One of the most important but often overlooked issues of the coming decades is most certainly that of Food Security. This is an issue that in today’s world cannot simply be assigned to Departments of Agriculture, or the Ministries of Land Management. As of January 2011 more than 120 of the 195 established nations have been placed on the Failed States listing in an Alert or Warning status*, and of these most have food sustainability issues that must be addressed, many immediately.
More than 60 of these countries are incapable of raising the food needed to meet national demands which forces them to import record quantities of grain, due to reduced productivity and increasing populations, to feed their people. These issues in turn promote conflict, hording, black market economies, food diversion and social unrest (including food riots).
Many of the nations hovering just above the line are producing crops from a ‘Food Bubble’ posture. A food bubble is a situation in which, due to land, water, climatic, or economic constraints, production failure is eminent. Simply put, these countries are fast approaching, when the bubble bursts, a point where they will not be able to produce enough food for their populations. Not unlike 2008's housing bubble in the developed world, the global food bubble will be devastating and it will reach much farther down.
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