What Now?
We’ve been grossly misinformed about how we eat and what we farm. Colin Tudge invites us to take the first steps towards thinking differently.
Words Colin Tudge
Illustration Sergio Membrillas
More or less everything that we are told about food and farming by the oligarchs who dominate our lives — the government, the corporates, big finance, and large sections of academia — is seriously misleading.
We are told:
“Intensify Production”
In 2011, in a Foresight Report called The Future of Food and Farming, the British government told us that we (humanity) need to produce 50% more food by 2050 just to keep pace with rising numbers and rising “demand” — especially for meat. Since then, some politicians and others have upped the ante and suggested that we will need to double output by 2100. The emphasis, in short, must continue to be on production, production, and ever more production.
But according to Prof Hans Herren, President of the Millennium Institute, Washington DC, the world already produces enough food to nourish 14 billion people. This is twice the present world population and, since the UN tells us that world numbers should level out around 2050 at about 10 billion, it is 40% more than we should ever need. The continued emphasis on production has nothing to do with real need, and everything to do with commerce.
It’s easy to check these figures. The world produces around 2.5 billion tonnes of cereal per year, and since one tonne contains enough energy and protein for three people that’s enough macronutrient for 7.5 billion. But cereals account for only half our food — the other half comes from pulses, nuts, tubers, fruit and vegetables, meat, dairy, and fish. So the total is enough for 14 billion or more. Clearly, the world’s food problems — a billion people still go hungry — will not be solved by producing more.
The problems are political: inequality, too much war, and strategies designed not to produce quality food and take care of the biosphere, but rather maximize profit and concentrate power.
“The People Demand Meat”
As societies are “lifted out of poverty” meat consumption rises. The US became hooked on steaks and burgers after the Second World War and the economic depression that preceded it. As China has prospered, so Beijing and other big Chinese cities now bristle with burgers and fried chicken.
In truth, though most people do seem to like meat, there is very little evidence for active ‘demand’. The evidence, when looked at objectively, is that people eat what’s available and equally what is fashionable. All the world’s greatest cuisines from Italy to China via the Middle East and India make only sparing use of meat as garnish, stock, and for occasional feasts. Thus a low-meat diet doesn’t mean austerity. We just need to re-learn how to cook.
The continued emphasis on meat production is the result of its profitability. In particular, it’s the main way to dispose of arable surpluses.
“More Livestock, More Crops”
We’re told that the extra food that it transpires we don’t really need can only be provided by further raising the already prodigious output of cereals and livestock: wheat that yields at least 10 tonnes per hectare on average; cattle that give at least 10,000 litres (2,000 gallons) per lactation; broiler chickens that reach supermarket weight faster than those that are at present slaughtered at six weeks.
But all this is unnecessary, cruel, and obviously unsustainable. According to the UN’s Global Land Output of September 2017 about a third of all the world’s agricultural soils are now seriously degraded, largely or entirely because of intensive, industrial farming.
“Clearly, if we want to pull the world in a more positive direction, we cannot afford to leave our affairs to the oligarchy.”
“Technology Will Save Us”
We are also given to understand that to go on feeding ourselves we need the highest of high tech — and above all, GMOs, tailor-made by genetic engineering. In truth, it is very hard to find any clear examples of GM crops that have been of unequivocal benefit to humankind. They solve no problems that really need solving, and (despite denials) are causing enormous collateral damage. To the contrary, more traditional techniques that are now being swept aside could easily provide all the food the world will ever need, more sustainably and at far less cost.
“Efficiency is All”
So we are told — it has been official policy for at least 100 years — the whole world should strive to industrialise its farming, replacing farm labour with machines, industrial chemistry, and biotech. Machines don’t deal easily with mixtures of crops and livestock and so farming must as far as possible be monocultural: just one crop, or beast, at a time. All should be increased to achieve economies of scale: combine harvesters as big as a small house; trucks the size of small warships; small fields merged into bigger and bigger fields and small farms merged into vast estates. So it is that there are farms in East Anglia of 1000 hectares or more with just one full-time employee (though many rely on seasonal groups of East European and Asian workers). There are farms in Ukraine bigger than Kent.
But cash efficiency depends entirely on an economic context which is highly contrived, even though we are told that prices are determined by the dispassionate forces of the “free” market. Thus industrial farming is entirely dependent on oil and is cheaper than the traditional kind only because oil is still available and its prices are regulated to make sure it is affordable.
Perhaps even more to the point: industrial farming seems cheap because the collateral damage is largely uncosted — including the cost of mass unemployment, financial aid, and human misery, as the countryside
worldwide is depopulated, and the farmers and their families packed off to the cities. These costs are not attributed to industrial farming. Neither is the cost of mass extinction. Collateral damage is written off as “externalities”.
“Organic Cannot Work”
As for organic farming — don’t be ridiculous! If all the world farmed organically food would cost a fortune and half the world would starve. Either that or we would all have to be vegans, and austere vegans at that, living on fibrous bread and lentil soup. Yet organic farming ticks all the boxes that really matter. Well-managed organic farms can be at least as productive as ‘conventional’ farms that use artificial fertilisers, pesticides and the rest. The produce is, of course, free of almost all pesticide residues and generally high in essential vitamins and minerals. Organic farms employ more people — which in this populous world should be seen as a good thing — and with appropriate technology, the jobs they provide can be highly agreeable, sociable, and the basis of truly fulfilling careers.
What’s to be Done?
These six misconceptions underpin the agricultural strategy of the world’s most influential governments, in association with the corporates, big finance, and their chosen intellectual and expert advisers. Clearly, if we want to pull the world in a more positive direction, we cannot afford to leave our affairs to the oligarchy. We, the people at large, need to take our own affairs into our own hands. We need to lead what has been called an Agrarian Renaissance.
Millions of individuals in many thousands of organizations including NGOs are already on the case. In particular, many are beginning to take over farming itself and the marketing chains that go with it, including local shops. The Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement is very important in this. So too is Via Campesina, the global peasants’ movement.
But nothing can be put right ad hoc. So I and my wife (Ruth) and friends are now setting up the College for Real Farming and Food Culture to look at all the problems of food and farming across the board. Everything needs to be re-thought, and acted upon, from the details of backyard chickens through politics and economics to science and metaphysics. We invite you to join us.
This original article appears in Weapons of Reason’s fifth issue: Food.
Weapons of Reason is a publishing project to understand and articulate the global challenges shaping our world by Human After All design agency in London.
