WORLDWATCH WOLF KEEPS CRYING
Lester R. Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute and long-time global food supply doomsayer, was quoted at length by The Wall Street Journal, 19 December 1991, p. A10, in an article headlined “Severe Famine in East Africa and Iraq, Food Shortages Elsewhere Seen in 1992.”
In addition to Mr. Brown’s usual litany of problems allegedly affecting world grain production — cropland loss, less irrigated land, increased soil erosion, reduced yields due to acid rain, air pollution, and climate changes — Brown again advanced his “days of consumption” ploy. (See “Lester Brown’s ‘Grain Reserves’ Shell Game,” PRI Review Vol. 1, No. 4, pp. 1–4).
According to The Journal, “In 1992, Mr. Brown said, the world’s grain reserves are projected to sink to their lowest levels since 1976 — enough to last only 63 days. Bad weather, combined with an expected drop in Soviet production, could reduce reserves below a 60-day supply and create ‘an extremely volatile price situation,’ particularly for wheat, he added.”
This writer replied to Brown’s claims in a letter printed in the 21 January Wall Street Journal, p. A21. That letter is reprinted below. At press time, The Journal had received no reply from Mr. Brown or the Worldwatch Institute.
Worldwatch President Lester Brown…has again manipulated world grain data to advance his overpopulation-outracing-food-production thesis.
Mr. Brown now claims that “the world’s grain reserves are projected to sink to their lowest levels since 1976 — enough to last only 68 days.” But in 1988, Mr. Brown was crying wolf over a global grain supply that he then alleged had fallen to just “54 days of consumption.”
Indeed, Mr. Brown has made similar claims of scarce grain supplies in almost every year of the past quarter century. In 1974, for instance, he claimed grain supplies were then equivalent to only “27 days of consumption.” In 1976, he alleged that global grain supplies for that year amounted to “31 days,” while in 1980 the figure was “40 days.” Subsequently, while never admitting error, Mr. Brown published data indicating that the 1974 figure was actually “61 days,” and the 1976 and 1980 figures were 79 and 71 “days,” respectively.
Although Mr. Brown now professes concern over an alleged “68 days” grain supply leading to “an extremely volatile price situation,” he has long held that the “danger point” below which the world’s supplies should not fall was 50 “days of consumption.” That level, he said, ensured adequate food supplies and price stability. In 1985, e.g., he noted that 1984’s “level of grain and cropland reserves equaled 56 days of world food consumption, more than enough to maintain relatively stable prices in world grain markets.”
Mr. Brown recently switched to a new, higher “danger level” for his “days of consumption” figure in order to support his scarcity claims in the face of adequate, if not outright burdensome, grain reserves. Incidentally, the U.S. Agriculture Department does not sanction Mr. Brown’s methods nor use his “days of consumption” ploy. Indeed, every USDA report cautions that the grain supply data “should not be construed as representing world grain stock levels at a fixed point in time,” as Mr. Brown continually does.
Meanwhile, this nation’s winter wheat crop, some 80% of the year’s total production, lies dormant in the ground with ideal weather and soil moisture. An article in the Commodities Corner of Barron’s [Nov. 11, 1991, p. 67] took note of this situation and predicted a “coming blizzard in wheat” at next spring’s harvest.
If that proves true, one wonders what new stratagem Mr. Brown will employ so that he may continue to cry wolf.
PICAYUNE FOOD SUPPLIES?
A 21 December editorial in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “World to have less food in 1992,” claimed that “the worldwide need for food will continue to exceed available supplies.” A letter from PRI, printed 18 January, set the record straight: “Worldwide food demands have never, at least in modern times, exceeded available supplies.”
If such a supply-demand imbalance were actually the case, then, by definition, the world’s grain supplies would be completely exhausted. The problem arose from the editorial writer’s mistranslation of the UN. Food and Agriculture Organization statement that “The world…[is] consuming more than it produces” into the claim that consumption has exceeded supplies, a very different matter altogether. Consumption may indeed exceed production, but supplies include current production plus stockpiles from previous harvests.
The FAO also reported a very positive development which The Times-Picayune ignored: The Sahel countries of Africa, which suffered greatly in recent years from poor harvests and famine, had achieved record harvests in 1991.
