This messge is relevant not only to those concerned about Y2K. It also
tells us a lot about society and especially about what's going on down
on the farm.
Caspar Davis
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Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 17:26:55 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [Y2K-L] Farmers Prepare for Y2K
Farmers Prepare for Y2K
[You can access this story via www.y2k.com and follow the CBN link]
November 12, 1998
In a nation that knows little about famine or widespread hunger, the
prospect of food shortages possibility if the Y2K Millennium Bug
interrupts links in the chain that delivers food from the farm to your
kitchen table. - David Snyder, reporter (CBN).
Do Americans take their next meal for granted? "These are the staples of
life that people need," says Michael Sansolo of the Food Marketing
Institute.
Says Geri Guidetti from the Ark Institute: "This is the only time in
history when men and women have not stored food to make it through the
winter until spring."
"So anything that can impact the delivery of those goods to the grocery
store could cause spot shortages," notes Bruce Webster from the
Washington,
D.C. Y2K Group.
In this land of plenty, it is a little disturbing to realize that the food
chain is both intricate and vulnerable.
"And so the average consumer nowadays doesn't have a good comprehension of
what it takes putting food on the table," says farmer Bill Taliaferro.
"We underestimate the number of dependencies that go on in any activity,"
says Peter de Jager, a leading Y2K authority.
"The more I uncovered, the more I realized how extraordinarily vulnerable
the system is," says Guidetti.
Geri Guidetti is a biologist who moderates an internet forum on Y2K and
agriculture. "The writing is on the wall: it is not only possible, but
probable that there are going to be food shortages," she says.
That's because modern agriculture and food production have grown heavily
dependent on technology. And computers and automated systems are at
risk of
getting bit by the millennium bug. In addition, agriculture relies on a
variety of other industries to put the food on your table.
"It's a very wide, intricate chain, it is a global chain," says Webster.
"We don't realize in the winter the grapes we eat are coming from
Chile. We
don't realize how much food comes from outside the U.S."
Which highlights the fact that America is vulnerable to failures in
countries which are well behind the U.S. in their efforts to fix their Y2K
problems. Even the seeds are susceptible to Y2K. Most are hybrid,
manufactured by seed companies.
"So if you're not able to grow the food because of a glitch anywhere
in the
process or because you're not able to deliver the seed after it is
produced
-- if you have a glitch anywhere in that line -- that seed is in jeopardy,
your future food is in jeopardy," says Guidetti.
Seed in hand, it is up to the farmer to get it to grow. You'd be surprised
at how much technology they're using down on the farm.
"It gives us better control over what we're doing," says Taliaferro.
Bill Taliaferro's grain farm in Eastern Virginia uses GPS (Global
Positioning Satellite) to help grow his crops.
"As the machine is going through the field, the GPS system is determining
the position and it's recording the yield readings at each of those
positions. So when we carry the data back to the office, we can generate a
map of how the yield's running," he says.
There's evidence of technology everywhere on Taliaferro's farm -- inside
his huge new harvesting tractor, over at the soybean separating machine,
and inside the front office. Unfortunately, Taliaferro hasn't had much
time
to react to the threat of Y2K.
"I admit to you that I'm just beginning to think about it, and the honest
truth is I don't think we'll fully know what the impact is until
January 1,
2000."
Everything could still work properly after January 1st, 2000, but what if
one renegade computer chip caused this tractor to spread too much
fertilizer? There could be a delay before the crops would grow.
And what if there were other problems?
"If you don't know who needs grain, if you don't know what global prices
are, you don't know where you're going to get your money from, you don't
know if there's credit available for the farmer or for whoever's dealing
with the grain, what's going to happen to the normal grain commerce," says
Guidetti.
Once the grain is harvested or the cows are milked, the raw produce
must be
shipped out for processing. And most experts pinpoint transportation
as the
weakest link in the chain.
"The railway systems, the trucking industry, if they depend upon oil and
gas, is that in good supply? Have the oil companies been able to fix it?,"
asks de Jager.
"And when you look at this, it is the Soviet Union in the '80's: where
there's a plentiful supply of food in the field, but you can't get it from
the fields to the towns to feed the population," says Alan Simpson of
comLINKS.com.
Or to the factories for processing, where they have potential problems of
their own. "Computers play an extremely important role in the
production of
food from factories -- many of which are automated -- down to the
distribution of products," says William James of Grocery Manufacturers of
America.
But James denies any problems in food processing will result from Y2K.
"We have been working on this problem for the past five to seven years. I
think that we've put a tremendous amount of resources into fixing this and
we're going to be ready," he says.
Once food is processed into canola oil or pasta, it is shipped to
warehouses. Inventories, temperature controls, and shipping orders are
often controlled by computer. And then the food is shipped by the
highly-vulnerable transportation system to your local grocery store.
"Most consumers don't really look at the supermarket as a high-tech
environment and they probably would be surprised as to how much technology
and how much data-gathering goes into making the store operate the way it
does," says Sansolo.
Retailers are spending untold millions of dollars in a last-minute rush to
get ready. "The critical area would obviously be if the scanners wouldn't
work and we couldn't get the consumer's goods purchased. In that arena,
we're probably at about 90 percent 2000 compliant," Sansolo continues.
Guidetti counsels people to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.
"There will be food shortages developing and I would say the inner cities
have the greaterprobability unless there's some concerted government
effort
to make sure the food gets into the inner cities come hell or high water,
because they are concerned with civil unrest," she says.
James says it just isn't so.
"Don't panic. There are not going to be empty food shelves January 1st,
2000. The trucks are going to be rolling."
Hopefully, those trucks will be filled with food.
END
Guy Dauncey, 2069 Kings Rd, Victoria, B.C. V8R 2P6, Canada
Sustainable Communities Consultancy
Tel/Fax (250) 592-4473
Publisher, EcoNews, www.islandnet.com/~gdauncey/econews/
Author, 'After the Crash : The Emergence of the Rainbow Economy'
Victoria Green Pages : www.greenpages.victoria.bc.ca
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