Technology to predict famine

We hear on the news of another food crisis: maybe the Horn of Africa, maybe Niger. It shocks us again, and we wonder: "How long has this been coming on?" Technology has been put to use in helping predict the next famine. The US Agency for International Development maintains a tool called the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET). Here is the link:

http://www.fews.net/Pages/default.aspx

FEWS NET looks at population, agricultural systems, expected rainfall, and many other factors, to anticipate food shortage conditions up to six months out. So food aid and other assistance can perhaps be planned ahead somewhat, rather than always being in a reactive mode. Technical partners for FEWS NET include NOAA, USGS, NASA, and a company called Chemonics, which has people on the ground in high-risk regions.

What FEWS NET highlights to me, though, is that food insecurity is a distribution problem. There is general agreement that the world agricultural systems produce adequate food for the entire population; it simply isn't getting to where it's needed. Famine and food insecurity can then be thought of as being outliers, where bad weather and other misfortunes interrupt what is normally an adequate food supply.

But as the population grows, food insecurity and famine WILL grow as well--even if the distribution problems are no more severe than they are now, the number of food insecure people will grow proportionately with the total population. But distribution problems will become MORE severe, for several reasons:
--food distribution requires energy, and larger populations will make more demands on energy, reducing what is available to combat food insecurity
--food insecurity and famine are more likely as population DENSITY increases, which it is
--distribution infrastructure, such as roads and rail, have finite capacities which are more likely to be exceeded because of population growth

We will also require tools with longer time horizons than FEWS NET presently provides, in order to place infrastructure investments intelligently to avoid catastrophic food problems in the coming decades.