decades.

A University of Arkansas team surveyed countryside in North Dakota for canola. Transgenes were present in 80% of the wild canola plants they found.

They suggest GM traits may help the plants survive weedkillers in the wild.

The findings were presented at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Pittsburgh.

"We just drew 11 lines that crossed the state [of North Dakota] - highways and other roads," related research team leader Cindy Sagers.

"We drove along them, we made 604 stops in a total distance of over 3,000 miles (5,000km). We found canola in 46% of the locations; and 80% of them contained at least one transgene."

In some places, the plants were packed as closely together as they are in farmers' fields.

"We found herbicide resistant canola in roadsides, waste places, ball parks, grocery stores, gas stations and cemeteries," they related in their Ecological Society presentation.

The majority of canola grown in North Dakota has been genetically modified to make it resistant to proprietary herbicides, with Monsanto's RoundUp Ready and Bayer's LibertyLink the favoured varieties. These accounted for most of the plants found in the wild.

Two of the plants analysed contained both transgenes, indicating that they had cross-pollinated.

This is thought to be the first time that communities of GM plants have been identified growing in the wild in the US.

Similar findings have been made in Canada, while in Japan, a study in 2008 found substantial amounts of transgenic rape - a close relative of canola - around port areas where GM varieties had been imported.

State-wide

What surprised the Arkansas team was how ubiquitous the GM varieties were in the wild.

"We found the highest densities of plants near agricultural fields and along major freeways," Professor Sagers told BBC News.

"But we were also finding plants in the middle of nowhere - and there's a lot of nowhere in North Dakota."
Canola seeds The GM seeds seem to be competitive, allowing a plant community to survive

Canola seeds are especially prone to dispersal, through blowing in the wind or through falling from trucks, as the seeds weigh just a few thousandths of a gram.

If you think that the upcoming energy shortage is going to be bad, it will pale in comparison to the next water crisis....

One theory about the endless wars in the Middle East since 1918 is that they have really been over water rights. Although Earth is often referred to as the water planet, only 2.5% is fresh, and three quarters of that is locked up in ice at the North and South poles.

In places like China, with a quarter of the world’s population, up to 90% of the fresh water is already polluted, some irretrievably so.

Some 18% of the world population lacks access to potable water, and demand is expected to rise by 40% in the next 20 years.

Aquifers in the US, which took nature millennia to create, are approaching exhaustion. While membrane osmosis technologies exist to convert sea water into fresh, they use ten times more energy than current treatment processes, a real problem if you don’t have any, and will easily double the end cost to consumers.

While it may take 16 pounds of grain to produce a pound of beef, it takes a staggering 2,416 gallons of water to do the same.