"Agricultural challenge" is passing the buck
Achim Steiner's 21 April article "For future peace, step forward for the great agricultural challenge" succinctly identified many of the issues surrounding the current "food crisis" and the future challenge. However, he incorrectly implies that technological salvation can be bought for the cost of a little more agricultural R&D. There is no evidence that "sustainable and profitable farming that generates food security" for 9 billion people is physically possible even if today's economic and environmental conditions persist, let alone in a low-carbon economy suffering the impacts of climate change.
He is wrong also to predict that the current food shock will fade. The oil shock of the 1970's was political. The current price hikes for both food and fuel are driven by fundamental production limitations. We are living the limits to growth.
Indeed, there is evidence that biofuel production has diverted some food resources. There are also legitimate claims that commodity speculation, governmental mismanagement, corporate monopolies in developing country commercial agriculture, the Asian middle-class demand for red meat, the debt burden of poor farmers and poor nations, and underproduction in Europe and the former USSR all contribute to current food shortages. Addressing each of these issues offers opportunities to avoid hunger, at least locally and temporarily. Agricultural research and innovation will also contribute, there is no doubt. But they are not the underlying cause of the problem, and they will not bring food security.
The issue Mr. Steiner failed to identify was food demand. The growth in the human population is driving the current crisis. The "scapegoats" above have been with us for some time, but we could afford them while fossil energy was cheap and environmental capital essentially free to be converted and degraded. As population grows, our tolerance for wastefulness and inefficiency declines. But there is only so much slack to be taken up.
Mr. Steiner rightly referred to the environmental problems generated by modern agriculture, and the need to move to more sustainable farming systems, adapted to new climate conditions. However, in most cases such changes require a reduction in edible output, even as profitability may be maintained.
Why is population not central to the food debate? Why is the prediction of 9 billion mouths by 2050 regarded as inevitable? Some believe nothing can be done about it. Others refuse to consider it a problem through religious or cultural prejudice. Still others have a vested interest in the economic growth required to service more people. Yet slowing population growth is a far more achievable endeavour than an agricultural revolution that will sustainably produce more and more from less and less each year.
Mr. Steiner is tilting at windmills.
Jane O'Sullivan
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