Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
there is no indication that he has listened to what people on the other side of the fence are
saying.
Nonetheless, it takes a big leap of faith to conclude from the success of small-scale ven-
tures such as SRI that China could feed all its population to the current level of nutrition
solely through organic farming. This would require all of the 75 per cent of China's nitro-
gen which Smil estimates is currently extracted from the atmosphere by fossil fuel-powered
factories, to be derived through nitrogen-fixing plants such as lucerne,
Azolla
, or
Mucuna
pruriens.
This may be theoretically possible, but it would also require extra land, extra wa-
ter, and a supply of other key nutrients, notably phosphates. I have to agree with Smil that
this looks like a pretty tall order.
The challenge is almost as daunting in some other low income countries, such as Egypt,
Indonesia and Bangladesh, although it is noticeable that India is considerably more eco-
nomic with nitrogen fertilizer than China (India has 1.6 times as much arable land per per-
son as China, but China uses 2.6 times as much fertilizer as India).
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The situation is very different in many of the developed countries, particularly those in
the New World. Smil calculates that the USA, even though it is the world's second largest
consumer of nitrogen fertilizers after China, 'in the 1990s could have supplied a healthy
diet for 250 million people without using any synthetic nitrogen compounds'. This could
be achieved by reducing food exports, the amount of grain-fed meat, and most significantly
Zealand could feed themselves just as easily, and I suspect that France, and even Britain
could feed themselves through organic home production, though we British might have to
eat more porridge and potatoes.
Britain is fortunate in enjoying a temperate climate, but its famous fertility is not inher-
ent, it has been built up over the last 500 years through a series of historical advantages.
The agricultural revolution, by slowly building up soil fertility and introducing legumes
and root crops, enabled more stock to be kept, more manure to be produced, more nitro-
gen to be applied to the land and higher yields to be obtained. The colonization of the New
World allowed surplus peasants, who had they remained at home would have increased
grain production at the expense of grass, to be exported abroad where they could grow a
surplus of crops on virgin land. And fertility has been further enhanced by the importation
of guano, rock phosphates, and untold quantities of biomass in the form of wheat, beef, an-
imal feed and other crops (much of which, but not all, we have flushed out to sea).
None of these options were available to China and other South East Asian nations. When
China finally emerged in the 1980s from a centuries-long struggle at the brink of carry-
ing capacity, it was not thanks to an agricultural revolution which increased nitrogen levels
through the agency of legumes and livestock, but on the wave of a green revolution fuelled
by chemical nitrogen and superphosphate. If Smil is right, the option to go organic is a
