Forget the battle now raging between organic and intensive farming. There is another way
IN OUR investigations into the implications of globalisation over the past three weeks, food has been touched on only briefly. Yet feeding everyone has never seemed so fraught with difficulty, especially as the world鈥檚 population is set to increase to 9 billion by 2050. The big question is how to feed all these extra mouths without further destroying the environment.
Globalisation is a factor here, not least because of the huge environmental cost as rich countries import more fresh food rather than producing it locally. Even eating organic produce can make things worse if it is imported. Then there鈥檚 technology transfer鈥攐r the lack of it. Advocates of genetic engineering insist that its greatest benefit will be in helping to feed people in developing countries. Yet so far the technology has stayed mostly in the hands of a few wealthy governments and multinationals.
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Basic approaches to feeding a larger world population tend to be polarised. On one side are the intensifiers who would pour more artificial fertilisers onto monoculture crops genetically modified to squeeze ever more from every hectare of land. On the other is the organic lobby, which wants animals and crops to receive only natural inputs. In this issue you will read about a middle way that takes the best from both sides and works towards the twin goals of growing more while preserving the quality of our soils and the wild environments around them.
You can also find out just what impact GM crops have had since the first commercial fields were sown six years ago. Have they wrought the health and environmental disasters that were predicted? Finally, there鈥檚 the high-rise pig farm whose advocates reckon it is better for people, pigs and the environment than any 鈥渘atural鈥� farm. If true, this may be just the sort of thinking we need to feed the world.
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