Shatha Khalil *
World Bank published alarming figures on the status of food in the world, and that two billion of the world’s population are threatened by poverty in the foreseeable future and that a hundred million of them are threatened by famine in the short term, and experts on future studies warned before the Bank of the lack of food supply in the world but no one cares for their warnings, what is the seriousness of these expectations? What does it mean that food prices are rising in unprecedented way we see today.
The phenomenon of poverty is one of the most prominent social and economic problems that are spread in human societies in general and Arabic in particular, due to its social pests such as sickness and ignorance, and its negative impact on the living reality of individuals on the one hand and the achievement of social and economic development goals on the other.
The fight against poverty in the Arab world and attempts to find ways to confront it constitute the fundamental challenges facing governments to raise the minimum level of these classes, and identify the weaknesses and promote them to progress and adequate standard of living.
Poverty is due to internal and external reasons; including population growth, political instability, debt, social inequality, and vulnerability to natural disasters, wars, which calls for the development of solutions to address those reasons, especially in the countries that complain about the weakness of its agricultural policies and its dependence on the import of basic materials.
It is expected that there will be an increase in need of the world to food by 50% by 2050 to more than 4 billion people in the world, US study revealed that it would be a shortage of food quantities; due to increased temperatures and the pollution resulting from the ozone layer, and thus the problem of malnutrition in developing countries will be increased from 18% to 27% over the next four decades.
The study showed the effect of rising temperatures and pollution caused by the ozone layer on the global production of major crops, such as rice, wheat, corn, and soybeans, which make up more than half the calories consumed by human being in the world, studies suggest that the impact on food crops is different from the area to the other, also some crops may be affected more than the others by these factors , for example, the wheat crop is more sensitive to pollution of the ozone layer, while the corn is affected by factors of heat and high temperatures, and ozone pollution can destroy plants and reduce crop yields; but until now, the effect of the two elements together on agricultural crops has not been studied, and there is a study focused on the effect of temperature increase while the impact of air quality on the crop is still studied with less attention.
It is expected that the increase in the temperature rise to reduce the agricultural crops in the world by 10% by 2050, and the impact of ozone pollution will lead to plant diseases such as flexion of plant leaves, and change its color while the high temperatures, and ozone can destroy plant independently, and the influence of factors may be occurred collectively , where the researchers found that 46% of the destruction caused to soy pills, caused by high temperatures and as a result of ozone pollution.
Another study warned that climate change will not cause a shortage of agricultural crops only; but it will cause natural disasters, floods, heat waves and storms in the coming decades.
The world has been cautious for natural disasters, as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was established in 2008, a secure seed bank which is located in the Norwegian Spazbergn island, in the archipelago of Svalbard, just 1,300 kilometers from the North Pole.
This Vault was built to try to insure against seed loss in the banks of other genes during regional or global crises widely, and where there is about 1.5 million samples of separate seeds from agricultural crops, the Global Seed Vault which is called vault of ” the Day of Resurrection”, its mission is to save humanity in the event of the occurrence of disaster and in the case of the worst scenario, and in late 2015, researchers from the Middle East demanded for drought – resistant seeds, to compensate for what was lost in the bank of storage of seed near the Syrian city of Aleppo, which was destroyed during the war.
Studies revealed that rising temperatures will increase poverty, and will destroy the land, marine organisms, noting that the world is living in a time of climate change due to human behavior, which have had its impact on global warming in all continents, oceans, and experts warned that people are not ready to face the risks of climate change.
Studies suggest the rise in food prices during the last four years in an unprecedented way, particularly prices of key materials, namely: wheat, rice, corn, dairy and oils, as the increase in prices was in 2007 alone, 40%, according to a recent report of the Organization (FAO) and the price per ton of wheat was increased from $ 400 in 2005 to $ 700 in 2007.
Thus , the food deficit has been worsened in the fiscal balances of the States concerned to import and declining global stocks of food and the world became on the edge of the real crisis called “food” .
In Arab area, high prices played a direct role in exacerbating the food gap in terms of monetary value, and so imports of Arab countries from food were increased between 2005 and 2006 by 4.4% from $ 23 billion to $ 24.3 billion, of which 9% increase in rice imports alone, while exports of this material decreased by 3.7% from 370 million tons to 357 million tons, the result that the food gap exceeded the Red line in Arab area.
Figures released by the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development in 2006 confirmed that the gap mentioned for cereals amounted to 49% and 43% legumes, corn 64% and rice 25%. In view of this situation, the position of the population was worsened in terms of access to the calories where the ratio of the undernourished from the Arab world’s population amounted 13% in 2004.
These ratios are likely to rise and may come back to the case of the seventies as it stood at 30%, and observers and researchers in the UN bodies attribute the rise in food prices to several factors , most notably, drought, rising energy prices, demand from countries of voracious growth such as India and China ,and the increase of the production of bio fuels on the account of cultivated areas .
The lack of cultivated land is exacerbated by capitalist behavior of the markets, and subordination to external market, and the neglect of agricultural policies in the countries concerned with a gap of food, and the behavior of some countries in the field of stocks of food, which led to the transformation to the foreign markets and the deterioration of local agriculture, as external capital markets and the markets of production turn gradually towards a new behavior on the impact of high oil prices threaten food security in all countries associated with those markets in one way or another, and so energy investment turned into metals and grain , which increased the total demand for food stocks , rising prices after the scarcity of its supply .
And major capital companies turned from oil monopoly to the monopoly of grain and gold, while the capitalist countries are gradually turning to the exploitation of the land in the bio – energy production , which has increased the cultivation of plant products intended for energy at the expense of food products, while in densely populated communities such as India and China , its consumer behavior was shifted to the demand for meat and cheese that doubled the demand for livestock feed and increased its prices.
In the Arab States , the policy has shifted from direct support to the production in the early eighties to the liberalization of the agricultural sector in the nineties for the benefit of the private sector, for example , in Algeria, a large part of the agricultural reclamation was granted to non- residents and the result is that the private sector has changed approximately of 2 million hectares from its agricultural nature, and the policy followed to support the farmer led to launch another area of corruption and fraud where the agricultural product was the victim itself. To make matters worse, the land intended for the production of grain west of the country has been transformed for the production of fruit trees and the demand on the import was increased and the state did not keep pace with the bumper production of tomatoes of desert and it did not hasten to manage livestock and fisheries on the scale of food security and the result is what we see today, bad management of resources from the perspective of sustainability, then the deterioration of cereals, oils and dairy production rates ranging from 14% to 49%, underscoring the seriousness of the food situation , which the World Bank warned of its coming.
International Finance Corporation warned about the next threat, in addition to experts and analysts of Arab, they did not stop warning of the gravity of the situation which is likely to have many problems in the future , however, the economy makers of us did not care for their analysis , but when the World Bank spoke, the decision makers in some countries became aware of it that some Arab governments have began to accelerate to take procedures to a siren alarm sounded time ago , while the situation calls for a real revolution in the field of agriculture management in the countries, the World Bank has proposed to increase the assistance directed to agriculture in Africa to $ 800 million and support of the United Nations food program by 500 million dollars, as China and India called for investment in Africa with the size of $ 30 billion and called for European Economic Cooperation Organization to contribute to the reduction of the poverty of the world, measures that are not out of the scope of the policies of international capital bodies that proved its failure every time!
Arabic integrated agricultural system:
The Arab system can to launch new policies for food security on the basis of integration according to the competitive advantages, the Arabs can invest in sustainable local resources rather than international aid vulnerable to depletion, and so the Arab world can be divided into four regional groups, namely: the Maghreb, and the area of blue Nile, the Middle East and the Gulf region.
Each group of it has its own agricultural advantages starting from cereals and pulses to vegetables, fruits and dates to animal and marine wealth to agricultural products of industrial output, and opportunities to invest in Arab sovereign funds abound in the agricultural field and other opportunities for economic feasibility in the field of export abound in the food industry that can be launched in Arab area.
A strategic objective requires a high – level coordination in the direction of Arab agricultural integration, and it needs an Arab free will to upgrade production, investment, services of agriculture then issues related to transfer, foreign trade and agricultural research.
With the sign that the is world on the verge of a real famine as the World Bank says, the Arab world is full of its natural resources in the hands of governments can transfer risk to the good work programs.
How can nanotechnology save the world, technology plays major role of serving all sectors of life, if we take the economic sector, “the industrial field”, which in turn leads to the development of the concept and philosophy of production and manufacturing, which reflected positively on the properties and characteristics and the prices of these products and goods.
The economics of nanotechnology: It is likely that the nanotechnology to dominate with its multi applications on the global economy over the next ten years, it is expected that the economy of this technology to represent enormous power that the size of its investments exceeds the total global investment in all other combined industries , recent studies conducted by the National Science Foundation in the United States of America proved the size of investment that will be based on nanotechnology in the coming years will reach one trillion US dollars, while the Japanese studies expect that it will exceed this figure too much to reach about 3.5 trillion dollar ..
The world countries have been keen to provide substantial financial allocations to strengthen the nanoresearch programs , where they see that this technology represents the last resort for humanity in the salvation of their concerns and problems that other technologies were failed for finding practical solutions to them, so they were obliged to spend generously on programs and centers of excellence for science and nanotechnology, as global spending reached during the period from 2000 – 2008 about $ 35 billion.
And nano – technologies occupies priorities of scientific and research interests in all countries of the world, where the 52 countries during the period 2000-2009 to establish scientific units and research institutes , amounting to 24 468, and 156 countries took part in the dissemination of scientific research, and the issuance of specialized journals, in addition to what the world is witnessing today of the race on the organization of international conferences, seminars and workshops on nanotechnology, then no day without holding a seminar or a conference.
Thus nanotechnology imposed itself firmly on the scientific community because it is the only technology capable of integrating basic science, and many of the advanced technologies and melted down in the crucible to reach to the globalization of technology for the human service.
Current and future nanotechnology applications:
Nanotechnology and Food Security : The applications of nanotechnology is , represented by the change and the development of technologies used for the agriculture sector, such as improving agricultural soil fertility, raise its ability to produce crops of high quality, resistance to diseases and pests, and cultivated at any time, improve and protect food products and preserved from damage , one of the modern applications of this advanced technology.
And a lot of talk recently about the use of a new term which is ” Nonofood ” , which has become a hope for broad categories of human beings who suffer from deprivation in the area of having healthy food that combines the desirable qualities such as , good taste and completeness of the nutrients in it.
Nanotechnology for environmental protection and removal of contaminants:
it is likely to use modern technologies will increase the human capacity for environmental protection and disposal of accumulations of pollutants to water and air, and innovation systems to predict future protection from any environmental problems, and it was possible the production of advanced nano – materials and to provide effective and inexpensive ways to get renewable and cheap energy, as well as water purification, as the traditional attempts specially the purification of groundwater is a complex expensive process , and require long periods of time, but some granules of the elements of the parity of zero, particularly iron ore of zero parity Fe0 when Low diameters less than 10 nanometers, the atoms condense on the surface of these granules, which maximizes its activity in ridding water of compounds of toxic halogens of chlorine compounds, and the granules iron nanoparticles grabbing the oxygen element from all toxic nitrogen oxides , and extends the role of these granules to water purification from heavy metals elements such as zinc, arsenic to oxidize and convert it into harmless chemical images , in addition to that these granules have a large capacity of active chemical catalysts if they are pumped to the places of underground water , it should be noted here that the status of the finite size in the tiny granules of iron allowing it the ability to easily access through the minute pores of the layers of soil above the groundwater; and most importantly of all of this , recent study in the United States, reported on ted channel
If we think of different ways, and water treatment when in use, mothers and children did not have to walk for four hours a day to fetch water, they can get it from any source close to them, so with eight billion dollars only, we can reach the millennium goal of halving represented to reduce the number of people who do not get safe drinking water, to put this in context, the Government of the United Kingdom spends about 12 billion pounds a year on foreign aid. But why we stop there? With Twenty billion dollars, anyone can get safe drinking water, so the three and a half billion people who suffer annually, as a result, and two million children who die every year, will live.
Desalination of sea water: nanotechnology has given hope in the development of water desalination techniques, as experiments confirmed that the use of pipeline of nanoparticles of carbon in the membranes industry used for this purpose reduced the cost of desalination by 75%, and a carbon pipelines represent a unique and distinct sources of filtering processes and filtering, where its slots designed to allow of pure water molecules to pass , while to prevent salt molecules to pass, and increasing the effectiveness of filtration and filtering water with the use of the first acid magnesium nanoparticles granules , as well as granules of magnesium free metal , and these substances show effectiveness in the elimination of bacteria, and killing germs that may be found in drinking water.
Detection of mines and explosives: since the eighties of the last century , terrorist operations have been spread by using forms of explosives characterized by small size and height of their destructive, and often be anonymous and installation, in addition to the presence of millions of mines from the remnants of wars and conflicts prevalent in many parts of the world, and detection methods of this explosives has become very costs, although there are types of sensors that are placed in multiple places, the large size and low sensitivity as well as the length of time required to perform its mission, all of that makes it fall short of its objectives, nanotechnology did not spare effort to find solutions for the provision of remote sensors, light weight, small size, unique sensitivity in distinguishing between explosive materials, and classified accurately, as characterized by low cost, and the idea of working based on hunting molecules of organic materials used in explosives, analyze and send radio signals to network of systems of information, then you can determine the mine site or the trap easily and accurately and to intervene immediately to foil it.
Promising results and encouraging for the applications of nanotechnology have led to be put by the Development Program of Millennium III of the United Nations in its report of 2005 as a first technique, and a key tool for the goals of development, reconstruction and mitigation of problems resulting from poverty and disease , and “nanomedicine tide” was not limited on the developed countries, but extended to reach the whole world, especially the developing countries that have found in this technology the way to solve many of its problems, which have failed to find solutions to it by traditional technologies.
Economic Unity
Rawabet Center for researches and strategic studies