Floods, pestilence, war, drought and skyrocketing fuel prices combined this year to create the perfect storm of conditions which are squeezing the world's food supply, causing prices to soar and leaving more people hungry, policy experts gathered at McGill University warned yesterday.
Agriculture experts from around the world attending a conference on global food security cited extreme weather, coupled with population increases, dwindling farmland and dietary shifts as parts of a complex equation that has triggered food riots in Asia, toppled governments and boosted prices for staples by up to 50 per cent this year.
Judith Mbula Bahemuka, Kenya's High Commissioner to Canada, said climate - and now climate change - are "great determinants to food security" in her country, where arable land is limited at the best times and a poor rainy season can be disastrous.
Last year, the Economic Review of Agriculture estimated half the population did not have enough to eat.
"The food basket is very, very small," she said.
Here at home, agencies such as Sun Youth report they're feeling the crunch, as shelves empty and donations buy one-third less than they did even a year ago.
"World grain reserves are at their historic lowest levels ever," said Chandra Madramootoo, dean of agricultural and environmental sciences at McGill who organized the session in response to the global crisis.
"Traditionally, Canada was a major breadbasket of the world. We contributed a lot to grain and cereal reserves internationally. Those reserves have dwindled over the last couple of years," he said, citing drought in Australia, floods in Canada, and hurricanes and conversion to biofuel production in the United States.
"The energy crunch, the high demand for fossil fuels. ... It's a whole serious of factors that came together to make this all occur at the same time."
During formal sessions and a lunch inspired by the 100-Mile diet, researchers, government officials and students traded recipes for shielding consumers while providing small farmers with the tools to increase yield and ensure produce is safe when it reaches the table.
Kulandaisamy Thangavel, a professor at Tamil Nadu University, said India leads the world in milk production and ranks among the top five nations for fruit, vegetable and egg production.
Yet 840 million people in India don't have enough food, 185 million children are malnourished and roughly one-third of the annual harvest is lost because of poor infrastructure and a dearth of cold storage facilities.
Dev Sharma, an Indian engineer working on a Canadian-funded irrigation project in Ethiopia, said food prices used to be cyclical.
"Last year, prices never went down."
Ethiopia has enjoyed four successive bumper cereal crops, he said, yet 6 million people suffer from chronic food shortages, largely as a result of "weather hazards."
Mbula Buhemuka said there's no time to waste.
"In the short-term, we have to feed people. In the long-term, we need sustainability."