First, I want to start with a positive outcome. So much of food security information is terrifying, which is understandable – which is why I wanted to start with something positive.
Recent experience in Malawi, illustrates the potential for improvement. After a drought in 2005, many of the country’s 13 million people were left hungry or starving. In response, the government issued coupons to small farmers, entitling them to 200 pounds of fertilizer at a greatly reduced price and free packets of improve seen corn, the national food staple. Funded partly by outside donors, this fertilizer and seed subsidy program helpful nearly double Malawi’s corn harvest within two years, enabling it to export grain and boost farmers’ incomes.
Now for the scary stuff.
“With the world’s grasslands being grazed at their limits or beyond, additional beef production now comes largely from putting more cattle in feedlots. A steer in a feedlot requires 7 pounds of grain for each pound of weight gain. For pork, each pound of additional live weight requires 3.5 pounds. For poultry, it is just over 2. For eggs the ratio is 2 to 1. For carp in China and India and catfish in the United States, it takes less than 2 pounds of feed for each pound of additional weight gain. Thus the worldwide change in patterns of meat consumption reflects the costs of mean production, which in turn reflects the widely varying levels of efficiency with which cattle, pigs, chickens, and farmed fish convert grain into protein.” p.31
“In India, annual grain consumption totals 380 pounds per person, or roughly 1 pound a day. Nearly all grain must be eaten directly to satisfy basic food energy needs; only 4 percent is converted into animal protein. In contract, the average American consumes roughly 1,400 pounds of grain per year, four fifths of it indirectly in the form of meat, milk, and eggs. Thus the total grain consumption per person in the United States is nearly four times that in India.” p.30
“One of the consequences of the world’s explosive population growth (1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1960, 7 billion in 2012 with UN projects estimating a population of 9.3 billion in 2050) in human numbers is that human demands have outrun the carrying capacity of the economy’s natural support systems – its forests, fisheries, grasslands, aquifers, and soils. Once demand exceeds the sustainable yield of these natural systems, additional demand can only be satisfied by consuming the resource base itself. We call this overcutting, overfishing, overgrazing, overpumping, and overplowing. It is these overages that are undermining our global civilization.” p.40
“The thin layer of topsoil that covers the earth’s land surface was formed over long stretches of geological time as new soil formation exceeded the natural rate of erosion. Sometime within the last century, soil erosion began to exceed new soil formation. Now, nearly a third of the world’s cropland is losing topsoil faster than new soil is forming, reducing the land’s inherent fertility. Soil that was formed on a geological time scale is being lost on a human time scale.” pp. 45 – 46
“For the rangelands that support 3.4 billion heads of cattle, sheep, and goats, the threat comes from the over-grazing that destroys vegetation, leaving the land vulnerable to erosion. Ragelands, located mostly in semiarid regions of the world, are particularly vulnerable to wind erosion.” p. 46
“An Afghan Ministry of Agriculture and Food report sounds the alarm: ‘Soil fertility is declining…water tables have dramatically fallen, de-vegetation is extensive and soil erosion by water and wind is widespread.’ After three decades of armed conflict and the related deprivation and devastation, Afghanistan’s forests are nearly gone. Seven sourthern provinces are losing cropland to encroaching sand dunes.” p. 54
“In Tamil Nadu, a state of 72 million people”…”water tables have dried up 95 percent of the wells owned by small farmers, reducing the irrigated area in the state by half over the last decade.” Also, “larger farmers in India are using modified oil-drilling technology to reach water, going as deep as 1,000 feet in some locations.” p.65
“The growing water needs of major cities and thousand of small towns often can be satisfied only by taking water from agriculture. As the value of water rises, more farmers are selling their irrigation rights to cities, letting their land dry up.” p. 69
Although people often ask about the potential to raise grain yields using genetic modification, success has thus far been limited. This is largely because plant breeders using traditional approaches were successful in doing almost everything plant scientists could think of to raise yields, leaving little potential for doing so through genetic modification.” p. 76
“As the world economy from being largely rural to being highly urbanized, the natural nutrient cycle was disrupted. In traditional rural societies, food is consumed locally, and human and animal waste is returned to the land, completing the nutrient cycle. But in highly urbanized societies, where food is consumed far from where it is produced, using fertilizer use closely tracks the growth in urbanization, with much of it concentrated in the last 60 years.” p.77
one-quarter vegan 