Future Food--Make it a Green Revolution with a Capital G

　The food riots of 2008 may have slipped off the global headlines, but do not be fooled into imaging that all is well down on the farm or in the kitchen.

　Close to 50 per cent of Australia’s agricultural land remains in drought and the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand are seeing crop losses running as high as 40 per cent due to low rainfall.

　In Kenya shortages of maize and other staples are forcing increasing numbers of hungry people to pick scraps off rubbish tips, many suffering and some dying from food poisoning as a result.

　In Japan an estimated 630,000 people currently lack food security and four million Filipinos recently claimed they are finding food in short supply.

　Earlier this month a London-based think-tank warned that unsustainable consumption and production methods, allied to climate change, meant the UK risked a food crisis in the coming decades.

　Overall one billion people are now classed as hungry as global cereal and other crop prices remain stubbornly high: Over the next 40 years the world will have to find food for an additional 2.5 billion.

　Thus even without the impacts of climate change, the world is facing a major challenge.

　Many eminent experts have been calling for a green revolution: But what does this mean?

　Simply cranking up the agricultural models of the late 20th century, with their reliance on higher levels of chemicals; water hunger production systems and users of ever larger amounts of productive land must be off the menu.

　The tough facts are that by 2050 the amount of cropland available per person will have shrunk to 0.1 hectares per head requiring levels on efficiency unattainable under existing industrialized farming methods.

　Soil degradation, linked with intensification and overgrazing, has now and already affected all but 16 percent of the world’s croplands.

　And since the onset of industrial fisheries in the 1960s, the total biomass of large, commercially-targeted marine fish species has declined by a staggering 90 percent.

　A green revolution needs to deal with not only the way the world produces food but the way it is distributed; sold and consumed.

　Investment in seeds, price support mechanisms; access to global markets and microfinance for the poor will be important as will be a sharp reversal in the downward spend of developing country agricultural research.

　Scientists have just reported that the neurotransmitter serotonin may be the key to whether locusts form massive and crop-devastating swarms.

　It opens the door to a highly promising method of eco-friendly pest control, less reliant on environmentally-questionable pesticides.

　There are other avenues for a Green Revolution--ones that can boost yields by working with rather than against nature, by enhancing and recycling the natural inputs such as water, nutrients and pollinators rather than running them down.

Trials at several 100 year-old tea plantations in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where yields have stalled despite heavy use of fertilizers and the spraying of plant growth hormones, have looked at soil organisms.

　Researchers re-introduced earthworms from a nearby forest. Harvests at some of the plantations went up as much as 282 per cent, and profits by as much as $ 5,500 per hectare per year.

　In Brazil 14 million hectares of soya have been inoculated with nitrogen-fixing bacteria replacing the need for artificial fertilizers.

　Several Asian countries, including scientists at Tokyo University, have been championing a less water-intensive rice farming system called System of Rice Intensification whose origins can be traced back 2,000 years.

　In Indonesia yields have risen by close to 80 per cent; water use has declined by 40 per cent; fertilizer use by 50 per cent and overall production costs has fallen by a fifth.

　And what about organic methods, a subject that can trigger sharply polarized views?

　UNEP and the UN Conference on Trade and the Development recently surveyed 114 small-scale farms in 24 African countries. We found that yields had more than doubled where organic, or near-organic practices had been used. That increase in yield jumped to 128 per cent in east Africa.

　The study found that organic practices outperformed traditional methods and chemical-intensive conventional farming.

　It also found strong environmental benefits such as improved soil fertility, better retention of water and resistance to drought. And the research highlighted the role that learning organic practices could have in improving local education.

　A new Rapid Response Assessment by UNEP and an international team has just completed its evaluation in an Environmental Food Crisis report.

　The experts argue that continuing to feed cereals to growing numbers of livestock will aggravate poverty and environmental degradation. One option is to deploy technologies, aimed at producing biofuels, to produce sugars for animals from discards such as straw and even nutshells.

　Overall the report concludes that we need to get smart and more creative about recycling food wastes and fish discards into animal feed.

　If this can be done on a truly transformative scale such measures could supply the food-based energy demand for the anticipated population rise.

　This could also allow an increase of 50 per cent in production from fish farming and aquaculture without increasing pressure on an already stressed marine environment.

　The amount of food wasted around the world is perhaps one of the least discussed aspects of today’s economies whether losses in the fields, processing or in the kitchen.

　The University of Arizona estimates that losses and food waste in the United States could be as high as 40-50 per cent. In Australia it is estimated that food waste makes up half of that country’s landfill.

　Some developed country farmers, speculating on higher commodity prices, would rather leave food to rot in the field than accept a lower price--this simply makes no sense and demands some more sane and sensible policies.

　Meanwhile, an estimated 6.7 million tonnes of household food waste is produced each year in the UK, most of which could have been eaten.

　The Waste and Resources Action programme, a UK-government backed charity, says food waste also means a waste in pesticides, fertilizer and energy used to make the food in the first place.

　It is estimated that 20% of the UK's greenhouse gas emissions are associated with food production, distribution and storage and that reducing the wasted food piles could cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 15 million tones, not including the methane emitted by rotting organic matter at landfills.

　Second Harvest, an NGO providing food relief in Japan, says Japan is in a similar position wasting more than the around eight million tones of food currently supplied under global food aid.

　There are signs that the world may be starting to get to grips with the wasteful use of energy. When it comes to food, we have barely lifted the napkin or picked up the knife and fork.

　Factoring in the environment and more intelligent management of the entire food chain will be central to success or failure.

　Yes we need a green revolution, but we urgently need it with a capital G. Or, like the terrible situation currently on the Kenyan coast, many more people in the coming decades will be forced to hunt for scraps off the world’s refuse mountains.