Over at Market Sceptics, Eric deCarbonnel predicts a food catastrophe for 2009. My knowledge of food production is not good enough to really assess whether or not he is right, but he makes a convincing case. For example, have a look at this map:
You will notice that there is a large overlap between the countries that experience the worst droughts and that produce most of the world’s food: China, Australia, and the USA. Not a very reassuring idea.
So what would this mean for us? Well, you can be pretty sure that organisations that deal with food aid, WFP most of all, will be busy. WFP logistics will most likely be strained to its limit, if not beyond. Logisticians in any organisation that deals with the malnourished (and that would include almost any medical or food aid NGO) will have to deal with an increase in the number of feeding programs that will have to be supported, and should already prepare to be able to do so — e.g. by taking a hard look at their procurement and transport capacity for therapeutic food. And manufacturers of therapeutic food can look forward to yet another big year — if their production and logistics capacity can keep up.
Does your organisation have the logistics capacity to deal with this?
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