Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
prices, the fundamental cause of whih is insuicient production to meet an inexor-
ably increasing demand.
Soil nutrient depletion also harms nutrition. Elevated carbon dioxide levels are
predicted to reduce the protein content of wheat, and perhaps of other grains. Ad-
ditional concerning indicators of inferior dietary quality due to climate hange are
more toxins in heat- and rain-affected crops, and increased food spoilage due to poor
storage in hot or wet weather.
In summary, the global agricultural system is using limited supplies of fossil fuels
and other resources - whih are becoming more scarce - to produce and transport
nutrients around the world, in order to meet the growing demand of a population
whih is, at the population level, poorly equipped to recognize when it has had too
muh of a good thing. We aknowledge that a substantial part of this global trade
in nutrients has been of beneit to health, suh as by enabling a higher consumption
of nutrient-dense food by populations in low income countries. Yet, even there, con-
sumption by many is likely to increasingly exceed thresholds of dietary harm, not to
mention exert a growing cost to the Earth system.
The metabolic rift and producer and consumer community
interactions
A feature of the third food era is that the numbers of calorically undernourished and
calorically over-nourished are unprecedented. At the same time, never before have
so many people been so dependent on others to provide food for them. As part of
this paradox, many small farmers who could supply their own food are in debt, im-
poverished and hronically undernourished. As producer communities become more
enmeshed in the global food supply to meet their own dietary needs, two troubling
ancillary trends have been noted (Blouin
et al
., 2009): global food companies have
been able to make processed foods of dubious nutritional worth available and afford-
able for huge numbers of the world's population; while global supermarkets and fast
food hains have made suh foods not only highly accessible but also highly accept-
able.
The interrelationships between these dynamics are accelerating a phenomenon
identified by Marx in the 1880s as 'the metabolic rift'. The appropriation of agri-
cultural lands for purposes of capital accumulation, rather than food production,
amounted in his terms to 'a robbery system' exploiting labour and soils: the two
factors considered by Marx as the most basic foundations of wealth (Foster, 1999).
