New farming methods needed to keep the food reaching our tables
Major changes in the way our food is produced are necessary if the human race in general is to avoid starvation. Instead of concentrating on the use of diminishing and irreplaceable natural resources to increase crop yields and expand production, we need to reverse the course and head back to the organic farming that took place before the age of industrialisation.
In a study by UN Special Reporter on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter, it was demonstrated that farmers in developing countries, specifically Africa, could double their food production within ten years by changing from expensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides to an ecological form of agriculture that employs nature’s own defenses against pests and a more eco-friendly approach to cultivation, amongst other things.
De Schutter says that such an alteration in farming methods would require a change on the order of the Industrial Revolution itself, and he feels it will be more difficult for developed nations to make the switch as they are so dependent on and “addicted to” modern, mostly oil-based mass-production farming methods.
In less modernised countries, however, this reversal has already proven successful. In at least 57 countries, eco-farming projects increased crop yield by 80% using naturally occurring elements to enrich the soil and repel damaging pests and diseases. Such projects should be instigated in other countries, with the expectation that crop yields could be doubled in just a couple of years, and the cost of producing them reduced by a substantial amount.
Agroecology is a fairly new term, loosely defined as the application of ecological principles to the production of food. It is based on the sciences of agronomy and ecology, taking into account the varying conditions in different areas of the world. Ideally, agroecology is tailored to specific soil conditions, indigenous pests and plants, climate and a range of other variables. It is based on scientific study of these factors combined with the experience of local farmers.
In the UK, the Food and Drink Federation recently published figures showing that £10 billion worth of food and drink was exported in 2010. Those figures lead to the conclusion that the country needs to put more effort into making the best possible use of its limited amount of farmland. According to De Schutter’s report, it’s possible to do so while at the same time keeping the overall cost of food from rising the way it has been for the past couple of decades.
This basically common sense approach, making use of native plants, animals, bacteria and minerals to do the jobs that man-made chemicals are doing in ‘modern’ farming, has a lot of potential benefits.
If the UK and other developed countries concentrate on research in this area, and in making the information available to growers, large and small, we may be on the way to averting the looming food crisis not only in developing nations but across the entire planet.
