14 June 2011

The latest publication by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which was released yesterday, reveals that industrial agriculture is under threat from resource scarcity and calls for sustainable intensification and an end to biofuel subsidies. image expired

Save and Grow, a book by the FAO on farming systems, argues that sustainable techniques must replace intensive agriculture if farmers are to meet the challenge of feeding a prospective 9bn people by 2050. The organisation’s report states that the green revolution technologies behind most methods of food production are unsustainable, as they lead farmers to compete with industries and cities for land, water and energy.

The thought provoking UN report comes just days after another compiled by international agencies including the World Bank, the IMF, World Trade Organisation and the UN, which blamed biofuel subsidies for driving up food prices and called upon governments to abandon them.

FAO calls for agricultural paradigm shift

The organisation says its efforts focus mainly on small scale farmers in developing countries as it is this type of operation which has the most potential to boost production exponentially. It says this is essential in order to secure the 70 per cent increase in production necessary to feed the rising global population by the middle of the century.

However, it also calls upon farmers to rediscover the importance of healthy soil, draw on natural sources of plant nutrition, and begin using mineral fertilizer wisely. Furthermore, the report stresses the need for biodiversity, agroecological practices and training to prepare farmers for maintaining production in the face of climate change.

It goes on to emphasise the importance of looking after the environment rather than seeking to dominate it, by integrating pest control, ensuring soil health is maintained and water is used wisely; it states, “More environmentally friendly agriculture will help to reduce crops’ water needs by 30 percent and the energy costs of production by up to 60 percent.’’

The original Green Revolution saved an estimated one billion people from famine and produced more than enough food for a world population that doubled from three to six billion between 1960 and 2000 by intensifying production with new technologies and chemicals. However, according to the FAO, "The present paradigm of intensive crop production cannot meet the challenges of the new millennium; In order to grow, agriculture must learn to save."

Shivaji Pandey, Head of FAO's Plant Production and Protection Division, explained, “The Green Revolution brought agriculture to the level where crop productivity growth rates are declining everywhere...those ecosystem services; the soil, the water, the friendly pests, have to be saved for us to produce that extra food by 2050.”

Biofuels contribute to rise in price of food staples

The FAO contends that industrialised countries are consuming as much as 150kg of maize per capita each year in the form of bioethanol; similar rates to those of cereal food consumption in developing countries. Between 2007 and 2009, the biofuel industry consumed 20 per cent of sugar cane crops, nine per cent of oilseeds and coarse grains, and four per cent of sugar beet.

The book, along with the UN-commissioned report on biofuels by the IMF and the World Bank, projects that biofuel production places inflationary pressure on food prices, which have reached record highs this year. Accusations that biofuel production drives up food prices and increases deforestation are nothing new in themselves, although the weight of the reports’ authors may give more credence to this criticism than has been accorded to environmental groups in the past.

An interview with Shivaji Pandey, Director of the FAO’s Plant Production and Protection Division, who produced the Save and grow book, is available here.

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