Sustainable Agriculture Can Feed the World

After reading a fascinating post by Kate of Hills and Plains Seedsavers, my curiosity began me on a quest to learn as much as I could about sustainable agriculture. We both, as well as many others, have written our thoughts on one form or another of organic agriculture for some time now and I was wondering if we could actually produce enough food to feed the world without using pesticides or other synthetic, non-natural fertilizers that purport to boost food crop output.

In my research I discovered a web site entitled Food First. They published results of a study that was done by the University of Michigan Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology that shows that not only can we feed the current world’s population without the help of chemical-based fertilizers and pesticides, we can by converting to a sustainable organic food production system support a population of up to 10-11 billion by the year 2100! Which will be the world’s expected population by that time.

The original Green Revolution of the 1940’s (Victory Gardens) was credited with averting widespread hunger by drastically increasing agricultural production during World War II. When our soldiers came home after the war, it was felt that the need for these gardens was over and so they fell out of favor. The post-war economic boom saw many people leave the farms and home gardens to experience the conveniences that our new found prosperity brought to us. Farm yields were increased through the science of plant genetics and chemical fertilizers. Food production was improved by the ability to mass produce canned and frozen foods that greatly cut down on food preparation time. This allowed people to enjoy more of the new leisure time that everyone craved.

Years later, after seeing the damage caused by chemical fertilizers and pesticides and the fact that hunger is still a major problem, sustainable organic alternatives are once again receiving the attention they deserve.

The study was published in the June 2007 issue of the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. I won’t go into great detail of the trials, but they compared alternative and conventional agriculture from 91 studies and were able to demonstrate that current scientific knowledge implies that organic agriculture could actually increase global food production by as much as 50% (to 4,381 kilocalories/person/day).

The problems of hunger and food security in the world are not presently associated with not enough food, but with poverty and the lack of ability to acquire food. Whether sufficient food is produced organically or conventionally, the problems of fair distribution and acknowledgment of the right to food will still need to be resolved, and no amount of food production alone will change the political system that leaves those without money to live without sufficient food.

Currently, the world produces enough food to feed everyone, if we would stop artificially fattening up cattle with grain that could go to feed humans. Cows stomachs are not designed to process grain, their natural food is grass, but ranchers receive more profit by feeding their cattle grain. This mis-direction of human food leaves over 800 million people who cannot acquire enough food for their basic needs, according to Food First. They go on to say that if we are to address world hunger, we cannot avoid food sovereignty: people's right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, no matter how much is produced. This implies the democratization of our food systems—not their further industrialization.