Food Security Levels in the Face of High Food Prices. Bingxin Yu, Liangzhi You and Shenggen Fan (2009) via www.zentrum-transformation.bundeswehr.de

If nothing else, existentially important goods include food. Although countries such as
Germany are almost self-sufficient when it comes to the basic supply of foodstuffs, peak oil could well have serious consequences in some areas of agriculture. Potential supply bottlenecks would above all jeopardise countries with high food import quotas since the cost of importing food is bound to become very high. After peak oil, there would be significant differences from past food shortages or crises in this context:

  • The crisis would concern all food traded over long distances, not just single regions or products. Regions that are structurally already at risk today would however be particularly affected.
  • Crop yields also depend on oil. The abdication of machines or oil-based fertilizers and other chemicals to increase crop yield would therefore have a negative effect on crops.
  • The increase in food prices would be long-term and would not be the result of a one-off crop failure or a similar situation.
  • Competition between the use of farmland for food production on the one hand and for the use of producing biofuels on the other hand could worsen food shortages and crises.

The probability of serious supply crises with relevance to security policy would climax where the food security levels are already low. Price fluctuations induced by peak oil would lend more weight to problems concerning domestic production or generally insecure trade relations. However, food shortages could also develop into a problem in countries that are as such self-sufficient if food production methods in various parts of the country vary greatly and distribution is inefficient or perceived unfair. Since oil is needed directly or indirectly for the production of more than 90% of all industrial goods, effects would show across the entire economic structure. Since an increase in the price of oil would bring about a shift in almost all price relations, consumption and, in turn, domestic production and foreign trade would have to permanently adapt to the new oil prices.

PEAK OIL: Security policy implications of scarce resources [pdf]