“Human civilisation depends vitally on a stable food supply. The constant lesson of history is that food insecurity breeds conflict – as shown in my book Food or War,” says science author Julian Cribb AM.
Mr Cribb is a speaker at next week’s Fenner Conference on Environment – Making Australian agriculture sustainable – at the Shine Dome in Canberra and online. It will be held from 9am to 5pm on Thursday 17 and Friday 18 March.
“Behind the current crisis in the Ukraine, for example, lies Russia’s anxiety over the security of its food supply – and, among other war aims, its need to control the Ukrainian grain bow,” says Mr Cribb.”This is exactly the same need that motivated Hitler’s Germany to launch World War II. Capturing the Russian and Ukrainian food lands was Nazi Germany’s primary war aim.
“This arose out of the fear of starvation which Germans suffered in World War I – and which Hitler stated in Mein Kamf in 1926 should be remedied by taking land from the Soviets and putting German farmers on it.
“With increasing climate turbulence, massive soil loss and a growing global water crisis, the future of the world food supply is increasingly insecure – and the Ukraine conflict is rubbing in this message through its impact on world grain, fertiliser and oil prices.”
Mr Cribb says what we most need is a new global diet and a renewable food system – one that can guarantee food for all through the peak in human numbers, a global peace dividend and an end to the 6th Mass Extinction.
“My talk to the Fenner conference will focus on the future of food for a safe and peaceful planet.”
