Are corporations ruining food? – A lecture by Rob Lyons.

Last night (23/11/11) I attended a UCL Current Affairs Society lecture by Rob Lyons - deputy editor of spiked-online.com, writer on science and risk and author of Panic on a Plate: how society developed an eating disorder.

Short but thought provoking, the lecture revealed Lyons’ views that modern agriculture has enabled us to achieve all that we need to, in terms of food production. He stated that “for most of human history, the politics surrounding food was simply 'will there be enough'. Now such fears are absent from the developed world, the politics of food now focuses on who produces it and how”. Lyons took a historical view from when food was local and organic but expensive and scarce, making the current food system look far more successful! Food is now cheaper and more varied (due to trade) therefore people in the developed world eat a better, more varied diet. – So far intensive agriculture is looking good.

When questioned about the environmental impacts of these practices in terms of soil erosion and eutrophication, Lyons stated that our rivers and lakes are much cleaner today than they have been in the past - ok fair enough. Regarding soil erosion, he compared the desertification occurring in developing countries, where small-scale subsistence farming methods deplete nutrients, with soil in developed countries where fertilizers and irrigation maintain soil quality- I see his point here too. Lyons seemed positive that there will always be ways to improve environmental conditions with advances in technology and understanding in the future, therefore we need not worry about damaging it now.

            However, when I questioned Lyons on the long-term sustainability of intensive farming in terms of fossil fuels and phosphorous depletion, required to maintain the agricultural inputs, he simply suggested that fossil fuels aren’t really running out. He named a couple of newly found fuel reserves and explained that the viability of the extraction of shale oil is increasing. Similarly with phosphorous, Lyons stated that new reserves have been found therefore availability of phosphorous is no longer a problem. He explained that as we get close to the depletion of a resource, the value of that resource will increase and therefore more effort will be made to find new reserves. Lyons seemed pretty sure that we wouldn’t run out of these vital resources for at least 100 years – so there’s no need to panic!

            I do agree that maybe the depletion of fossil fuels is often dramatized, however, I think that continuing our reliance on them even longer is just going to increase our vulnerability by enabling the population to grow even more. We will never produce fossil fuels as quickly as we are using them so we will inevitably run out at some point and we need to prepare for this. Similar to the green revolution – I believe that finding more resources to rely on is just ‘postponing the day of reckoning’.

I left the lecture feeling intrigued but frustrated. I felt like the environmental impact of modern agriculture had been dismissed, as if it didn’t really matter because Lyons wasn’t concerned about it.

Other issues raised in this lecture will be discussed in later posts.