Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Small farms may be better for food security
By David Suzuki
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Environment/Suzuki/2011/06/15/18287421.html

We often assume the only way to feed the world’s rapidly growing human 
population is with large-scale industrial agriculture. Many would argue that 
genetically altering food crops is also necessary to produce large enough 
quantities on smaller areas to feed the world’s people.

But recent scientific research is challenging those assumptions. Our global 
approaches to agriculture are critical. To begin, close to one billion people 
are malnourished and many more are finding it difficult to feed their 
families as food prices increase. But is large-scale industrial farming the 
answer?

Large industrial farms are energy intensive, using massive amounts of fossil 
fuels for machinery, processing, and transportation. Burning fossil fuels 
contributes to climate change, and the increasing price of oil is causing 
food prices to rise. Deforestation and ploughing also release tonnes of 
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing further to climate change. 
And industrial farms require more chemical inputs, such as pesticides and 
fertilizers.

Agriculture also affects the variety of plant and animal species in the 
world. According to a review of scientific literature by Michael Jahi 
Chappell and Liliana Lavalle, published in the journal Agriculture and Human 
Values, agricultural development is a major factor in the rapid decline in 
global biodiversity.

In their study – Food security and biodiversity: can we have both? – the 
authors note that agriculture, which takes up about 40 per cent of the 
world’s land surface (excluding Antarctica), “represents perhaps the biggest 
challenge to biodiversity” because of the natural habitat that gets converted 
or destroyed and because of the environmental impacts of pesticide and 
fertilizer use and greenhouse gas generation from fossil fuel use.

Large-scale agriculture also uses a lot of water, contributes to soil erosion 
and degradation, and causes oxygen-starved ocean “dead zones” as 
nitrogen-rich wastes wash into creeks and rivers and flow into the oceans.

On top of that, despite the incredible expansion of industrial farming 
practices, the number of hungry people continues to grow.

Concerns about industrial agriculture as a solution to world hunger are not 
new. As author and organic farmer Eliot Coleman points out in an article for 
Grist.org, in the 19th century when farming was shifting from small scale to 
large, some agriculturists argued “that the thinking behind industrial 
agriculture was based upon the mistaken premise that nature is inadequate and 
needs to be replaced with human systems. They contended that by virtue of 
that mistake, industrial agriculture has to continually devise new crutches 
to solve the problems it creates (increasing the quantities of chemicals, 
stronger pesticides, fungicides, miticides, nematicides, soil sterilization, 
etc.).”

Volumes of research clearly show that small-scale farming, especially using 
“organic” methods, is much better in terms of environmental and biodiversity 
impact. But is it a practical way to feed seven billion people?

Chappell and Lavalle point to research showing “that small farms using 
alternative agricultural techniques may be two to four times more energy 
efficient than large conventional farms.” Perhaps most interesting is that 
they also found studies demonstrating “that small farms almost always produce 
higher output levels per unit area than larger farms.” One of the studies 
they looked at concluded that “alternative methods could produce enough food 
on a global basis to sustain the current human population, and potentially an 
even larger population, without increasing the agricultural land base.”

This is in part because the global food shortage is a myth. The fact that we 
live in a world where hunger and obesity are both epidemic shows that the 
problem is more one of equity and distribution than shortage. With globalized 
food markets and large-scale farming, those with the most money get the most 
food.

It’s a crucial issue that requires more study, and the challenges of going up 
against a large industrial force are many, but it’s hard to disagree with 
Chappell and Lavalle’s conclusion: “If it is … possible for alternative 
agriculture to provide sufficient yields, maintain a higher level of 
biodiversity, and avoid pressure to expand the agricultural land base, it 
would indicate that the best solution to both food security and biodiversity 
problems would be widespread conversion to alternative practices.”

We need to grow food in ways that make feeding people a bigger priority than 
generating profits for large agribusinesses.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation editorial and 
communications specialist Ian Hanington.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.