Can industrial agriculture feed the world? Part 2

Global food riots edition

Posted by Tom Philpott at 3:04 PM on 10 Apr 2008

Read more about: Big Ag | industrial ag | agriculture | business | food

A couple of months ago, I raised the question, can industrial agriculture feed the world?

I was being intentionally provocative. For decades, policymakers have treated low-input, diversified agriculture -- "organic" in the sense described by the great British agriculture scholar Sir Albert Howard -- as a kind of hippy indulgence. Sure, it's nice to grow food without poison, but you can't feed the world that way.

To feed the globe's teeming masses, you need loads of mined and fossil-fuel synthesized fertilizers, pesticides by the tons, patent-protected genetically modified seeds, heroic irrigation projects, gargantuan, petroleum-fueled "combine" machines, etc.

But as I wrote in the earlier post, evidence is mounting that organic agriculture is just as productive as chemical-based.

Moreover, even before the recent spike in global food prices, some 800 million people lacked access to food worldwide. Industrial agriculture excels at cranking out calories, but its productive capacity tends to be hyper-consolidated in hands of a few corporations and a relatively small group of landowners. The people who most need the food it generates can't always get their hands on it. Vaunted for its efficiency, industrial ag generates massive amounts of wasted food, even as hundreds of millions go without enough.

And now, the system has come under severe strain. Global grain stocks are at all-time lows, prices are escalating, and hunger riots are erupting in Egypt, Cameroon, Haiti, and Burkina Faso -- and could well spread, the FAO warns.

Here's how the FAO diagnoses the crisis:

A combination of factors, including reduced production due to climate change, historically low levels of stocks, higher consumption of meat and dairy products in emerging economies, increased demand for biofuels production, and the higher cost of energy and transport have led to surges in food prices.

What's being described here is a full-on crisis in industrial ag. And I don't think the reflexive official response -- more industrial ag -- will work this time. The above-linked FAO document talks about finding ways to get more "inputs" to smallholder farmers in the global south.

But prices for fertilizers, GM seeds, and insecticides are all escalating, rising even faster than food prices. Just as urban dwellers in the global south are being priced out of food markets, farmers in the global south are being priced out of ag-input markets.

Moreover, the use of these inputs -- particularly synthetic nitrogen fertilizer -- contributes massively to climate change, degrades water, blots out sea life, etc.

Under these circumstances, yet another push to consolidate industrial agriculture in the global south seems imbecilic. The time has come for global institutions like the FAO to take low-input, intensive organic agriculture -- intellectually rooted in smallholder farming styles in India -- seriously as a response to the crisis in industrial agriculture.

The FAO is holding a conference on "World Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy" in Rome on June 3-5. In typical top-down fashion, it's billed as a "high-level" summit for "heads of state and government to discuss the pressing challenges facing global food security and to adopt required actions to deal with the situation."

I hope these esteemed figures don't turn it into a yet another group-grope for the agrichemical industry, designed to turn smallholder farmers into commodity producers for a global market. Rather, they should be figuring out how to leverage the knowledge and expertise of their smallholders -- with a focus on region-appropriate technologies -- with the goal of rebuilding local and regional food systems.

For story: Can industrial agriculture feed the world? Part 2
7 Comments | Post a Comment

Not top-down

Tom, excellent article. But the up-coming FAO conference on "World Food Security: The Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy", to be held in Rome on June 3-5, while it may be a "high-level" summit, has involved a lot of experts and stake-holders in the build-up to it.

These are only my personal opinions.

by Ron Steenblik at 3:20 PM on 10 Apr 2008

Agricultural Assessment

Hi Tom -- Good post! I want to direct your attention to what international organizations are thinking about doing. I'm here in S. Africa at the plenary of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development. How can agricultural knowledge, science and technology address issues of hunger, poverty and sustainable rural development? The assessment really calls for a new paradigm that focus on agriculture's multifunctionality as the only way that we can reduce hunger and poverty AND provide sustainable rural livelihoods. The key issue is that we have to shift our focus from exclusivly on productivity to small farmer profitability, health and enivronment. Get the authors' documents now at www.agassessment.org. The governments are changing things as you read this and the newly agreed upon documents won't be back up until later! -- Mary

Eating local makes you happy.

by BornOnANebraskaFarm at 3:55 PM on 10 Apr 2008

More on assessment

Also -- the Latin American Assessment (LAC) did a fantastic job of looking at agroecological approaches and their benefits for poverty, hunger and environment.

Eating local makes you happy.

by BornOnANebraskaFarm at 4:00 PM on 10 Apr 2008

key determinants

Tom, good work. And I just browsed through your earlier article the case for organic builds.

In addition to the problems you have highlighted,

... need loads of mined and fossil-fuel synthesized fertilizers, pesticides by the tons, patent-protected genetically modified seeds, heroic irrigation projects, gargantuan, petroleum-fueled "combine" machines, etc.

other problems are also plaguing industrial agriculture including soil degradation and loss of topsoil. Many of us believe that these two factors, together with drought, are among key determinants of when our civilization would ultimately collapse.

http://edro.wordpress.com/2008/02/18/topsoil/

by LGT at 11:32 PM on 10 Apr 2008

The time has come...and gone

Always important to look at previous meetings and reports.

Like, 2007

Perhaps the shortage crisis has reverted the discourse, but last year they were all about it.

by SegundaFeira at 7:32 AM on 11 Apr 2008

Mass produced culture

When mass production culture meets tribal culture, it seems to filter the crucial elements for civilization from the local. Those who aspire to learning and advancement, the potential successful leaders, leave as soon as they can and join the mass culture.

In closed systems these people are often systematically eliminated, as in the soviet, maoist, and cambodian massacres. And currently in african mass murder events. This warns those who are different to flee before it is too late. The mob driven by mass culture, commercial interests will eliminate those who are different.

So diverse and tolerant mass culture claims the most productive, innovative souls and local tribal culture is left with starving, child armies roaming the earth, killing for the pure effect of mayhem itself. Pure concentrated evil.

Life and death as video game violence.

How do you stop the osmosis of the most successful across the membrane of mass murder? Should it be stopped? Or should the local tribal culture be allowed to wallow in destruction until it dissapears? The cruelty of "sharia law" for instance?

How do you intervene and stop circumcision and sale of girls to the highest bidder, by the mothers of these same girls? Or stoning of rape victims by mobs of women, with the matriarchs literally casting the first stone?

Is it better to wall off this unimaginable cruelty until nature starves it of life itself? And take in those who somehow escape over the wall?

The refugee camps that are established quickly come under the control of local warlords, and the whole viscious culture reanimates itself once again.

In established cultures where the rule of law, designed to prevent these kinds of insanity, tribal religious sects replicate their sadistic traditions with thuggery and use calls for religious tolerance to hide behind.

How do you raise a crop in a culture like this, with roving gangs of mass muderers on the loose? Chemical ag crops have hired armies to protect them. Machetes and guns and a few dollars a day buy a whole cadre of mass muderers.

The profits from local organic ag don't buy enough muscle for protection. So do we send our soldiers in to protect the families who grow those crops and start up civilization again?

It's a conundrum. Unfortunately largely ignored in discussions like this. The darker side of human nature is ugly indeed. Made uglier with corporate efficiency injected into the heart of darkness.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

by amazingdrx at 8:01 AM on 11 Apr 2008

Thanks for the great comments

Sounds like i need to be a little more open-minded about the FAO. I will look into the conference proceedings highlighted by SegundaFeira, and take Ron's statement into account about the upcoming conference. And thanks for the info, Mary; I'll look into that as well.

Victual Reality

by Tom Philpott at 10:25 AM on 11 Apr 2008

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