Feeding theWorld – The Contribution of IFOAM Principles - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 80

concentration in processing and marketing/distribution (Grievink 2002 ; Humphrey
and Memedovic 2006 , p. 35). Equally important, both foreign public and private
capital investments in food production continue to be based on this high input
paradigm. This production approach is widely promoted as the most effective way
to produce the food needed to feed the world. However this rapid intensification of
agricultural production is accompanied by many negative consequences for environ-
mental, social and economic justice (e.g., Stoate et al. 2001 ; Trigo and Cap 2004 ).
Several studies identify numerous environmental problems related to the use of
biotechnological cropping (e.g., Tscharntke et al. 2012 ). Establishing high-input
agriculture on mainly fragile soils will lead to soil degradation and an irreversible
loss of soils, loss of water qualities and quantities (Rockström et al. 2007 ; Godfray
et al. 2010 ), loss of biodiversity as well as negative impacts on the climate (Galloway
et al. 2008 ). Of equal concern is the increasing evidence of the relationships
between crop biotechnology that facilitates large-scale monocropping (more than
10 % of the agricultural land in the US and Canada) and cropping for bioenergy
production (Hendrickson and James 2005 ). As some might suggest, this is like
“putting top soil in our gas tanks” with negative consequences on soil fertility
and water quality (e.g., see Goolsby and Battaglin 2000 ; Nellemann 2009 ), not
to mention the competition posed to food production (see Government Office for
Science 2011 ). This is not to generally put in question bioenergy production, but
the production methods of the high-input paradigm, and their negative influence
on ecology and the socio-economy, similar to that of food production (Searchinger
et al. 2008 ). Finally, others report on human and animal health problems related to
the use of food products made from genetically modified crops (Hendrickson and
James 2005 ; Gurian-Sherman 2009 ; Zacune 2011 ) and critical power relations of
GMO businesses (Walters 2006 ).
This paradigm specifically promises the production of the large quantities of
food required to meet the projected increase in demand for food from a growing
world population. Based on Neo-Malthusian thinking, this approach holds that
world population growth will outstrip the ability to produce enough food. This
argument has regularly cycled through numerous public debates for decades as an
argument for high-input agriculture (e.g., see Ehrlich 1968 ). But simply to increase
production does not assure either widespread or equitable access to food (Thompson
2008 ). Furthermore, this approach pays scant attention to the political economy of
population growth, or to questions related to corporate power in food production,
including recent concerns over “land grabbing” via corporate, multi-national and
national investments (Cotula 2009 ; Kachika 2010 ).
The increasingly frequent “land grabs” throughout Asia, Africa and Latin
America (Volpi 2007 ; Daniel 2011 ; McMichael 2012 ; Tscharntke et al. 2012 ;
Oliveira 2013 ) are all based on the use of high input methods to produce crops
consistent with Western diets, and at the cost of unchecked deforestation in
developing and emerging countries (van Solinge 2010 ). Further deforestation in the
South for gaining agricultural land will have negative consequences for the world
climate, and is therefore not a sustainable way of food procurement (Malhi et al.
2008 ).