live in rural areas.29 Smallholders, farm labourers and landless workers rely directly on agriculture. If the weather is favourable, the harvests are good. They may then have enough to eat but still have little opportunity to earn an income from surplus produce. If the weather is poor, the harvest does not provide enough food, nor do they have money with which to buy food. As a last resort, they migrate to towns, mostly ending up in urban slums. Once there, they rely on cheap and subsidized imports from the rich North for food; these same imports also deny domestic smallholders the opportunity to earn an income.
The problem is exacerbated by the agricultural policies of some countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Production for domestic purposes is neglected and the traditional crops needed for a healthy diet are abandoned. Latin America currently produces three times more food than it consumes,30 whilst at the same time the continent has 34 million people without enough food.31 Two-thirds of developing countries are either net importers of food or dependent upon food aid from the global North.32 This form of food system is misguided and further widens the gap between rich and poor, both internationally and within countries. This in turn perpetuates the problem of hunger. The reductionist solutions inherent in industrial agriculture are not only unsuitable but also counterproductive for escaping from this vicious circle. In order to combat poverty, we need a holistic approach; it requires policies on development, trade, social issues and tax that target this objective both internationally and domestically in individual countries. The change to a sustainable food system of the type that I envisage would make a significant contribution towards that objective.
2. Threats to resources
Agricultural land degradation
Between now and 2050, the global population will rise from 7.4 billion to more than 9 billion.33 The highest growth is likely to be in Africa south of the Sahara, the region currently worst affected by hunger; here the population will more or less double—at a time when agricultural resources are shrinking.34 Some 5 billion hectares are currently available for farming: 1.5 billion hectares of arable and permanent crops and 3.5 billion hectares of grassland and pasture.35
The opportunities to increase the amount of land available for agriculture are limited and any expansion is likely to be detrimental to forests and wetlands. Globally, 60% of forest clearance is done to create farmland.36 One-third of current farmland is already degraded—to a greater or lesser extent—by erosion, salination, compaction, acidification or pollution.37 Some 10 billion hectares of land are lost to erosion each year because of inappropriate land use—almost ten times the total agricultural land in Switzerland.38 New residential developments are gobbling up more and more agricultural land in developing countries. In both cases, it is often the best agricultural land that is lost.
Land grabbing
When it comes to soil, the battle for scarce resources has already begun. Rich oil states, emerging nations such as China and South Korea and increasingly private fund companies from the developed North are buying land in developing countries or leasing it on a long-term basis.
In October 2009 GRAIN, a non-governmental organisation specialising in this issue, listed a total of 140 hedge funds, private equity groups and financial organisations involved in this type of investment.39 Huge tracts of land are being turned over to monocultures for the production of food, animal feed and agro-fuels intended for export, including in countries where people are suffering from malnutrition. According to estimates by the World Bank, the Sudan leased or sold almost 4 million hectares of land to foreign investors between 2004 and 2009— roughly the total land area of Switzerland.40 The Land Matrix organisation keeps a record of all land sales and leasehold transactions and its data shows that the global figure currently exceeds 44 million hectares.41
Water shortages
About 20% of current arable fields are irrigated and 40% of all food is grown on irrigated land.42 The huge investment in irrigation systems since the 1950s has played a major role in increasing yields. By 1990, the total area under irrigation had almost tripled and currently 70% of the world’s fresh water consumption is used for agriculture.43
Water is an increasingly scarce resource in food production. A total of 1.6 billion people live in areas that suffer from water shortages.44 In many parts of Asia and Africa, the over-exploitation of water resources is now a problem in its own right, with groundwater levels dropping rapidly. Water shortages have also reached alarming proportions in the industrial grain-growing belt of the US Midwest.45
Loss of biodiversity
Similarly, the biological basis of food production is now much more fragile. Over the millennia, humans have used more than 10,000 plants as crops; today it is just 150 and the few plants still in use are becoming increasingly alike. A total of 12 varieties make up 80% of the plants used for food production.46
In the past, farmers have used plant propagation and livestock breeding to produce an enormous range of varieties suitable for use in an extremely wide range of conditions. Not only is the number of varieties shrinking but at the same time we are witnessing the triumphant global march of fewer but higher yielding varieties. For example, the potato is currently the fourth most important staple food and could play an even greater role in future in fighting global hunger. Potatoes were originally grown some 8000 years ago by the indigenous peoples of South America in the Peruvian/Bolivian Andes around Lake Titicaca at altitudes up to 4300 m. In addition to the wild varieties, there are more than 3000 cultivated varieties of potatoes.47 It is essential that they are protected because it is estimated that 75% of all varieties in the world are no longer cultivated.48
Similarly, the biological basis of livestock farming is shrinking just as fast. Since 1900, some 1000 livestock breeds have become extinct—including the Frutigen cow and sheep, the Freiburg cow and the Galloway pony.49 According to data from FAO, the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation, 1458 breeds, including the Brazilian Pantanerio cow and the Hungarian Mangalica pig, also called the woolly pig, are threatened with extinction; their loss would represent some 17% of all livestock breeds.50 This development is the result of indiscriminate crossbreeding, the use of non-native species, the decline of traditional forms of production and the neglect of species not deemed sufficiently productive. If the sole aim of agriculture is to maximise output, valuable characteristics are lost, e.g. an animal’s ability to withstand heat or cold or to make do with less water or lower quality feed.
Crops and livestock are but two of the factors in food security. In order to introduce new characteristics into crops, we need to make use of related wild varieties. This has been done, for example with millet, where a disease pathogen known as the barley yellow dwarf virus has caused enormous damage. The only way to fight the virus is prompt intervention with an insecticide that kills off the vector. That could soon change. Plant researchers have discovered a gene resistant to the virus in barley living in the wild (Hordeum bulbosum) and commonly found in the Mediterranean and Central Asia. This gene has been transferred to cultivated barley (Hordeum vulgare) by crossbreeding. The result is a new variety with a resistance to the pathogen.51
Hordeum bulbosum is a crop wild relative, or CWR. This is the specialist term used for wild plants that are sufficiently closely related to cultivated plants that their genes are interchangeable. This makes them potentially an excellent source for the breeding of new varieties.
There are more CWRs than you might think. Research has shown that the term can be applied to 83% of all flora in Switzerland and 143 varieties have already been placed on a priority CWR list because of their potential for use in cultivation.52
The world’s genetic reservoir is being eroded and between 10,000 and 25,000 animal and plant species die out each year.53 The process
