GLOBALISATION

Primarily cheap and readily available transportation (e.g. to enable British apples to be sent to Kenya to be waxed and polished and returned!). Secondly it requires stability politically to enable investors to do so with confidence – hence the slow development of many African, Asian and South American economies. Thirdly, and more importantly for many products it needs a reliable climate within certain parameters. Here we have climate change beginning tpom wreak havoc on consumer prices. Already hit by the supply chain problems we have durum wheat prices rising rapidly due to extreme weather conditions in Canada (and poor weather earlier this year in Italy), so pasta will rise in price. The coffee crop has been hit by poor weather in Brazil. I guess we can expect other crops to be hit by climatic changes? Maybe I would look to see which crops have a limited geographic range to predict future price hikes? Our main staple foods are each grown across a variety of environments so they should be ok, tree crops could look vulnerable as things like olive trees need years to mature, almonds need vast amounts of water (I believe? OK I thought I would not be sloppy so I googled – one Californian almond needs 12 litres of water. The site I checked was obviously a Californian one as it stated that all nuts were water intensive and cattle farming was more water hungry).

I have to comment on this – I suspect that chestnut, hazel nut and walnut trees in the UK do not need much irrigation (at the moment). I guess this is the point. California has never been the environmentally optimum place for water intensive crops – at least not until the great dams were built along with the water transfer schemes.

We need to get back to mainly local food production with exotics being just that – special treats. However everything has a knock on impact so how will countries like Kenya, Vietnam and Granada cope with fluctuating prices and demand, let alone production.

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