Agriculture Twenty Years On

The British government has launched a blueprint for how we need to develop agriculture and grow more food in the face of an increasing population. The document is long on rhetoric but short on detail. However, there are three key details that is supposed to the future of farming for the next twenty years. More of the same regarding intensive agriculture. The use of GM. Importing foods that we lack.

While intensive factory farming has produced more grains, beef, milk in each and every case, there have been serious environmental impacts, but equally and perhaps more importantly intensification has reduced the nutrition value of our food. While beef may now be a relatively cheap meat there is a real taste difference between intensive and extensively reared cattle. Further there seems to be a serious failure to learn the lessons of BSE, as BSE would never have occurred without intensive agriculture. Equally, with milk production there are problems with the health of the Holstein milking machines that means that mastitis is a real problem and we have to check each tanker load, from each farm to ensure its safe. With grain farming the chemicals used in arable farming are getting into the water supply and we are having to spend millions trying to keep the water safe. Therefore is further intensification along the same failed model really the way to go?

While GM, Genetic Modification, may be a part of the answer to the problem of feeding the world, so far GM has failed to deliver the extra yield that was promised and claimed. The yield increase has only been a one percent increase in yield. This could have been gained with non GM crops. The impact of GM in places like India has actually been a fall in yield as GM needs greater water use than non GM crops. The question is when the world is facing a water shortage, where will the extra water come from?

With the importing of foods that we cant grow, or where we have shortfalls in yield, where will this extra food come from? Already in Britain we are only producing fifty-nine percent of the foods we use in the UK. This could show that there are real opportunities for farmers and growers in Britain to sell more, but as it is more profitable to exploit the poverty in other nations British farmers are being forced to accept prices that are uneconomic. As the world population grows, will there be the surpluses available for us to buy and import?

The other part of this equation is simply that this plan fails to even acknowledge that we have a climate that is changing. The government of Britain is basing its Climate Change policy upon the assumption that the globe can tolerate a 2ºC rise in temperature. Yet laboratory tests have shown that each 1ºC rise in temperature will, I repeat will, cause a fall in crop yields of between 4% and 16% across a range of crops. Thus with a two degree rise we will loose 32% of our current yields. Add into this complex mixing pot the fact that we will loose growing space as a result of rising sea levels, and agricultural yields will be reduced even further.

While all governments need to plan for the future, and no one can know for sure what the shape of things to come will be, but in this case, the one aspect that we can be sure of is that the climate is changing. And while the exact level where the global temperature will settle is unknown, the fact that it is rising is undisputed. Even the climate sceptic's do not deny that fact, they just say that its not humans that are causing it. Thus more of the same in agriculture will only serve to increase the increase the environmental impacts that are driving climate change.

With the known and expected impacts of climate change already here, will we really ever have a global population of nine or ten billion people? The shortages of water and food logically say that these levels of population growth can not happen. As simply poor nutrition in any population will slow and often stop reproductive cycles. Further, if we assume that the birth rate will match predictions, the shortages of water and food will prevent most of these children reaching adulthood. That I know is a shocking statement to make, but this is the reality of where the policies of most nations are leading. This is where some intelligent thinking needs to be applied. So that we create policies that manage birthrates so that we retain human rights while enabling a reduction in the global population via natural cycles of lifespan.

As I was writing this I took a break and looked at the BBC News website and I found this story about South Korea. There people are being encouraged to create more children, just when globally we need fewer. When will governments stop being selfish and realise that we are part of a global community.