I liked this article because of couple of reasons:
1. As it states in its first paragraph that "we already grow enough food for 10 billion people." Now, I don't know where this author got this number of 10 billion, but the fact it is stating is definitely true. Many people commonly comment after hearing that billions are malnourished in the world & the world needs more resources to cope with increasing population that the world needs less people & hence, the public around the world needs to reduce their birth rate.
Problem is not high or low birth rate. Problem of how the world is going to sustain 9 billion people in the next 35 years is not going to be resolved by reproducing less. Problem lies with inefficiency & unequal distribution of existing resources. Our world is more than capable of producing more than enough resources to sustain billions more, but nothing is sustainable when those resources are tightly controlled by a few rich elites, at the individual level & the national level.
As per latest Oxfam report, the world has 62 billionaires who have as much wealth as half of the world's population (that's 3.5 billion). Do these billionaires need all that wealth to comfortably live in this world? Of course not. A human's wish to comfortably live in this world can be fulfilled with a very few needs. But hoarding cash, or resources, only makes the world more unequal, & hence, unsustainable for billions of poor around the world.
Then, we got inequality at the national level. As the article also suggests, the global north, or economically rich countries, not only overconsume, but also waste a lot of food, & in general, resources. Lots of African & Middle Eastern countries are thirsty for water & wasting water to make swimming pools & lush green lawns are a "necessity" in US & Canada. Obesity is a major health problem in the global north because people cannot stop stuffing their faces, while malnourishment, or even famine, is rampant in the global south.
2. Control of agricultural practices by a few giant industrial companies, e.g. Monsanto. People readily say that GMO seeds & chemicals (i.e. fertilizers, pesticides etc.) are required to grow more food in fewer areas, since, we need to grow more food to feed the increasing population.
As the article once again stresses the point that these giant agricultural companies don't help the environment & the agricultural practices by forcing small-scale farmers to buy special seeds from them only & grow specific crops. I am not against GMO seeds since I don't even know if they do cause cancer or not. But I do know that forcing farmers to grow specific crops, which are more of money makers (cash crops) than letting them diversify which crops are grown (which helps in keeping the soil nourished in the natural way, instead of through chemicals) destroy the soil longevity.
Now, the article also provides a few recommendations to improve agricultural practices to increase efficiency & reduce unnecessary losses in losing vital crops. I, on the other hand, am less optimistic that these recommendations will ever be implemented by international organizations & companies, because giant agricultural companies, like Monsanto, heavily lobby organizations, at national & international levels, to help extend their own agendas (increase profitability & share prices) at the expense of environment & people's lives & health.
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The World Bank’s view that we need to grow 50% more food by 2050 to feed 9 billion people, while finding ways to reduce carbon emissions from agriculture at the same time, ignores one very simple fact – we already grow enough food for 10 billion people.
But a combination of storage losses after harvest, overconsumption & waste mean that some 800 million people in developing countries are malnourished.
The storage losses mainly affect the global south ... Overconsumption & waste mainly affect the global north.
The challenge of feeding the world is not simply met through increases in production – this is precisely how the so-called green revolution created our current problems.
The answer lies in increasing the climate resilience of agriculture in ways that reverse the catastrophic environmental degradation of the last 50 years while also making production more efficient.
The green revolution that took place in the 1960s, increasing cereal production in developing countries, is credited with saving a billion lives. But today the environmental toll from this boom is all too evident.
The statistics tell the story – 38% of the planet’s cropland is degraded, 11% of the irrigated area is salt contaminated, 90% of the biodiversity of the 20 main staple crops has been lost, nitrogen fertiliser produces 6% of greenhouse gases & its runoff creates 400 marine “dead zones” (areas where oxygen concentration is so low that animal life suffocates), & more than 350,000 people die every year from pesticide toxicity.
Research on planetary boundaries estimates that nitrogen fertiliser use needs to decline by 75% to avoid large-scale environmental impact of this kind. The focus on productivity over efficiency has meant that the amount of energy needed to grow the same quantity of food has increased by between one-quarter & one-third over the last 25 years. Even without climate change, conventional chemical agriculture is driving humanity towards a food-security cliff.
A Christian Aid briefing paper argues that if we are to reverse this situation in the face of climate change, agriculture needs a transformative change in the way it addresses climate resilience.
Small-scale farmers & pastoralists, who manage 60% of agricultural land & produce 50% of the planet’s food, should be central to this agenda. Research to solve their problems should be guided by their priorities, & take place largely on their farms.
The kind of support farmers want often includes advice on soil management & testing, reliable climate forecasts, & development of their own seed & livestock breeding processes. The advice they get usually revolves around unaffordable chemical fertilisers & pesticides, while their ability to exchange & sell locally adapted crop seeds is threatened by corporate-inspired legislation promoting crop varieties developed in distant biotech labs.
...
For farmers to invest in resilience, they need secure land tenure, especially when they participate in communal land-tenure systems. Land deals with largely foreign buyers have increased to 55 million hectares. This not only dispossesses farmers but also undermines the confidence that others need to invest in measures to control land erosion, in trees & in other adaptations that pay off over several years.
Activities that degrade soils, forests & other vital catchment protection resources inevitably result in greater vulnerability downstream – through flood damage, increased exposure to cyclones & more intense drought, all of which affect food production.
The good news is that by empowering farmers to develop climate resilient agriculture, it is possible to envisage the elimination of extreme hunger in 15 years. The conservation of resources & use of environment-enhancing approaches, such as conservation agriculture, agroforestry & integrated pest management, have been shown to yield more & deliver significantly better resilience to climate extremes than conventional, chemical agriculture. Such practices also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, increasing access to markets can turn agriculture into an engine that drives diversified, sustainable rural economies.
The World Bank’s call for climate-smart agriculture includes focusing on sustainable water use, countering gender inequality, & increased research.
It should also acknowledge the need for a truly three-dimensional approach to reversing the environmental degradation & climate change that “20th-century technology” has caused. Such an approach would include plans to strengthen the review of World Bank Environmental & Social Safeguards to ensure lending enables, rather than undermines, climate resilience for small-scale farmers & pastoralists in developing countries.
Richard Ewbank is climate advisor for Christian Aid
1. As it states in its first paragraph that "we already grow enough food for 10 billion people." Now, I don't know where this author got this number of 10 billion, but the fact it is stating is definitely true. Many people commonly comment after hearing that billions are malnourished in the world & the world needs more resources to cope with increasing population that the world needs less people & hence, the public around the world needs to reduce their birth rate.
Problem is not high or low birth rate. Problem of how the world is going to sustain 9 billion people in the next 35 years is not going to be resolved by reproducing less. Problem lies with inefficiency & unequal distribution of existing resources. Our world is more than capable of producing more than enough resources to sustain billions more, but nothing is sustainable when those resources are tightly controlled by a few rich elites, at the individual level & the national level.
As per latest Oxfam report, the world has 62 billionaires who have as much wealth as half of the world's population (that's 3.5 billion). Do these billionaires need all that wealth to comfortably live in this world? Of course not. A human's wish to comfortably live in this world can be fulfilled with a very few needs. But hoarding cash, or resources, only makes the world more unequal, & hence, unsustainable for billions of poor around the world.
Then, we got inequality at the national level. As the article also suggests, the global north, or economically rich countries, not only overconsume, but also waste a lot of food, & in general, resources. Lots of African & Middle Eastern countries are thirsty for water & wasting water to make swimming pools & lush green lawns are a "necessity" in US & Canada. Obesity is a major health problem in the global north because people cannot stop stuffing their faces, while malnourishment, or even famine, is rampant in the global south.
2. Control of agricultural practices by a few giant industrial companies, e.g. Monsanto. People readily say that GMO seeds & chemicals (i.e. fertilizers, pesticides etc.) are required to grow more food in fewer areas, since, we need to grow more food to feed the increasing population.
As the article once again stresses the point that these giant agricultural companies don't help the environment & the agricultural practices by forcing small-scale farmers to buy special seeds from them only & grow specific crops. I am not against GMO seeds since I don't even know if they do cause cancer or not. But I do know that forcing farmers to grow specific crops, which are more of money makers (cash crops) than letting them diversify which crops are grown (which helps in keeping the soil nourished in the natural way, instead of through chemicals) destroy the soil longevity.
Now, the article also provides a few recommendations to improve agricultural practices to increase efficiency & reduce unnecessary losses in losing vital crops. I, on the other hand, am less optimistic that these recommendations will ever be implemented by international organizations & companies, because giant agricultural companies, like Monsanto, heavily lobby organizations, at national & international levels, to help extend their own agendas (increase profitability & share prices) at the expense of environment & people's lives & health.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The World Bank’s view that we need to grow 50% more food by 2050 to feed 9 billion people, while finding ways to reduce carbon emissions from agriculture at the same time, ignores one very simple fact – we already grow enough food for 10 billion people.
But a combination of storage losses after harvest, overconsumption & waste mean that some 800 million people in developing countries are malnourished.
The storage losses mainly affect the global south ... Overconsumption & waste mainly affect the global north.
The challenge of feeding the world is not simply met through increases in production – this is precisely how the so-called green revolution created our current problems.
The answer lies in increasing the climate resilience of agriculture in ways that reverse the catastrophic environmental degradation of the last 50 years while also making production more efficient.
The green revolution that took place in the 1960s, increasing cereal production in developing countries, is credited with saving a billion lives. But today the environmental toll from this boom is all too evident.
The statistics tell the story – 38% of the planet’s cropland is degraded, 11% of the irrigated area is salt contaminated, 90% of the biodiversity of the 20 main staple crops has been lost, nitrogen fertiliser produces 6% of greenhouse gases & its runoff creates 400 marine “dead zones” (areas where oxygen concentration is so low that animal life suffocates), & more than 350,000 people die every year from pesticide toxicity.
Research on planetary boundaries estimates that nitrogen fertiliser use needs to decline by 75% to avoid large-scale environmental impact of this kind. The focus on productivity over efficiency has meant that the amount of energy needed to grow the same quantity of food has increased by between one-quarter & one-third over the last 25 years. Even without climate change, conventional chemical agriculture is driving humanity towards a food-security cliff.
A Christian Aid briefing paper argues that if we are to reverse this situation in the face of climate change, agriculture needs a transformative change in the way it addresses climate resilience.
Small-scale farmers & pastoralists, who manage 60% of agricultural land & produce 50% of the planet’s food, should be central to this agenda. Research to solve their problems should be guided by their priorities, & take place largely on their farms.
The kind of support farmers want often includes advice on soil management & testing, reliable climate forecasts, & development of their own seed & livestock breeding processes. The advice they get usually revolves around unaffordable chemical fertilisers & pesticides, while their ability to exchange & sell locally adapted crop seeds is threatened by corporate-inspired legislation promoting crop varieties developed in distant biotech labs.
...
For farmers to invest in resilience, they need secure land tenure, especially when they participate in communal land-tenure systems. Land deals with largely foreign buyers have increased to 55 million hectares. This not only dispossesses farmers but also undermines the confidence that others need to invest in measures to control land erosion, in trees & in other adaptations that pay off over several years.
Activities that degrade soils, forests & other vital catchment protection resources inevitably result in greater vulnerability downstream – through flood damage, increased exposure to cyclones & more intense drought, all of which affect food production.
The good news is that by empowering farmers to develop climate resilient agriculture, it is possible to envisage the elimination of extreme hunger in 15 years. The conservation of resources & use of environment-enhancing approaches, such as conservation agriculture, agroforestry & integrated pest management, have been shown to yield more & deliver significantly better resilience to climate extremes than conventional, chemical agriculture. Such practices also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition, increasing access to markets can turn agriculture into an engine that drives diversified, sustainable rural economies.
The World Bank’s call for climate-smart agriculture includes focusing on sustainable water use, countering gender inequality, & increased research.
It should also acknowledge the need for a truly three-dimensional approach to reversing the environmental degradation & climate change that “20th-century technology” has caused. Such an approach would include plans to strengthen the review of World Bank Environmental & Social Safeguards to ensure lending enables, rather than undermines, climate resilience for small-scale farmers & pastoralists in developing countries.
Richard Ewbank is climate advisor for Christian Aid
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