Climate change and food security
Today there are 7 billion people living on planet Earth. By 2050, there should be 9.2 billion of us. 40% of global agricultural land produces just three basic crops: wheat, rice, and maize. Also potato is increasingly grown. Rice is the most important of the crops, feeding half of the world’s population.
With the growing population, our food supply needs to double by 2050. Climate change can be a challenge regarding food security because it can affect our water supply and the likelihood of new plant diseases spreading around the globe.
Since the 1960’s Green Revolution, we have had a massive increase in global food production. This has been made possible by an increasing use of fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides and fungicides, in addition to farming mechanisation and intensification. But the biggest problem with the Green Revolution has been the introduction of high yielding varieties of crops grown in huge monocultures over vast fields, also known as monocropping.
Alex Roslin gives a detailed account of what this transition in agriculture has meant in his article “Monocrops bring food crisis”. The article can be found here: http://www.straight.com/news/monocrops-bring-food-crisis.
“[The Green Revolution] meant dropping millenniums-old farming practices of planting diverse fields of frequently rotated, native-adapted crops that evolved as local soil and environmental conditions changed. Those methods based on diversified seed varieties and varied crops were developed during the earliest days of human farming in order to prevent plant diseases, pest infestations, and soil degradation.”
According to Devlin Kuyek, the author of the book ”Good Crop/Bad Crop: Seed Politics and the Future of Food in Canada:
”The new crops were bred in government labs—and today, by a half-dozen large seed companies that control the bulk of the $30-billion U.S. annual seed business worldwide—in order to maximize yield, not other characteristics, like, say, nutritional value.”
”Because the new monocrops were poorly adapted to local conditions, the plants didn’t do so well unless sustained by massive amounts of water, fertilizers, and pesticides. Little wonder that almost all of the world’s largest seed companies, including the likes of Monsanto, Syngenta, and DuPont, got their start as chemical manufacturers. ”
“All of a sudden, instead of adapting seeds to local conditions, the farm had to be adapted to the seed variety. The result of all this has been a tremendous loss of biodiversity. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says 75 percent of crop varieties have disappeared since 1900. Nine-tenths of the world’s calories now come from 20 crop species, with four making up half of total calories: rice, corn, wheat, and potatoes. “
“Soaking farmland with chemicals has had other impacts as well. It meant only a few larger farming operations could afford the astronomical costs of the new type of farming. Small farms were crowded out, making communities less self-reliant. As well, the chemicals produced environmental problems, like the explosion of toxic blue-green algae in Canadian lakes, due largely to fertilizer runoff.”
”Monocrops also deplete soil of key nutrients and billions of micro-organisms that help keep plants disease-free, reducing soil productivity 18 times faster than natural processes can rebuild it on average in the U.S., says John Jeavons, a Willits, California–based author and farming researcher who teaches small-scale food-production techniques. “We’re putting extraordinary pressure on our soil base,” he says.”
It is not hard to figure out that monocrops are not sustainable in the long run. As the global climate continues to change, there is no way to guarantee that everyone in the world can be fed by relying on so few crops.
”Evidence is starting to show monocultures aren’t the only way to feed the planet—and aren’t necessarily the most efficient. “I’m quite confident we don’t have to do mass agriculture,” says Mark Winston, a former professor of apiculture at Simon Fraser University. ”
”Winston coauthored a groundbreaking study of monocultures published in 2006 in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems and the Environment. It found that canola farmers in Alberta who let some of their land go fallow dramatically improved their yield compared to those who planted their entire farm. The reason: the uncultivated land became an oasis for bees, which, in turn, helped the canola flourish with improved pollination. ”
”With 33 percent of land left unplanted, a farmer’s profit would have more than doubled from $24,000 to $65,000 on a 1,400-hectare piece of land.”
“It’s a whole different mindset. Monocultures create pest outbreaks that are greater than natural predators [like ants and wasps] can deal with. In a balanced crop, natural predators balance pest insects.”
John Jeavons, author of the book ”How to Grow More Vegetables”, says ”mini-farming can feed a person a nutritious vegan diet with 4,000 square feet of land, compared to 7,000 square feet needed for a vegan diet with conventional farming and 30,000 square feet to produce the average American diet. ”
”How does it work? He starts with double-dug, raised beds tilled two feet down in order to create what he calls a “soil sponge cake” or a “living, quadridimensional tapestry in your soil”. Other tips: plenty of compost; close spacing of plants to reduce erosion, the need for watering, and room for weeds; companion planting; and carbon-heavy legumes to replenish the soil so it requires no fertilizer. And above all, no chemicals. “You’re feeding the soil and yourself,” he says. ”
”Jeavons says the approach simply revives techniques first used in China and Greece thousands of years ago. North American farms, Kuyek says, used to be hotbeds of efficiency and biodiversity before the advent of modern agriculture.”
As a conclusion, it seems like a very good idea to start investing time in supporting and participating in small-scale local farming and creating local seed banks to save locally grown crop varieties that are hopefully better able to respond to climate change.
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