To Conclude...

I hope you have all enjoyed my blog and that it has given you some food for thought! Throughout this blog we have seen the impact that the production of our food is having on our environment and how unsustainable our current practices are. Agriculture was one of the first human impacts on the earth, and throughout the anthropocene mankind has realized how we can use nature as a resource. The impacts of this have increased through the intensification of agriculture to feed our growing population. The human population has exceeded the earth’s carrying capacity, and as a result the earths natural resources are being over exploited.

Technical innovation may be able to solve the problem of our diminishing natural resources through harvesting phosphorous from urine etc. But the problem is much bigger than that, I personally don’t think that technology can solve the whole problem. We need to go back to basics and work within the earths environmental limits with more sustainable practices and to slow down our population growth to reach a population that the earths resources can sustain naturally. We need a complete change in the way we produce food. The Guardian article ‘Global food system must be transformed 'on industrial revolution scale’ highlights how we cannot continue as we are, as our current food system is failing.

Climate change is going to intensify this problem and make the solution even more challenging. A report from the government's futures thinktank Foresight states that ‘the global food system between now and 2050 will face enormous challenges, as great as any that it has confronted in the past… the food system needs to change more radically in the coming decades than ever before, including during the Industrial and Green Revolutions’. All solutions involve huge uncertainty therefore much more funding for research is needed and any decisions need to be highly scrutinized to try to make more sustainable decisions than created by the green revolution. Food production needs to be a much higher priority in political agendas worldwide. However, we also need deeper societal changes to combat the cause of the problem as sustainable agriculture cannot maintain our unsustainable lifestyles. 

So next time you sit down to eat, think about where your food has come from and the impacts it has had on our planet from the farm to your fork.

No simple solution

My previous posts have indicated that there is no simple solution to reverse the effects of the intensification of agriculture. With increased environmental awareness, organic agriculture is becoming increasingly popular and viable, but is it enough? There are numerous questions and uncertainties associated with what’s best for future agriculture?

Is a smaller area of intensive agriculture with more space for natural, wild vegetation better than more widespread environmentally friendly (organic) agriculture? As our population increases we will have to either intensify agriculture further or farm more land – what is best?

Is local produce more environmentally friendly than imported food? Changes in consumption patterns and diet throughout the anthropocene has been possible through the global trade of food. Media coverage on food miles and the emissions associated with importing food has shown this negatively. However, if food can be grown more in a more environmentally friendly (natural) way elsewhere, should we import it? Is it more environmentally friendly to import tomatoes from warmer countries or to grow them locally in an artificially lit and heated poly tunnel?

Should we accept the fact that we should only eat seasonal produce and sacrifice exotic foods for the protection of the environment? The changes in our consumption mean that old fashioned techniques are not always viable, and organic agriculture doesn’t provide a simple solution. Change in consumption is one of the major causes of these problems especially the increased consumption of meat, therefore changing out consumption patterns play an important role in reducing this impact.

           

Tilman et al. (2002) suggest other ways of reducing the impact of agriculture, such as:

-       Environmentally sensitive areas and countryside stewardship schemes, as well as set aside subsidies to reduce surplus production and benefit biodiversity.

-       Education of farmers in fertilizer use efficiency to improve efficiency and minimize losses.

-       Education on appropriate crop rotations and better matching temporal and spatial nutrient supply with plant demand.

-       Landscape management e.g trees planted around fields to reduce erosion, buffer zones to reduce eutrophication.

Cordell et al. (2009) have more radical ideas, like the recovery of phosphorous from human urine. Urine could provide more than half the phosphorus required to fertilize cereal crops. Therefore we need to develop an infrastructure for harvesting, treating, storing and distributing human urine. Read Cordell et al. (2009) for more info, its a really interesting article! However, clearly much more funding and research is needed.

Complete adoption of organic practices may be a long way off, but I don’t think ‘organic agriculture’ is necessarily what we need, we need ‘sustainable agriculture’. Not just organic methods, but more careful stewardship and management of the environment in general. ‘Making the right decisions at the farm level in terms of input-use efficiency, human health and resource protection is becoming an increasingly knowledge-intensive task’ (Tillman et al, 2002). Education is vital – many farmers are unaware of the simple changes they could make and the possibilities of sustainable agriculture.

This video shows how we need to take a holistic approach to sustainable agriculture. Schemes like AgBalance can be used to educate farmers and policy makers on  sustainable farming, a necessity for the future.

Can we produce enough?

The University of Nebraska produced a report in 2007 on whether organic agriculture can produce high enough yields to feed the world.

            Badgley and Perfecto (2007) used data from a global dataset of 293 yield ratios for plant and animal production to show that organic agriculture can produce enough food to feed the world at its current population. They also state that data from 77 published studies suggest that nitrogen-fixing legumes used as green manures can provide enough nitrogen to replace synthetic nitrogen fertilizers (74% of studies came from peer reviewed studies). Suggesting that organic agriculture could feed the world.

            Cassman (2007) responded to Badgley and Perfecto’s report stating that comparison between organic and conventional yields is not enough to conclude that organic agriculture can feed the world. Cassman (2007) calls for more peer reviewed research and states that the question of whether organic agriculture can feed the world remains unanswered.

            Cassman (2007) also highlights that most of our food problems are not about lack of yield, they are a result of poverty and lack of buying power. We often overproduce in developed countries and it’s the distribution of food, which is the problem and organic agriculture wont change that. Equally, there is a great deal of uncertainty in the future, how much will our population continue to grow? How much arable land will be lost due to urbanization? How much arable land will be used for biofuels rather than food? These questions highlight that food security depends on policy and prices as much as it does on yields.