by Angie Mohr

Created on: May 01, 2008   Last Updated: May 07, 2008

On October 16, 2007, a distinguished group of environmental and agricultural experts assembled in Stratford-Upon-Avon, England under the banner of The International Policy Council to address the issue of increasing human populations and decreasing food supplies. Experts estimated that the world population will grow over 40% to 9.1 billion by the year 2050, a mere 42 years from now. It is estimated that the global demand for food will double by that same year. Part of that acceleration in food demand comes from the increasing affluence of the Asian population. As incomes in China and India rise, more pre-packaged, and highly processed food is consumed as well as more meat and fewer staple grains, like rice and wheat. The more a food is processed, the more land it takes to grow its ingredients. The increase in demand and the lack of land will result in Asia not being able to be self-sufficient in food production, cautioned the experts.

In order to counteract increasing demand, productivity improvements in agricultural management have developed over time. Animals destined for meat have been bred to reach butchering size as early as possible and they are no longer allowed to graze and wander, instead being penned up and fed cheap (and so far, plentiful) corn-based meal. Genetically-modified grains and vegetables have appeared on the market that increase yields and decrease vulnerability to pests. Pesticide-resistant grains were bred in a laboratory to reduce susceptibility to spraying. All of these advancements have allowed more food to grow with less land, but at what cost?

Traditional farming methods focused on the most elemental building block of food production: the soil. Crops were rotated from year to year and field to field in order to avoid plant-specific diseases to flourish. Fields were planted with nitrogen-fixing cover crops and allowed to go fallow to rebuild the vitality and nutrient content of the soil. Animal manures were incorporated into the fields providing the dual benefits of nurturing the soil and disposing of the animal waste, forming a closed biosystem. With today's mega-farming operations, fields are planted monoculture style- with the same crop year after year. There is no time to allow a field to be without saleable product during a growing season so artificial nutrients are spread liberally on infertile soil to make it able to grow higher yields. Disease outbreaks are held in check with herbicides and pesticides. Animal manures are no longer wanted as fertilizer because they contain so many hormones, drugs and other chemicals that are fed to meat animals to keep them alive that the manure has become toxic waste.

An increase in the global demand for food will only intensify the need for more productivity and more unnatural manipulation of the environment. In the long run, we may find ourselves with a hunger for food that far outstrips our ability to grow it. Without a control on our demand and a resulting reduction of environmental abuse, the Earth will not be able to sustain our population and widespread famine will result. Like other environmental damage we are inflicting on the planet, we must reprioritize our wants that we deem to be needs. Our planet has a natural rhythm and our fertile soil has natural renewal cycles. We must return to working side-by-side with ecological processes in order to continue to feed our masses beyond the next fifty years.

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