Unequal Distribution
CHRONIC UNDER-NUTRITION is not a consequence of overall scarcity, but of unequal access to land, technology, education and employment opportunities, coupled with a whole range of socio-economic and environmental factors. The world’s population is unevenly distributed, as is the quantity of food produced, and there is a mismatch between the largest populations and the most productive agricultural land and farming methods. Although the overall production of cereals has grown roughly in line with population increase, the regions where the largest strides have been made in terms of agricultural production are not those that have experienced the greatest increases in population. Productivity has improved substantially in South America and Asia in the last half century, but in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the need is greatest, the increase was not as marked, and in some parts productivity has declined. Climate change is likely to affect agriculture in many and complex ways, but current predictions show reduced outputs in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Food is redistributed around the globe both as trade and aid – and a mixture of both – but the redistribution is neither sufficient to solve the problem of under-nutrition nor desirable as a long-term solution. Improvements are needed in agricultural practices and in social structures so that more food can be produced and consumed where it is most needed. While technological change can raise agricultural productivity, if the technologies are too expensive for poor farmers they will make the well-off richer and the poor even poorer. Technological change without social change can therefore aggravate inequalities. Predictions for further population growth vary, but even if the rate of increase continues to slow, as it has done since 1970, the number of people in the world is still likely to exceed 9 billion by 2050, with more than 60 percent of people living in cities.
2 Feeding the World
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4 Environmental Challenges
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Environmental Challenges
AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIVITY has increased over the past 50 years, but the adverse environmental impacts of those changes have often not been included in commercial prices and so have been mostly tolerated or ignored. It is now clear that the pollution, soil degradation, and loss of habitat and biodiversity caused by current methods of food production and transport are going to make it difficult for current levels of productivity to be maintained or improved on in the future. In an attempt to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions, crops are being grown for biofuels, to substitute for fossil fuels. This is proving ecologically counter- productive, however, and is diminishing the amount of food produced worldwide. Soil degradation caused by wind or water erosion, nutrient depletion, chemical pollution or salinization is a problem in all regions of the world, with an assessment in 1990 concluding that a quarter of the soil used for growing crops or grazing livestock showed signs of degradation. Ongoing research using satellite imagery to assess changes in productivity indicates that productivity declined on 12 percent of all land between 1981 and 2003. The study of soils and their degradation is increasingly being recognized as a key issue in the context of food production, and of climate change, with an evaluation of the work of the Food and Agriculture Organization concluding, in 2007, that conservation of lands and soils should be given greater priority. There is considerable scope for reducing waste, pollution and soil degradation, as well as the use of energy and water in the food chain. Social and technological changes could enable many of those problems to be addressed, with some forms of land degradation reversed, and the rate of progression of others slowed. International co-operation is essential, however, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, make food production systems more ecologically and economically sustainable, and to extend educational and economic opportunities to poor people in developing countries, to allow them
Deforestation
The increasing demand for agricultural land is contributing to the destruction of rainforests around the globe. While tropical timber is the immediate product of this deforestation, around two-thirds of the cleared land is subsequently used for pasture, and a third for arable farming, much of it managed by large companies responding to an increase in meat and dairy consumption worldwide, and a growing market in soybean and oil palm products. While attention has been turned to losses in the Amazon and Congo forests, Indonesia has lost a quarter of its forest, and the Philippines a third. Because the soils in rainforests are generally shallow and low in nutrients, they are susceptible to erosion, which quickly leaves the land unsuitable for agriculture and leads to further deforestation.
3 Unequal Distribution
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Predicting the impact of climate change on food production is difficult because so many factors are involved. It is reasonable to assume that a rise in sea-level, already occurring as a result of thermal expansion, will affect low-lying cropland in countries such as Bangladesh, either by inundating it, or by leading to the intrusion of saltwater into underground aquifers, making the land too saline for agriculture, and reducing the availability of fresh water for irrigation or drinking. Weather patterns are becoming increasingly unpredictable. Intense tropical storms at unseasonable times damage crops and increase food insecurity, as do prolonged droughts. Agriculture is adaptable, however. Crops can be planted and harvested at different times, and new varieties developed that are more tolerant of stress than those now in use. In Asia, where there is little room for expansion of the agricultural area, global warming may actually enable farmers to move higher up mountain slopes and to more northerly latitudes. But even if, with a changing climate, the total quantity of food produced remained stable by increasing production in some regions, it is probable that productivity in other regions, including South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, will decline, making hundreds of millions of people increasingly dependent on imported food, with serious political, economic and social consequences.
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22 Organic Farming; 23 Greenhouse Gases
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