political review | Markets & Power
towards sustainable world agriculture Max Hofmeister
I
n 2008, author and activist Michael Pollan
nutrients in the soil. Farms have to make up
pollute our rivers and oceans, causing huge
wrote an open letter to President Obama,
for the harvest of plant material with fertilizers.
dead zones off our coasts—as seen in the
the new “Farmer in Chief,” advocating for a
Likewise, pests in the wild are balanced
Chesapeake Bay or the Mississippi River Delta.
sweeping agricultural reform. Pollan argued that
by a complex ecosystem of predators and
To extend available arable land and improve
reform would make our food healthier, less oil-
prey—competition restricts insect and weed
yields, farmers use approximately 92 percent of
dependent, and more environmentally friendly.
populations, and biodiversity limits the spread
the global water footprint for irrigation While
Seven years later, the Obama administration
of plant diseases and the domination of any
the atmosphere replenishes fresh water, many
has done little to address this issue. Though
particularly destructive species of insect or
areas already face water shortages where water usage exceeds its rate of replenishment.
typically far from the public spotlight, agriculture may become the most important issue of the twenty-first century. The industrial system of agriculture practiced by most countries today relies on chemical fertilizers, tractors, pesticides, and hybrid or genetically modified seeds. Events in the next century will put great strain on this system. A growing world population, overreliance on scarce and diminishing resources, and global climate change threaten to upset the delicate mechanism that brings us food each day. Currently, analysts from the U.S. government expect the world to meet its food needs by farming more land, using technology to increase crop yields, and spreading modern, industrial farming methods from the U.S. to developing countries. The U.N. estimates that the world’s population will increase to between 8.3 and 10.9 billion people by 2050, with a commensurate 70 percent increase in the demand for food. Growing populations are also increasing in
Our system of agriculture is unsustainable due to a reliance on a diminishing stock of fossil fuels. weed. Insects and weeds typically exploit the weakness of a single type of plant; a field of cotton will be decimated by a boll weevil, but a boll weevil is harmless to a field of corn. Farmers using industrial agricultural methods
food per capita and higher energy use foods,
apply oil-based chemical fertilizer, herbicide,
such as meat or processed food. Most of this
and insecticide to deal with these issues,
population and food demand increase will
basically sterilizing a field so only one species
take place in developing countries, so ideally
can survive there. According to Pollan’s
solutions would increase production in those
research, the use of chemicals and machinery
countries, rather than proposing that they rely
require that U.S. industrial farming expend
on Western agricultural surpluses.
“10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a
faces two key problems in the long run: loss of soil fertility and pest management. In nature, a previous year’s decayed plant matter fertilizes the next year’s growth, preserving the
predicted effects, but for agricultural concerns, it will drastically affect water availability. Some areas will receive far more water than before; others will receive far less. Needless to say events such as the ongoing extreme drought in California and severe floods across the world, notably last year’s massive flooding in Pakistan and India, will happen with increasing frequency. A warmer earth increases the amount of water vapor the atmosphere can hold, intensifying severe weather events and changing precipitation patterns. Adaptation to a new warmer climate will shift U.S. agriculture north, and will likely require new water storage techniques to deal with high variability in
affluence, demanding higher quantities of
In addition to population growth, farming
Global climate change has a wide variety of
single calorie of modern supermarket food.” Fossil fuels exist in a finite quantity, meaning eventually we will have to use something else in their place. In the meantime, however, burning fossil fuels pollutes the atmosphere, increasing the greenhouse effect, and farm chemicals
yearly rainfall. We lack the ability to accurately predict the effects of climate change, but we can be sure that climate change will complicate the other problems facing our fragile food system. How can we adapt to these problems? Presently the world produces enough food to feed everyone; the one billion that today suffer from food insecurity could be adequately fed with a more equitable distribution of our current resources. However, growth in demand in the next century will require increased production, not just better distribution. This production can be achieved by greater land usage or more intensification (growing more food on the same amount of land). Transferring the current technology of industrial intensification—i.e. the use of
5