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Prospects for a viable food future
Abisola Adekoya, Nourishing the Planet
A recent report entitled, “A Viable Food Future,” produced by The Development Fund of Norway, lays out recommendations for small-scale, ecological food production that, with the adequate support, promises to feed the world, without the damaging effects caused by industrial agriculture.
In this, the first installment of a two-part report on how healthy food systems can potentially alleviate the social and the environmental problems that result from unsustainable agricultural practices, The Development Fund researchers advocate for a food system model that draws upon the advantages of both traditional and contemporary forms of agriculture. They claim that by combining the latest science on sustainable forms of production with traditional models of food production that have evolved and adapted for millennia, developing countries can obtain at least a double digit increase in production without using chemical inputs, including synthetic fertilizer and pesticides.
Many of the recommendations outlined in the report focus on improving framers’ access to and control over:
• resources, such as land, seeds, water and credit;
• food storage facilities;
• and local markets
Improving access to information that could help smallholders improve their production with ecological methods and enhance their management of natural resources, is another important policy recommendation outlined in the report. Small-scale food producers are responsible for at least 70 percent of the food consumed in the world today and supporting their efforts through local governments and international institutions, according to The Development Fund, is more important than ever, especially as the impacts of climate change become more pressing.
To learn more about small-scale, ecological food production, see: Instead of One Size Fits All, Many Innovations for Improving Small-Scale Agriculture, Large Scale Land Investments Do Not Benefit Local Communities, Creating Food Sovereignty for Small-Scale Farmers, and Restoring Biodiversity to Improve Food Security.
Abisola Adekoya is a research intern with the Nourishing the Planet project.
(21 September 2010)
Introducing the Permaculture Designers’ Manual, Chapter 1: Introduction to Permaculture
Jesse Lemieux, Permaculture Research Institute of Australia
This is the first in a series of fourteen introductory articles about permaculture — one for each chapter of Bill Mollison’s “Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual.” Through this series I will connect theory with practice, and share practical examples of permaculture in action.
Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms. It provides a sustainable and secure place for living things on earth. While each component is important, permaculture is less about the things themselves and more about how the things fit together.
Permaculture does not dwell on the negative. While we maintain a healthy awareness of present day problems, we are more focused on the positive, continually asking the question “what do we want?”
Few people would argue that our global and local environments are on the down-hill slide, but it is important that we cut clearly through the mass of misinformation and half-truths that exist. Only by getting to the heart of the matter can we reasonably design a plan to change things.
Just the other day I was reading an article in The Province, which took the position that we need to start investing in natural systems if we are going to maintain our precious existence on this planet. The article stated that 60 countries have lost nearly all their forests, and that 1/3 of all fish stocks, food for two billion people, were on the brink of collapse. Furthermore, due to soil erosion,we can no longer farm 30% of all agricultural land on the planet.
How did we get here? We rely on a system of economic and social organization that has seen us become less and less responsible for our own basic needs. By supporting and expanding this system, we have come to rely more and more on distant lands and resources.
Agriculture is particularly grim and is responsible for more deforestation, CO2 production, chemical pollution and soil erosion than any other activity on the planet. The sad part is we have been convinced that the only way to feed ourselves is through the destructive and highly centralized system of plow-based agriculture. This is just plain false.
(24 March 2010, ongoing series)
This series looks like a great resource for learning more about permaculture principles. Part 2 is here, and keep an eye on the PRI website to catch future chapters in the series. -KS
Why We Need a New Green Revolution to Stop Hunger
PETRA BORNHÖFT, JENS GLÜSING, HORAND KNAUP, CHRISTIAN SCHWÄGERL, Der Spiegel
World leaders are meeting in New York this week to discuss progress on the UN’s Millennium Development Goals. The world’s nations have failed miserably in addressing one of the main goals, the fight against hunger. Researchers believe that small farmers, not large-scale farms, are the key to feeding the planet. By SPIEGEL staff.
Food was scarce for Dorca Mutua last summer. No rain had fallen for months. Mutua, 35, watched as first her calf and then her cow died. “There was no more grass,” the farmer says. What little she was able to coax from the ground was only enough to provide her family with one meager meal of corn porridge a day.
In 2004, Mutua had moved with her eight children and her mother-in-law to Vololo, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) east of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, where she bought two hectares (five acres) of land. Her husband had died, and land in their home village was too expensive.
Mutua had little knowledge of agriculture and no money for expensive tools or modern seeds.
Irrigation was out of the question. When the nearby river ran dry — and it ran dry often — Mutua set out with a donkey and a few canisters and walked to the next river, which was 20 kilometers away. She went there and back every two days.
She tried everything. She constructed terraces to help keep moisture in the soil, with no success. She tried planting trees to retain water, but in vain. Three small mango trees on her plot of land have borne no fruit and are slowly withering.
…The “Green Revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s advanced agriculture in Asia and Latin America enormously, employing modern methods of plant breeding and massive use of fossil fuels for fertilizers, pesticides and equipment.
This agricultural revolution saved millions of lives, but it came with a price — environmental consequences that are becoming steadily more visible. Today, the creation of new agricultural land is generally possible only through the destruction of essential ecosystems such as rain forests and savannas.
…’Knowledge Revolution’
Agricultural researchers are therefore looking for other ways to fight hunger. “Small farmers need to be the focus of the next Green Revolution,” declares Olivier de Schutter, the UN’s so-called special rapporteur on the right to food.
“The next Green Revolution will be a knowledge revolution,” says Carlos Seré, the agricultural researcher. “Small farmers need to learn how to work with limited land areas in a productive and environmentally friendly way.”
The world’s millions of small farmers need not only better plant species, but also up-to-date guidance on growing them. They don’t need high-tech tractors controlled by satellites, but they do need access to regional databases that provide information on soil quality. They need access to capital, without becoming dependent on big corporations or running up debt.
(20 September 2010)
Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community
Raj Patel, rajpatel.org
I’m dead excited to read a new anthology of pieces on food sovereignty, edited by my friends Annette Desmarais, Nettie Wiebe, and Hannah Wittman. I’ve got a piece in it (a version of which is here) but the reason to be excited lies not only in the cross-section of individual analyses, but also in the arc that Annette, Nettie and Hannah trace through the book. Food Sovereignty jacket-FINAL (lo-res). More details here.
(16 September 2010)
UN warned of major new food crisis at emergency meeting in Rome
John Vidal, The Guardian
The world could be on the brink of a major new food crisis caused by environmental disasters and rampant market speculators, the UN will be warned today at an emergency meeting on food price inflation.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) meeting in Rome today was called last month after a heatwave and wildfires in Russia led to a draconian wheat export ban and food riots broke out in Mozambique, killing 13 people. But UN experts will also hear that pension and hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and large banks who speculate on commodity markets may also be responsible for inflation in food prices being seen across all continents.
In a new paper released this week, Olivier De Schutter, the UN’s special rapporteur on food, says that the increases in price and the volatility of food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a “speculative bubble” which he traces back to the early noughties.
“[Beginning in ]2001, food commodities derivatives markets, and commodities indexes began to see an influx of non-traditional investors,” De Schutter writes. “The reason for this was because other markets dried up one by one: the dotcoms vanished at the end of 2001, the stock market soon after, and the US housing market in August 2007. As each bubble burst, these large institutional investors moved into other markets, each traditionally considered more stable than the last. Strong similarities can be seen between the price behaviour of food commodities and other refuge values, such as gold.”
He continues: “A significant contributory cause of the price spike [has been] speculation by institutional investors who did not have any expertise or interest in agricultural commodities, and who invested in commodities index funds or in order to hedge speculative bets.”
(24 September 2010),
The briefing paper is here “Although the FAO has rejected the notion of a food crisis on the scale of 2007-2008, it this week warned of greater volatility in food commodities markets in the years ahead.” So I guess they are calling it a “less alarming food crisis with potential to become more alarming?” -KS
