Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
cuss and debate the real rub lying at the centre of most debates about food produc-
tion, whih we analytically distinguish as being between quantity and quality.
Food security through the lens of quantity
Driving the interstate through 'farm country' in the US takes you past the inevitable
billboard: 'One US farmer feeds 145 people'. At irst we are taken abak by the sheer
efficiency of American agriculture and in the spirit of advertising the billboard has
worked. But does eah farmer actually feed 145 people? How is that calculated? he
calculations surely assume certain caloric intake levels and production levels that
simple division then yields a neat and tidy quantification of the efficiency of the
American farmer. While the number of people fed has continued to increase, are we
any closer to ahieving global food security than we were a couple of decades ago?
The global food crisis of 2008 along with food aid in the form of food stamps, food
banks and food drops suggest, sadly, that we are not.
A quantitative approah to food security assumes that if we simply produce
enough, the market will ensure that everyone is sufficiently fed and that profits are
earned from a job well done. Simple. We can limit labour input and improve effi-
ciency (oten the same thing) with increased use of mahinery, GPS tehnology to
best plot the crops, utilizing the latest data on soil quality, and with new fertilizer
systems especially calibrated for the area. Researh is then oriented to increasing
yield to ensure that production can keep up with the rate of population growth. Gal-
lantly, the US and other 'first world' producers take on the burden of that produc-
tion - the noble providers. This provision comes in the form of caloric production
through yield increases and economies of scale related to production that maxim-
ize water efficiency, distribution networks
and
calorie production. But is that what
really happens?
Calorie production
Let's examine the calorie argument first. Food security is often reduced to caloric
production - if we produce enough food then hunger will be a thing of the past. It
is an equation missing a few variables. Let's take, for example, the green revolution
beginning in the 1960s. Miracle rice, so-dubbed for its miraculous qualities to in-
crease yield, reduced the need for inputs by reducing plant size and shiting muh of
the energy into edible parts of the rice. The related elimination of biodiversity; from
