There is little waste in nature. The waste products from one species become food for another. It is a model of sustainability that is hard to beat. The human race, however, does not work this way. We populate the earth in ever-growing numbers, we consume the food, minerals and fossil fuels that are needed to sustain us, and we then use the earth to dispose of the bulk of the 300 million tonnes of waste we produce each year.
We have treated the earth badly, almost forgetting--so it would seem--how much we depend on it. Nothing demonstrates this more powerfully than our need for food. Today nearly one quarter of the earth’s terrestrial surface is under cultivation. As the world’s population continues to grow rapidly, human dependence on agriculture, the farmers who produce food, and the businesses that package and ultimately sell what we eat, has never been greater.
Over the last 50 years, food production has kept pace with growth in demand. By using pesticides, fertilizers and machinery, farmers have been able to treble the amount of wheat, barley and other grains, potatoes and sugar beets from the same area of land, while milk yields per cow have more than doubled.
Cheap food—the cost to the environment
Food has also become cheaper, safer to eat and more reliable. But farming methods only appear efficient if we take no account of harmful side effects or ‘externalities’, such as the loss of soils, the damage to biodiversity, the pollution of water and the harm to human health. And food only appears cheap because these costs are difficult to identify and measure.
Great progress has been made in terms of efficient food production, yet significant causes for concern remain. For one, modern agriculture has caused significant pollution from pesticides and nitrates, and the loss of soil and bacteria. Nitrate pollution alone costs £250 million a year in the UK to remove from drinking water, which is paid for by water consumers, not the polluters.1 According to the Environment Agency, farming is the most significant cause of serious pollution incidents.2 For another, changes in farming techniques have, according to Chris Pollock and Jules Pretty, chair and deputy chair respectively of the UK’s Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment, in their New Scientist article ‘Pastures new’, “led to habitat loss or degradation, and to diminishing biodiversity on farmland and in the surrounding countryside. Flora and fauna in the UK are now in remarkably poor condition”, thanks to the removal of hedgerows, monocultural rotations and the use of pesticides and herbicides.3
The cost to human health
Over the past two generations, the diets of most people in industrialised countries, and a great number of developing countries, have changed enormously, fuelled, in part, by the availability of cheap, intensively produced and nutritionally lacking food. People are choosing diets high in refined cereals, sugars, salt, and saturated fats, and generally low in fruit, vegetables and fish. We are also eating more meat. Large numbers of people are now eating too much or the wrong sorts of food. It is no surprise, then, that there are thought to be about a billion overweight people across the world, 300 million of whom are obese. Obesity is a major factor in many chronic illnesses, including cancer, making ill health arising from food now a major public health cost.
Co-existing with this high level of obesity and its attendant problems, are the 800 million people across the world who are hungry. Many of these people live in countries where local agricultural markets have been destroyed by the subsidies and export credits given to agricultural commodity producers in Northern producer countries. These economic policies shield farmers in developed countries from competition and do nothing to require farmers to change their farming methods or minimise the amount of pollution they produce.
Future pressures on food production
So what does the future hold? The global population is expected to rise by at least another two billion to around nine billion by 2045 or 2050. This will put even more pressure on the land over the next half-century, making it even harder to achieve a truly sustainable agriculture. Climate change will also take its toll, reducing crops and animal yields by a predicted five to ten percent by 2050, particularly in the subtropics and tropics.4
At the same time, demand for animal products in developing countries is growing so fast that meeting it will require an extra 300 million tonnes of grain a year by 2050. Yet the growth of cities and industry is reducing the amount of water available for agriculture in many regions.
Food vs fuel: the debate rages on
The biofuel boom in the United States, is driving up the price of corn and encouraging farmers to grow corn for fuel rather than food. “Last year,” says Matt Crenson of The Associated Press in his article ‘Biofuels boom raises tough questions’, “ethanol production used 12 per cent of the US corn harvest, but it replaced only 2.8 per cent of the country’s gasoline consumption.”5 It is estimated that 87 million acres of corn will be planted in 2007, up from 78 million last year.
When blended with gasoline and used as vehicle fuel, ethanol burns cleanly, reducing the production of nitrogen oxides and other pollutants. But the energy, equipment and materials needed to produce ethanol from corn, make it a far less efficient automobile fuel. “In the end,” says Crenson, “even the most generous analysts estimate that it takes the energy equivalent of three litres of ethanol to make four litres of the stuff, and some argue it takes more.”6
But ethanol’s main drawback is that it is made using a critical component of the world’s food supply. High corn prices are already causing unrest in Mexico and the US will also soon feel the effects, because corn is a key ingredient in many American foods, from cornflakes and corn chips to beer and all the baked goods, candy and soft drinks that are sweetened with corn syrup. If producing ethanol in volume from corn is not a viable option, what is? Research is being carried out into producing ethanol from other materials, but does this approach still pose a threat to food production? Are agribusinesses able to invest sufficiently in research and innovation or does Rio Tinto’s use of hydrogen as an alternative means to transport energy and deliver it cleanly at the point of use, for example, provide a more viable alternative?
Is sustainable agriculture possible?
So, what is to be done? According to Chris Pollock and Jules Pretty, a radical re-think is needed. “All this means that agriculture in the 21st century will have to be very different to how it was in the 20th,” they say.7
There are many different ways to measure agricultural performance besides food yield, Pollock and Pretty maintain, including energy use, environmental costs, water purity, carbon footprint and biodiversity. In places such as South America, Asia, China and Africa, sustainable agriculture techniques, such as inter-cropping, water management, and introducing locally-appropriate crop varieties and animal breeds are increasing food production, with far less impact on the environment.
In a survey ‘of 208 sustainable agriculture projects in 57 countries, many of which are ‘food poor’, a team of research scientists found that sustainable farming methods can help the poorest farmers in developing nations out of poverty and provide an example to Western farmers.8
“Most people think it is bad news from the south,” says Professor Jules Pretty, one of the team of research scientists, “but in many ways farmers in developing countries are leading the way.”
Farming methods that did not have an adverse effect on local biodiversity allowed farmers to reap the rewards of growing crops in healthy soil, the researchers found. By making the best of biodiversity, like predators, parasites and multiples cropping, the eco system takes care of pest management. Not only did this technique result in the use of fewer pesticides, but farmers needed to spend less of their income on chemicals. Healthy soils, rich in organic matter, also require less water to cultivate crops because they hold water better.
To make these sustainable techniques more widely acceptable in the developed—as well as the developing—world requires change to agricultural policy and the system of farm subsidies on which farmers currently depend. It also requires that agribusinesses invest in research and innovation and work with consultancies like Article 13 to do more than just develop products and processes but take responsibility for protecting the environment as well. It can be done. And the future health of the world depends on it.
Footnotes:
Pretty, Jules, ‘What is farming for?’ Leopold Letter, Vol 15, No 4, Winter 2003. Pollock, Chris and Pretty, Jules, ‘Pastures New,’ New Scientist, 21 April 2007. Ibid. Ibid. Crenson, Matt, ‘Biofuels boom raises tough questions’, The Associated Press, 10 March 2007. Ibid. Pollock and Pretty. Campbell, Tom, review of Jules Pretty, ‘Agri-culture: Reconnecting people, land and nature,’ Earthscan, 2002.
Other sources:
Kinver, Mark, ’Eco-farming ‘helps the world’s poor’’, BBC News website, 15 February 2006. Pretty, Jules, 'The Earth Only Endures', Earthscan, London, 2007. Telephone interview with Jules Pretty, Professor of Environment and Society at the University of Essex.
Also in this feature:
© Article 13 – June 2007
See also:
|
