Tag Archive for: Food Security

Modern Agriculture Drives Hunger, Obesity and Disease While Simultaneously Threatening Food Chain and Worsening Water Crisis

/by

Author: Dr. Mercola | Published: April 25, 2017 

“Regenerative food, farming and land use can provide a solution to the health crisis, the water crisis, environmental degradation, climate change, rural poverty, hunger and war.” ~ Ronnie Cummins, Founding Meeting of Regeneration International, June 9, 2015, Finca Luna Nueva, Costa Rica

If you’d walked up to a farmer 100 years ago and told him farming would one day threaten life on Earth, he probably would have laughed in your face, saying such a thing simply isn’t possible.

Agriculture is necessary for food production, and therefore for life, the farmer would have said with firm conviction — and farming the land or raising cattle is not going to unduly harm anything or anyone.

Today, however, such an impossible scenario is precisely what we’re facing. Virtually every growing environmental and health problem can be traced back to modern food production. This includes but is not limited to:

  • Food insecurity and malnutrition amid mounting food waste
  • Rising obesity and chronic disease rates despite growing health care outlays
  • Diminishing fresh water supplies
  • Toxic agricultural chemicals polluting air, soil and waterways, thereby threatening the entire food chain from top to bottom
  • Disruption of normal climate and rainfall patterns

The good news is there are viable answers to all of these problems that do not merely scratch at the surface, and the answers hinge on the widespread implementation of regenerative agriculture and decentralized food distribution.

It’s easy to forget that at one point, not so long ago, all food was organically grown in a way that supported the ecosystem and environment as a whole. This all changed in the 1940s when the Green Revolution took hold and industrial, chemical-dependent farming techniques quickly spread to become the norm.

Industrial Farming Has Proven Itself a Failed Experiment

Farming has sustained mankind for millennia. Industrial farming, on the other hand, has managed to create a series of unsustainable situations in less than 70 years, and evidence suggests we will not make it until the end of the century if we continue along the path of degenerative food and farming.

Topsoil destruction, erosion and desertification are exacerbated by tilling, monocropping and not using cover crops. Maria-Helena Semedo of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has warned that at the current rate of topsoil degradation, all the world’s topsoil will be gone in less than 60 years.1

At that point, it’ll be “game over” because without topsoil you cannot grow food no matter how many chemicals you add to it. Closely related problems are the loss of soil fertility and biodiversity, which is directly related to the loss of natural carbon in the soil.

An estimated 80 percent of soil carbon in heavily farmed areas has already been lost,2 due to destructive plowing, overgrazing and the use of soil-destructive, carbon-depleting chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

Industrial monocropping has also led to the loss of diversity. Seventy-five percent of the world’s crop varieties have gone the way of the dinosaurs in the last 100 years, and another 20 percent of all plants worldwide are threatened with extinction.3

Toxic contamination adds to the problem. According to studies by the Chinese government, 20 percent of arable land in China is now unusable due to pesticide contamination,4 and important crop pollinators such as butterfly and bee populations have collapsed, thanks to widespread pesticide application.5

Modern agriculture also promotes water waste through use of flood irrigation, destruction of soil quality and poor crop choices.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, about 80 percent of U.S. consumptive water (and more than 90 percent in many Western states) is used for agricultural purposes6 and, worldwide, groundwater is being used up at a faster rate than it can be replenished.

According to James Famiglietti, a senior water scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the majority of our global groundwaters “are past sustainability tipping points,”7 which means it’s only a matter of time until we run out of fresh water.

Without food or drinkable water, the end of civilization as we know it is pretty well-assured. The question is will enough people have the foresight to change course?

Industrial Food System Promotes Both Obesity and Malnourishment

The industrialization and centralization of food production was done to increase farmers’ capacity to grow more food at a lower cost. Unfortunately, a core principle was lost in this efficiency equation — that of food quality and nutrient density.

Today, we have ample amounts of “good-looking” foods, thanks to genetic engineering and agricultural chemicals. What you don’t see is the loss of nutrients. Tests reveal that the nutrient content of foods has dramatically declined since the introduction of mechanized farming in 1925.8

As just one example, to receive the same amount of iron you used to get from one apple in 1950, by 1998 you had to eat 26 apples; today you have to eat 36, and this is a direct consequence of industrial farming techniques and use of chemicals that destroy soil quality by killing essential microbes.

We now know that, just as the human gut microbiome plays integral roles in human health, so the soil microbiome influences nutrient uptake and plant health. Soil microbes even help regulate the invasion of pests.

It’s not surprising then that as nutrient density declined and toxic exposures via food increased, obesity and chronic disease rates have dramatically risen — so much so that obesity now threatens to overtake hunger as the No. 1 global health concern.

KEEP READING ON MERCOLA.COM

Protect Small Farms to Meet Growing Global Food Needs

/by

Author: Chris Arsenault | April 5, 2017 

As the world moves towards large-scale plantation agriculture, it’s crucial poor countries protect small farmers to meet the food needs of a growing global population, said a study from Australian researchers published on Wednesday.

More than half of the world’s food is produced by small and medium farmers, particularly in Africa and Asia, said researchers at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia.

While large-scale plantation agriculture is expanding, small farms with less than 20 hectares of land should be protected because they produce more diverse and nutritious food, the study said.

“It is vital that we protect and support small farms and more diverse agriculture so as to ensure sustainable and nutritional food production,” Mario Herrero, the study’s lead author, said in a statement.

“Large farms, in contrast are less diverse.”

Big farms larger than 50 hectares dominate food production in the western hemisphere, Australia and New Zealand, producing more than three quarters of the cereals, livestock and fruit in those regions, the study said.

KEEP READING ON TRUST.ORG 

Make Our Soil Great Again

/by

Author: David R. Montgomery | Published: April 14, 2017 

Most of us don’t think much about soil, let alone its health. But as Earth Day approaches, it’s time to recommend some skin care for Mother Nature. Restoring soil fertility is one of humanity’s best options for making progress on three daunting challenges: Feeding everyone, weathering climate change and conserving biodiversity.

Widespread mechanization and adoption of chemical fertilizers and pesticides revolutionized agriculture. But it took a hidden toll on the soil. Farmers around the world have already degraded and abandoned one-third of the world’s cropland. In the United States, our soils have already lost about half of the organic matter content that helped make them fertile.

What is at stake if we don’t reverse this trend? Impoverished trouble spots like Syria, Libya and Iraq are among the societies living with a legacy of degraded soil. And if the world keeps losing productive farmland, it will only make it harder to feed a growing global population.

But it is possible to restore soil fertility, as I learned traveling the world to meet farmers who had adopted regenerative practices on large commercial and small subsistence farms while researching my new book, Growing A Revolution: Bringing Our Soil Back to Life. From Pennsylvania to the Dakotas and from Africa to Latin America, I saw compelling evidence of how a new way of farming can restore health to the soil, and do so remarkably fast.

These farmers adopted practices that cultivate beneficial soil life. They stopped plowing and minimized ground disturbance. They planted cover crops, especially legumes, as well as commercial crops. And they didn’t just plant the same thing over and over again. Instead they planted a greater diversity of crops in more complex rotations. Combining these techniques cultivates a diversity of beneficial microbial and soil life that enhances nutrient cycling, increases soil organic matter, and improves soil structure and thereby reduces erosive runoff.

Farmers who implemented all three techniques began regenerating fertile soil and after several years ended up with more money in their pocket. Crop yields and soil organic matter increased while their fuel, fertilizer, and pesticide use fell. Their fields consistently had more pollinators — butterflies and bees — than neighboring conventional farms. Using less insecticide and retaining native plants around their fields translated into more predatory species that managed insect pests.

Innovative ranchers likewise showed me methods that left their soil better off. Cows on their farms grazed the way buffalo once did, concentrating in a small area for a short period followed by a long recovery time. This pattern stimulates plants to push sugary substances out of their roots. And this feeds soil life that in return provides the plants with things like growth-promoting hormones and mineral nutrients. Letting cows graze also builds soil organic matter by dispersing manure across the land, rather than concentrating it in feedlot sewage lagoons.

KEEP READING ON THE CONVERSATION 

Soil Organic Carbon: The Hidden Potential

/by

Published: March 21, 2017 

Warning of “colossal” negative impacts for the environment and human societies if the massive stores of carbon trapped in the Earth’s soils are released, Fijian president Jioji Konousi Konrote called for stronger management of this critical natural resource at the start of an international symposium today.

There is currently more carbon locked up in just the first meter of the planet’s soils than can be found in the atmosphere and all terrestrial plant life combined, he said during his keynote address to the Global Symposium on Soil Organic Carbon (21-23 March).

Referring to international commitments to limit global temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius made under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, Konrote warned: “If we fail to maintain our soils as a carbon reservoir, I am afraid that these discussions and negotiations would have been in vain.”

“We cannot afford to neglect a resource that could be our serious and viable ally against climate change,” he added.

Fiji and other small island developing states are on the front lines in the battle against climate change. The government of Fiji is poised to assume the presidency of the next Conference of Parties of the UN Climate Agreement that will take place in in Bonn, Germany, in November.

FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva in his remarks stressed that beyond their critical role as a carbon sink, healthy soils underpin multiple environmental processes upon which humankind depends and which are the foundation of global food security.

KEEP READING ON RELIEF WEB 

Our Current Food System Is Broken and Unjust—we Need a Paradigm Shift That Values Nutrition As a Human Right

/by

Author: Dr. Robert Biel | March 22, 2017

There is a sense that the world food system has reached an impasse. Hunger afflicts at least an eighth of the world population, mostly in the global South, but also in the North where austerity policies—which respond to crisis by prioritizing the interests of the wealthy—leave working people hungry. What is even more serious is that even this damaged ‘food security’ cannot be guaranteed into the future. International institutions now recognize that something fundamental must change, a realization embodied in the notion of paradigm shift and further concretized in the form of sustainable intensification.

Such recognition is all the more significant since, for most of its history, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tended to be somewhat unwilling to offend corporate interests. Within the UN system it was mostly the two successive Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler and Olivier de Schutter, who pushed for a more radical and systemic critique. The latter notably placed his authority behind agroecology, a term that implies bringing farming back to an understanding of natural systems, and that forms an important point of reference for this book.

A landmark in official critiques of the ruling food paradigm was the publication of Save and Grow, A New Paradigm of Agriculture—A policymaker’s guide to the sustainable intensification of smallholder crop production, which argued specifically for a revitalization of small farms and a recognition of their dignity and essential contribution. Expanding on this, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) further stated: “The world needs a paradigm shift in agricultural development: from a ‘green revolution’ to an ecological intensification’ approach. This implies a rapid and significant shift from conventional, monoculture-based and high-external-input-dependent industrial production towards mosaics of sustainable regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of small-scale farmers. We need to see a move from a linear to a holistic approach in agricultural management, which recognizes that a farmer is not only a producer of agricultural goods, but also a manager of an agroecological system…”

This and similar statements embody a welcome reflection on what the shift may entail: terms like ‘mosaics’ and ‘regenerative’ imply a change in how we think, moving away from linear and reductionist approaches and towards a systems perspective.

These ideas are stimulating. Nevertheless, we should ask whether the new paradigm is correctly framed. Not everyone, even among those critical of the old paradigm, would accept that it is, particularly the assumption that the answer is ‘intensification,’ which could imply a merely quantitative solution and contradict the more qualitative issues raised. Indeed, the notion of a ‘new paradigm’ entered the debate quite some time ago, precisely in relation to quality issues. The emphasis on quality arose as a critique of earlier mainstream policies, targeting mainly quantity, which often were critically labelled ‘productivist’ and were typified by the now-discredited Green Revolution in which hybrid crop strains were bred only for quantity of yield.

KEEP READING ON ALTERNET

Sink It or Lose It: The Carbon Trade-off

/by

Author: Rolf Sommer | Published: March 20, 2017 

In the race to keep climate change in check, our soils are an important ally. A natural carbon sponge, they represent the earth’s largest terrestrial store of this essential, life-giving element.

And if we’re to meet the climate targets laid out in the Paris Agreement, then we must take advantage of the ability to sink carbon in soil, especially because this can offset harmful greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere.

But while we’re at the forefront of understanding how to make the most of soils to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, our research shows that we’ve still got a way to go before we can realize the full potential of long-term carbon storage – or carbon sequestration.

Before anything else, we need to be realistic about how much carbon our soils actually can store, how long this will take, how this changes from region to region, and how much this would contribute to climate change mitigation.

Evidence is improving and research advancing, but we still don’t have enough data. Not surprisingly, many aspirations are based on quite a bit of guesswork.

At the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), we have found that even using the best soil management techniques known to science, we can’t seem to store enough carbon – if any – to put a notable dent in global emission figures.

Yet what we do know is that carbon is being lost from soils, especially in the humid tropics, where there is a high turnover of the organic matter in which carbon is found. So we need to focus on reducing – and avoiding – carbon losses before we talk about carbon storage, or sequestration.

One of the contributors to carbon loss is tilling the soil, a common activity on most smallholder farms in developing countries. Here, only very small amounts of organic matter – from crop residues, manure or compost – are dug back into the soil, as these resources are usually in short supply.

It’s a tall order to call on African smallholders to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and build carbon in the soil when food insecurity, drought and other challenges are looming. For them, harvesting food – to eat or sell – is the number one priority. And, these farmers already contribute very few emissions to start with, paling in comparison with large commercial farms.

But our research shows that little changes could have tremendous impacts. For instance, quantifying the climate smartness of best soil protection and restoration practices in Kenya, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, India and Benin revealed that there are methods that can sustainably intensify farming systems without adding to greenhouse gas emissions.

If we can convince farmers to adopt small soil conservation practices, we can slow carbon loss down significantly, quickly and without too much effort. The bottom line is that we need more sophisticated management practices than the ones being advocated right now, since sustainable and smart cropping systems have not yet been widely adopted.

KEEP READING ON REUTERS 

What We Need Are Farms That Support Farmers, Consumers and the Environment

/by

Authors: Andrea Basche, Marcia DeLonge | Published: March 15, 2017 

The past several years have been rough for many U.S. farmers and ranchers. Net farm incomes this year could fall to 50 percent of 2013 levels in a fourth consecutive year of income declines that is leading some producers to seek alternatives. At the same time, rural and urban Americans share growing concerns related to agriculture: worries that water pollution will be increasingly costly and harmful, that water supplies are at risk from extreme swings in rainfall, and that global warming due to fossil fuel burning threatens our food system and will necessitate changes in how we farm.

What if all of these challenges could find a common solution? It might just be that they can. In a commentary published this week in the scientific journal Elementa, we contend that agroecology offers a promising approach to solving food system problems while mitigating, water and energy concerns — and propose a way to overcome the obstacles to fully embracing it.

U.S. agriculture has trended for several decades — as a result of policy, economics and other drivers — toward systems that are more simplified over both space and time. This has had adverse consequences for food, energy and water.

Agroecology takes a different approach, applying ecological concepts tocreate and maintain diverse, resilient food systems. Promising research demonstrates that bringing diversity back to farms can begin to reverse the problems simplification has created. For example, scientists have found that strategically incorporating perennial plants (including food, energy or non-crop plants) into small areas of commodity crops can significantly reduce water pollution and soil loss. Studies also show that using multiple crops rather than a monoculture is associated with improvements in the amount of carbon (important to help soils hold onto more water and mitigate climate change) and nitrogen (critical for plant growth and soil function) in the soil.

KEEP READING ON ALTERNET 

Beyond Wetiko Agriculture: Saving Ourselves From the Soil Up

/by

Authors: Tom Newmark and Steven Farrell | Published: March 15, 2017 

How much longer do you hope to live? How long do you hope your children or grandchildren will live?  Do you think you or your loved ones will live 60 more years? If so, you’ll be around to witness the end of food production on the planet.  Unless, that is, we become conscious of the crisis and evolve.

According to a recent United Nations FAO report, due to human ecological malfeasance we have only 60 harvests left on this wasting planet. That’s it: 60 more years of food and then the industrial agribusiness frenzy is over. And it might actually be far worse: the just-issued report of the Environmental Audit Committee of the British House of Commons warned that “Some of the most productive agricultural land in England is at risk of becoming unprofitable within a generation through soil erosion and loss of carbon, and the natural environment will be seriously harmed.” Indeed, in some places it’s already happening. Food systems around the world are breaking down, and the resulting food shortages have led to wars and revolutions. Starving people are risking everything as they flee to areas where there is still food. Why is this happening?

It’s simple: business interests chasing enormous short-term profits have waged war against the productive topsoil of the planet, and we’ve already lost between 50% to 75% of life-sustaining soils worldwide. Using chemical pesticides and fertilizers, industrial agribusiness is burning through 10 tons of soil per hectare per year of cropland, which is soil loss that is up to 20 times the amount of food being produced on that land. And what do we get for that? We get food fit for factory farming and factory nations.

Why would humans destroy the very soils that have long sustained civilizations?  The First Peoples of North America have an explanation for this form of suicide: the wetiko psychosis. Wetiko, also known by some First Peoples as wendingo, is a cannibalistic spirit that devours the flesh of humans or, ecologically, eats the flesh of Mother Earth. Like all memetic thought-forms, wetiko is transferred from person-to-person or through larger cultural forces through values, beliefs, ideologies, behaviors and practices. The wetiko psychosis, then, is the mental derangement that leads our species to consume life-giving soils, and some will say that the psychosis is caused by spirit possession. Others might say it’s caused by governments under the control of indifferent corporations that enslave and crush the spirits of the free. And others might say it’s the result of clever marketing or meme warfare. But it’s the wetiko psychosis we’re seeing: the diagnosis is clear.

KEEP READING ON COMMON DREAMS

On the Frontlines: Training Small-Scale Farmers in Regenerative Agriculture

/by

The world’s small-scale farmers are key to safeguarding our most vulnerable ecosystems, and to leading the global transition to regenerative agriculture.

Sustainable Harvest International, a partner of Regeneration International (RI), is on the frontlines in Central America training small-scale farmers in regenerative agriculture and land management. Sustainable Harvest International’s holistic training model empowers small farmers by providing, over a period of several years, the knowledge and resources they need to successfully transition regenerative agriculture and develop markets for their products. Training areas include growing, processing and marketing.

Sustainable Harvest International’s work is in contrast with international agricultural development where small farmers are often provided genetically modified seeds and chemical fertilizers as a way to boost production and adapt to climate change. As they have seen first hand, chemicals harm farmers and the environment, and create dependence on expensive external inputs.

RI interviewed Sustainable Harvest International founder Florence Reed to learn more about the organization’s work and the obstacles they face.

—————————

Regeneration International (RI): Tell us about Sustainable Harvest International’s work.

Florence Reed (FR): Sustainable Harvest International’s mission is to preserve the environment by partnering with families to improve their health and well-being through regenerative farming.

Since 1997, Sustainable Harvest International has provided individuals, families and schools in Central America with the education, training and materials they need to create regenerative farms. As a result, natural forestland has been saved from slash-and-burn farming, and families have been able to remain together on their land growing organic produce to feed themselves and take to market.

RI: Where does SHI work and how were these areas selected?

FR: We currently work in Panama, Honduras and Belize. We also worked for many years in Nicaragua. Those countries all meet Sustainable Harvest International’s primary criteria of having large numbers of low-income families in rural areas, and high rates of tropical deforestation. Beyond that, it was honestly circumstantial. I just happened to be working in these countries immediately prior to founding Sustainable Harvest International. Going forward we have clearly delineated criteria in a matrix to help determine where we will work in the future when additional funding allows us to expand again.

Clemente Mejía and his family pose in their organic garden in Monte de Dios, Honduras. Families who partner with Sustainable Harvest International diversify their crops, improve their nutrition, increase their income, and preserve the environment. Photo by Victor Arboleda.

RI: Why did you choose regenerative agriculture as the avenue to combat rural poverty in Central America?

FR: I am first and foremost an environmentalist, because without a healthy environment that will sustain human life, nothing else matters. I founded Sustainable Harvest International as a missing but necessary way to stop tropical deforestation. We built the organization on the premise that environmental degradation and rural poverty are unavoidably linked, so the solution must also be linked.

With 3.1 billion people in the developing world living in poverty, and 70 percent of the people who go hungry living in rural areas where land is available for farming, it only made sense to help those populations grow the food to feed themselves, rather than leave them to rely on money that comes and goes so easily in these communities.

At first, I was partial to ecological farming practices because I figured nature knew how to sustain itself. But I was originally open to any alternative to slash-and-burn farming, including chemicals, if there wasn’t a natural solution. At the time, I didn’t understand the damage that chemical fertilizers do to soils. I didn’t realize that the harm caused by pesticides is as serious as the damage caused by slash-and-burn farming. Over time, I learned a lot from colleagues, board members and others and came to the conclusion that any agriculture that degrades soils, pollutes water, decreases biodiversity and puts more carbon into the atmosphere is a threat to life as we know it. So I concluded that, if the human race wants to keep feeding ourselves, we must move to regenerative agriculture that builds up and maintains healthy ecosystems on and below the ground, while storing as much carbon as possible in the soil. Sustainable Harvest International has been around long enough now that we can always find a natural alternative to the regular use of agrochemicals or other harmful practices.

RI: How many farmers do you work with?

FR: Over the past 19 years, we’ve partnered with just over 2,800 farmers and their families. We’ve taught them how to farm sustainably, how to build wood-conserving stoves and solar driers, how to set up chicken coops and fish ponds, and how to establish micro businesses to bring organic farm products to market.

RI: Are you able to measure the impact of your work on the lands being worked by these farmers?

FR: Absolutely. Our model provides low-income farmers with alternatives to slash-and-burn agriculture, so they can build strong, self-supporting communities, and sustain the land for future generations of farmers.

Our locally hired field trainers teach farmers how to build erosion-control barriers from rocks, living trees, pineapples or other natural materials. They also teach farmers how to use cover crops, mulch and compost to improve soil health, and to make their crops more pest- and disease-resistant. To prevent mineral depletion, we teach farmers about crop rotation. We also educate them about integrated pest management techniques, including the production of natural pesticides made from local plants and inexpensive household products.

Over the years, with our help, farmers have converted over 17,700 acres of degraded land to sustainable farms, and restored 15,000 acres of devastated forest land by planting over four million trees.

As treasurer of the rural bank Sustainable Harvest International helped found in Los Alonsos, Panama, Nancy Alonso (right) connects community members to micro-loans for income-generating projects. Photo by Dayra Julio.

As treasurer of the rural bank Sustainable Harvest International helped found in Los Alonsos, Panama, Nancy Alonso (right) connects community members to micro-loans for income-generating projects. Photo by Dayra Julio.

RI: What are some of the biggest obstacles that small-scale farmers face when transitioning to or starting regenerative agriculture production?

FR: For farmers not in our program, I would say the biggest obstacle is lack of regular technical assistance over the course of several years. Regenerative agriculture requires a multi-faceted approach combining many skills and practices. It is not nearly as simple as burning a field or throwing down some chemicals. It also takes more time and physical labor to build up the healthy soils and ecosystems that are the basis of regenerative agriculture. Once the initial work is done, however, the farmers generally find that maintaining their regenerative farms is less work and less costly than other methods of farming.

RI: What challenges does Sustainable Harvest International face when training families in regenerative production?

FR: Among small-holder farmers in the global south, there is a huge demand for the type of training Sustainable Harvest International offers. Farmers are ready, willing and able to make the transition with our assistance. But communicating across four countries and cultures is challenging. So is setting up organizational structures that make the work as effective and efficient as possible, and finding the funding to meet even a fraction of the demand for this service that is so critical to people and the planet.

RI: Your organization is on the front lines training small-scale farmers in regenerative agriculture. We talk about how small-scale farmers will lead the global transition to regenerative agriculture. How do you see the work SHI is doing being rolled out on a global scale?

FR: Members of our board and staff, together with some expert advisors, have just begun to seriously look at this question in recent months. I expect we will have a solid initial plan for tackling this question soon, and that it will be based in great part on finding larger organizations, businesses and government agencies whom we could train to adopt our methodology, as well as big funders and intergovernmental agencies who could help facilitate this paradigm shift.

Ultimately, to be sustainable, I think this transition needs to be taken on by governments and businesses that have the staying power and steady income, not dependent on charity. For now, however, I think Sustainable Harvest International and organizations like ours need to be the levers to get this ball rolling before it’s too late.

Isabel Rodriguez of Bella Florida, Panama demonstrates how to make organic pesticides and fertilizers from locally acquired ingredients. Photo by Florence Reed.

Isabel Rodriguez of Bella Florida, Panama demonstrates how to make organic pesticides and fertilizers from locally acquired ingredients. Photo by Florence Reed.

RI: What does the regenerative agriculture movement need to expand on a global scale?  

FR: It needs more resources, which means big funders like USAID and Gates Foundation shifting funding from support of chemical-dependent monoculture systems for growing commodity crops for the export market, to programs that let farmers transition to regenerative farming to grow food for themselves, as well as to sell to local and regional markets.

To learn more about Sustainable Harvest International and how you can support their work, visit their website www.sustainableharvest.org.

Contact:

Florence Reed

Founder and President

Sustainable Harvest International

https://www.sustainableharvest.org/

Widely Accepted Vision for Agriculture May Be Inaccurate, Misleading

/by

Published: February 22, 2017

“Food production must double by 2050 to feed the world’s growing population.” This truism has been repeated so often in recent years that it has become widely accepted among academics, policymakers and farmers, but now researchers are challenging this assertion and suggesting a new vision for the future of agriculture.

Research published in Bioscience suggests that production likely will need to increase between 25 percent and 70 percent to meet 2050 food demand. The assertion that we need to double global crop and animal production by 2050 is not supported by the data, argues Mitch Hunter, doctoral student in agronomy, in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences. He says the analysis shows that production needs to keep increasing, but not as fast as many have claimed.

However, clarifying future food demand is only part of the story.

“In the coming decades, agriculture will be called upon to both feed people and ensure a healthy environment,” said Hunter. “Right now, the narrative in agriculture is really out of balance, with compelling goals for food production but no clear sense of the progress we need to make on the environment. To get the agriculture we want in 2050, we need quantitative targets for both food production and environmental impacts.”

Specifying quantitative targets, the researchers contend, will clarify the scope of the challenges that agriculture must face in the coming decades, focusing research and policy on achieving specific outcomes.

“Food production and environmental protection must be treated as equal parts of agriculture’s grand challenge,” says study co-author David Mortensen, professor of weed and applied plant ecology, Penn State.

These new findings have important implications for farmers. Lower demand projections may suggest that prices will not rise as much as expected in coming decades. However, the authors note that economic forecasting models already are based on up-to-date quantitative projections, so price forecasts may not be affected greatly by this new analysis.

At the same time, farmers will need to ramp up efforts to hold nutrients on their fields, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve soil health.

This analysis builds on the two most commonly cited food-demand projections, one from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and one led by David Tilman, a prominent ecologist at the University of Minnesota. Hunter and his colleagues did not dispute these underlying projections; they simply updated them to help reframe the narrative.

KEEP READING ON SCIENCE DAILY