Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
agencies, has had a significant negative effect on the environment and society, with
Gambians now reliant on imported rice for their own consumption. Their situation
compares less favourably to Mali, whose citizens continue to produce more of their
own rice and who were able to swith to home-grown sorghum (Moseley
et al.
,
2010).
Because of different bioregional and social group capacities for food production,
global trade in food is inevitable. But we need to be aware of the many sides to this
form of food provisioning. There have been numerous other studies of the mixed for-
tunes in the fruit, hocolate and tea sectors - especially where Fair Trade has been
anticipated to both improve environmental practices and to improve wages and the
working conditions of labourers. While this can indeed be the result, it can also mean
precarious working lives whih can end abruptly when contracts are not renewed;
immiseration for smaller producers unable to upscale sufficiently to obtain the con-
tracts; and displacement of self-provisioning of food by marketplace reliance.
In summary, whilst the current global agro-food system complex produces ample
calories, together with macro and micronutrients, to alleviate malnutrition (though
not necessarily to provide optimal nutrition), the system extracts an extraordinarily
high cost from the social and bio-physical environment. It also has a high ethical
price, including the treatment of low-paid, often exploited agricultural workers, and
the cruelty of intensive animal farming. Considering the scale of this harm, the be-
nefit to global health of the current food system is far less than is often assumed.
We agree with Hawkesworth and colleagues (2010) that a distinction should be made
between 'feeding the world' and 'feeding the world healthily' (Hawkesworth
et
al.
2010). It seems that the current global food and agricultural system can do the
former, though we add that this is subject to a fairer distribution of food 'entitle-
ment' (Prithard, this volume).
To this point, our hapter intimates points of leverage. Even if we are partly
'hard-wired' to feast when food supplies are plentiful, we are also plastic. Fads come
and go: for example, the recent move away from margarine with trans-fats, and an
embrace of more organic, health and sustainability arguments to reduce meat, es-
pecially grain-fed. However, while these are the marketplace and social-movement
fostered 'options' for the middle-classes, a more comprehensive safety net approah
is required for the bulk of the world's population. Furthermore, if we are to advance
and to sustain nutritional advances for all peoples, an ecological approah is essen-
tial in whih food policy, energy policy and climate hange policy are not only sim-
