PROMOTIONAL COPY - FULL ISSUE TO BE RELEASED EARLY NOVEMBER!

Copyright 2014 by Evan D. G. Fraser

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any
manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for
the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.
First Printing: 2014

ISBN <Enter your ISBN>

Evan D. G. Fraser
@feeding9billion
www.feedingninebillion.com

PROMOTIONAL COPY - FULL ISSUE TO BE RELEASED EARLY NOVEMBER!

This document is a preview of Evan Frasers graphic novel webzine entitled

#foodcrisis. The document begins with a preface that lists eleven things you
should know before reading the webzine. This is then followed by the first seven
pages of #foodcrisis giving you a sneak peak before its official release in early
November! After the seven-page preview, Evan has written a background essay
that will give you further insights into what inspired this story... We hope you
enjoy what is contained herein, and please continue to visit
www.feedingninebillion.com to stay up to date on what is going on with the global
food system!

PROMOTIONAL COPY - FULL ISSUE TO BE RELEASED EARLY NOVEMBER!

Preface: Eleven things you need to know before reading this story
1. There is enough food for everyone to live a healthy life. In fact, the United
Nations show there are about
I 2800 kcal per person per day available globally.
J
But the global food system is so
' inequitable that about 870 million people go
hungry while there are about 1.5 billion who are overweight or obese.

I' I

2. The price of food is wildly fvolatile.

In 2008, the UNs Food Price Index almost
I ' r
doubled in less than a year before
I
tl jllcrashing in 2009. Prices then shot up again in
2010 and 2011. Despite this volatility, our supply of food stayed stable
; 1 c
throughout this period. This suggests that the price of food is not determined
by our ability to produce food at a global level.

3. While some people believe that rising food prices cause riots, the links between
prices and unrest are not obvious. Political problems, unemployment in urban
areas, corruption and perceptions of injustice all combine with food price rises
to create the situation where people are willing to riot. Food price rises and
hunger on their own are not enough to destabilize politics.
4. About 1/3 of the worlds food is wasted before it is consumed. In the developed
world, most of the waste happens in grocery stores or in refrigerators. Most of
the waste in the developing world happens on farms due to inefficient storage
and processing facilities.
5. Not all food being grown on our planet is being used as food. About 40% of the
corn grown in the US is being turned into biofuels like ethanol. However,
creating bioethanol only uses the sugar in the corn. This leaves a protein rich
byproduct called Dried Distillers Grain that can be fed to livestock.
6. Since 2008, over 56 million hectares of land (the size of France) has been
purchased in the Global South by international companies. Some believe that
this represents meaningful foreign direct investment in places like rural Africa.
Others are worried that the companies are exploiting the Developing World.
7. A very small number of corporations control the vast majority of the worlds
food trade: Four companies produce over 55% of the worlds seeds; four others
are responsible for over 80% of beef processing; yet another four produce over
60% of the agrochemicals farmers use.

PROMOTIONAL COPY - FULL ISSUE TO BE RELEASED EARLY NOVEMBER!

8. We all know that too much meat, dairy and junk food causes obesity and
diabetes. What we dont always appreciate is that one of the causes of this is
US governmental policy. Between 1995 and 2012 the US government paid US
$84 billion in subsidies to corn farmers alone. This has resulted in massive
overproduction. Farmers feed this extra to livestock and this has driven down
the price of meat. Sugars from this excess corn are turned into high fructose
corn syrup and this has caused the price of junk food to drop too.
9. Agriculture is responsible for 75% of deforestation worldwide, and is the
largest contributor of non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions.
10. Recently published scientific work suggests that climate change may reduce
crop yields by 2% per decade over the next 100 years. The poorest regions of
the world are expected to be the worst hit. Whether these crop reductions
happen, however, depends a lot on if farmers have access to the tools they need
to adapt.
11. Recent studies suggest that the farmers of this world will have to produce
about 70% more food by 2050 in order to meet global population growth. But
many other commentators contradict this and point out that if we address
inequity and waste we may be able to feed 9 billion without big increases in
production. This is one of the key unresolved debates about global food
security.

PROMOTIONAL COPY - FULL ISSUE TO BE RELEASED EARLY NOVEMBER!

Background Essay 1: The Coming Food Crisis

One of the major inspirations for this story comes from the food crisis of
2008-2012 (this is referred to at the start of page 3 in the text box that opens
the scene). The trouble began in early 2008 when food prices shot up and around
the world angry crowds gathered, protesting an unfair food system that allow some
to profit while others go hungry. Protestors raised French baguettes into the air
as a symbol of their oppression and the government in Haiti fell. From South
America to Southeast Asia people died, cars were burned, marketplaces looted, and
armies were called in.
Then things calmed down, and 2009 saw steep declines in the price of food.
Experts let out a sigh of relief and everyone assumed that things would go back to
the way they had been, with low food prices being the norm. But the problems
returned in 2010 when Russia experienced a bad drought; within weeks, 25% of the
harvest was ruined. The Russian government took action and stopped exporting
wheat to the international market. This was supposed to keep Russians calm and
ensure that Russian grain fed Russian citizens. But panic spread onto world
markets and world prices soon exceeded the levels they had reached in 2008.

PROMOTIONAL COPY - FULL ISSUE TO BE RELEASED EARLY NOVEMBER!

While commodity
brokers and grain
merchants smiled
all the way to the
bank, these
events hit the
Middle East
particularly hard
because countries
like Tunisia and
Egypt import huge
amounts of
Russian grain each
fall.
Very quickly,
food price protests began and again the French Baguette was raised as an
international symbol of resistance.
But this time the protests morphed into much more than simple upset over
the cost of food. The food price rises had energized an emerging grassroots
revolution that quickly mobilized against deeply entrenched dictatorships that had
been in power for decades. The Arab Spring erupted onto the headlines in early
2011. In country after country, political powers fell before the demands for
reform and across Northern Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean politics and
daily life have been chaotic ever since.
The lessons from these years is that food prices, and conflicts over our
daily bread, are capable of toppling governments and upending the social order.
But as dramatic as these events were, since 2011 there has been an uneasy
calm on international food markets. Food prices have dropped (a bit). Governments
in Asia have established larger stockpiles of rice to help protect themselves and
their consumers. Higher commodity prices have also justified farmers spending
more on fertilizer and seeds. And notwithstanding the US drought in 2012 that
hurt corn (maize) production, by and large the weather has cooperated with grain
farmers.
Taken together, events of the last few years have caused food experts
like me to scratch our heads and I have been involved in a noisy, sometimes
PROMOTIONAL COPY - FULL ISSUE TO BE RELEASED EARLY NOVEMBER!

acrimonious, debate over both what caused this crisis and (more importantly)
whether or not the 2008-2011 food crisis was an isolated event or if it is the tip
of the iceberg and a sign of things to come.
After all, over the last few decades the global human population has tripled
and currently sits at about 7 billion souls. Most projections suggest that by 2050
there will be 9 billion people on the planet who need to be fed, watered, and
housed. Does this soaring demand mean that well face worse instability in the near
future?
The situation seems bleak. Making matters even scarier is the growth in
Asia's middle class, and in particular the fact that as Asians have become
wealthier they have also started to eat much more meat. Meat consumption is
important because producing 1 kg of meat takes many kilograms of grain, so rising
meat consumption increases our demand for food much faster than population
growth does alone. (Of course, this is also a problem in Europe and North America,
but Asia is typically blamed because the population there is so much larger and
people have only recently become wealthy enough to eat substantial amounts of
meat and dairy.)
Worse still is the specter of climate change. In 2008, droughts in Australia
reduced the amount of wheat produced, helping push prices higher. Similarly, 2007
was an El Nio year, and this hurt rice production in Asia. While some experts
debate whether the drought in Australia was all that significant in 2008, most
scientists realize that climate change will likely grow as an issue confronting
farmers in the future.
Altogether, some scientists argue that the farmers of this world will have to
produce 70% more food by 2050 and that rising demand and climate change
represent a perfect storm of problems that threaten to unleash civil unrest and
international conflict.

Stay Tuned For Updates!

@feeding9billion
www.feedingninebillion.com

PROMOTIONAL COPY - FULL ISSUE TO BE RELEASED EARLY NOVEMBER!