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FOOD: A NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE

The ecological deficits — soil depletion and water shortages — will make it more difficult to sustain rapid growth in world food output. No one knows when the growth in food production will fall behind that of demand, driving up prices, but it may be much closer than we think. The triggering events that will precipitate future food shortages are likely to be spreading water shortages interacting with crop-withering heat waves in key food-producing regions. Grain prices will be the economic indicator most likely to signal serious trouble in the deteriorating relationship between the global economy and the Earth's ecosystem.

Food is fast becoming a national security issue as growth in the world har vest slows and falling water tables and rising temperatures hint at future shortages. More than 100 countries import part of the wheat they consume. Some 40 import rice. While some countries are only marginally dependent on imports, others could not survive without them. Iran and Egypt rely on imports for 40 percent of their grain supply. For Algeria, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, among others, it is 70 percent or more. For Israel and Yemen, more than 90 percent. Just six countries — the United States, Canada, France, Australia, Argentina and Thailand — supply 90 percent of grain exports. The United States alone controls close to half of world grain exports, a larger share than Saudi Arabia does of oil.

Thus far the countries importing heavily are small and middle-sized ones. But soon, China, the world's most populous country, is likely to turn to world markets in a major way. In 1972, following a weather-reduced harvest, the former Soviet Union unexpectedly turned to the world market for roughly a tenth of its grain supply. World wheat prices climbed from $1.90 to $4.89 a bushel, and bread prices soon rose, too.

For the world's poor-the millions living in cities on $1 per day or less and already spending 70 percent of their income on food -- rising grain prices would be life-threatening. A doubling of world grain prices today could impoverish more people in a shorter period of time than any event in history. With desperate people holding their governments responsible, such a price rise also could destabilize governments of' low-income, grain-importing countries.

If China depletes its grain reserves and turns to the world grain market to cover its shortfall, now 40 million tons per year, it could destabilize world grain markets overnight. Turning to the world market means turning to the United State, presenting a potentially delicate geopolitical situation in which 1.3 billion Chinese consumers with a $100-hillion trade surplus with the United States will be competing with American consumers for U.S. grain. If this leads to rising food prices in the United States, how will the government respond? In times past, it could have restricted exports, even imposing an export embargo, as it did with soybeans to Japan in 1974. But today the United States has a stake in a politically stable China. With an economy growing at 7 percent to 8 percent a year, China is the engine powering not only the Asian economy but, to some degree, the world economy.

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