A Mini Solution to the Coming Food Crisis

By R.J. Ruppenthal, Chelsea Green Publishing.

What if each of us could produce just 10 percent of our own food at home? What a huge difference that would make.

Most of us are at least a little bit worried about the future of the world, and some folks are downright paranoid. The truth is that the future isn't looking too bright at the moment. Humankind is quickly running through our remaining supplies of the resources that have made our lifestyles tick, and the future appears to be one where peak oil, peak phosphorus, climate change, the growing unpredictability of water supplies, and other resource limitations will place tremendous pressure on humankind.

Well, add to this the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO's) recent warning that the world will need to produce 70% more food by 2050 in order to feed the world's population. This is due to a huge increase in world population, more urbanization, and the impacts of climate change (basically, variable rainfall with more regional floods and droughts, more pests and disease, and a shifting of agricultural areas to accommodate change). The upshot: this report recommends that a huge amount of new cropland be "created" and that governments around the world, particularly in developing countries, spend large amounts of money (a 50% increase from now) developing new food production.

Does "creating" new cropland mean chopping down the rainforests? If so, I'm against it, yet I realize that people in poorer countries need to eat. Irrigating the desert is a great idea if there is enough water and enough cheap energy to pump it for hundreds or thousands of miles. On either score, I have my doubts. In between those two extremes, there are probably other places that can be farmed, but reasons why they have not historically been farmed: overall it's going to require huge inputs of both water and fertilizer to make this happen. Water is getting scarcer and more expensive (as mentioned above), while fertilizer depends upon phosphorus (which is peaking) and chemical fertilizers require natural gas for their production process (scarcer and more expensive as well).

And then there's the fact that farmers can't afford to buy seeds anymore. One of those big multinational companies owns the property rights to them, so you need to pay them a license that is prohibitively priced in the developing world. They'll sell you seeds for rice that produce twice as much as the last kind, and are twice as disease resistant, but they cost four times as much. Oh, and also, biofuel production is set to increase by 90% in the next ten years (and probably more than that as we realize we're running out of affordable oil) so food production is competing with energy production on our prime growing land. Tell the peasants they can't eat the corn; it's going in someone's gas tank.

Well, I have no comprehensive solutions except the conviction that we need to live within our means. Easier said than done, right? At the very least, everything I've written above forces the conclusion that fresh food will become much more expensive in the coming years. But I do have a partial "mini-solution" which is that every person should start growing a little more of his/her own fresh food. Increased urbanization around the world means that urban residents need to take charge of (at least a small part of) their own food production. Yes, you can farm on a balcony, on a patio, and even on a sidewalk. You can sprout your own fresh food anyplace, anytime. You can plant a neighborhood fruit tree that can feed the whole block with a month of fresh fruit. Or a dwarf fruit tree on your doorstep in a container of dirt.

Actually, there is a lot you can do to produce your own food, even in a small living space. Granted, there's a lot you cannot do also. But what if each of us could produce just 10% of our own food at home? What a huge difference that would make in better nutrition, decreased household expenses, plus reduced energy use and carbon outputs from not having to produce that food and transport it for hundreds or thousands of miles. if each of us aims for helping out just a little, we can all make a big impact collectively. Give it a shot. This is a great time to think about a winter garden (if your climate allows), or sprouting, or mushrooming, or fermenting, or…dreaming of a spring garden. Some of the best plans are hatched during those cold winter months!

http://www.alternet.org/environment/143420/a_mini_solution_to_the_coming_food_crisis/

I am not unsympathetic to the writer here - I have an urge to give them a reassuring hug or something. The article is so heart-rending in its naivete. Sad, really.

First, what is meant by "10% of our food?" We would have to know how we are going to measure that, and which 10% we are talking about. I fear that the author is thinking in terms of 10% of the contents of a supermarket shopping cart, or 10% of the monthly food bill. You could supply 100% of your food needs and not have an adequate diet, of course. We are not that far away from a time when people were getting 90% of their food needs from their own farm, and their diets were still protein deficient. (Subsidization of grain crops for animal feed was a response to that need.)

"Humankind is quickly running through our remaining supplies of the resources..." the author writes. Yet everything involved in food production is recycled - there is nothing that is disappearing.

The author cites the UN - "...the world will need to produce 70% more food by 2050 in order to feed the world's population." Here we have the rationale for the population control argument. Obviously, this is backward. Population is dependent upon food supply, food supply is not dependent upon population.

From the UN report - "this report recommends that a huge amount of new cropland be 'created' and that governments around the world...spend large amounts of money (a 50% increase from now) developing new food production." Yes, but as I pointed out recently about that UN study, the goal there is to keep the food industry going, to expand the reach of "free markets," not to feed people.

These statements are simply not true: "Water is getting scarcer and more expensive (as mentioned above), while fertilizer depends upon phosphorus (which is peaking) and chemical fertilizers require natural gas for their production process (scarcer and more expensive as well)."

There is a common false assumption behind these statements: "Does 'creating' new cropland mean chopping down the rainforests? If so, I'm against it, yet I realize that people in poorer countries need to eat. Irrigating the desert is a great idea if there is enough water and enough cheap energy to pump it for hundreds or thousands of miles. "

This "shortage of cropland" idea is false. Right here in this country there are massive tracts of abandoned or developed farmland. What is lacking is not cropland, but rather we have a lack of farmers and the lack of a strong public agriculture infrastructure.

Those remarks set up a false dilemma, an imagined choice that does not actually exist in reality. It is the same sort of false choice that the promoters of Capitalism always set up - "jobs or the environment" as one example. In this case, "feed people or save the rain forest."

"And then there's the fact that farmers can't afford to buy seeds anymore." Not so.

"You can plant a neighborhood fruit tree that can feed the whole block with a month of fresh fruit."

Touchingly naive. Thousands of neighborhoods already have fruit trees, since orchard land is quickly being turned into suburbia all over the country. Millions of tons of fruit from wild trees goes unharvested. So what? The food is free. The cost of food is the labor (and the other 90-99% is to support capitalist profits) and the social relationship regarding labor is disordered.

10% of a family's food needs would require let's say 10 acres - or more accurately 10 families sharing and working 100 acres. A patio or balcony garden just ain't going to get it, and people who imagine that it would are woefully ignorant of the massive daily tonnage required to feed, say, a city like Chicago. Worse yet, it promotes ignorance and that works against solving the food problems.

The natural environment is under all-out assault, and people are denying the reality of that with their various boutique food strategies, like organic and CSA and backyard gardens. How can we talk about this subject, or claim that there are too many people, or inevitable scarcities, when we can see collapsed or collapsing fisheries all around the globe, to mention but one facet of the crisis? That is not because of a shortage of fish, that is because of wanton capitalist exploitation and destruction of habitat. That makes it a political challenge. Backyard gardens are a distinctly apolitical "solution," and an idea that leads people away from political solutions and that dramatically understates the crisis.

"What is lacking is not cropland, but rather we have a lack of farmers and the lack of a strong public agriculture infrastructure."

In order to deal with these issues in an adequate manner, the society has to be reorganized. A capitalist society is not going to do it - it can't do it. This is an "imperative" that most of the "post-yuppie" progressives completely miss - the idea that if we just had the "right people" in power or if we could just elect this that or the other "good" person then we would be taken care of is too ridiculous to counter.

It is hard to even talk about direct action with this issue, isn't it? I mean any union or co-op of farmers and "ag-people" who tried to develop strategies now, would need to have a strong profit element for any degree of success, right? But are there any groups that might be viewed as the base or nuclei of societal action when and if the opportunity comes? Or is this really too big and beyond localized solutions at this point?

[div class="excerpt"]In order to deal with these issues in an adequate manner, the society has to be reorganized. A capitalist society is not going to do it - it can't do it. This is an "imperative" that most of the "post-yuppie" progressives completely miss - the idea that if we just had the "right people" in power or if we could just elect this that or the other "good" person then we would be taken care of is too ridiculous to counter.[/quote]

Right. Yep.

Do we have a "capitalist society," or a society preyed upon by capitalists?

[div class="excerpt"]It is hard to even talk about direct action with this issue, isn't it? I mean any union or co-op of farmers and "ag-people" who tried to develop strategies now, would need to have a strong profit element for any degree of success, right? But are there any groups that might be viewed as the base or nuclei of societal action when and if the opportunity comes? Or is this really too big and beyond localized solutions at this point?[/quote]

The ag community is full of cooperative organizations of various kinds, but they have become dominated by the marketers, processors and wholesalers.

As far as the "strong profit element" goes, there really are no profits in farming. The profits are all made by the processors and marketers, brokers, investors and speculators. It is not a matter of getting Capitalism out of farming so much as it a matter of protecting the farmers from Capitalism. Most farmers, almost all, do little or no sales and marketing. The organic movement and CSA and "new agriculture" ideas and "consumer choice" models are attempts to insert sales and marketing into farming, to expand the reach of Capitalism into areas of agriculture that are now protected from it to one degree or another, and that is why they are a step backward.

Farming is heavily regulated. Land is subsidized by Farm Credit. Soil and water management regimens are in place. Safety and health inspection is like nowhere else. (This is why the "pesticide" scares about farming are so ludicrous. Pesticide use is regulated and supervised on farms, which is mostly not the case in schools, grocery stores, produce warehouses, office buildings, restaurants, etc. Yes, pesticides are a concern, but farming is vastly safer and more progressive in this regard than is the case anywhere else.)

Immigrant farm workers are fighting back, and they are interested in farming. That is where political action and the next generation of farmers may come from.

your purpose became transparent. Yeah, 10%, what a hoot. It is of a piece with most of what passes for environmentalism, do your part and you are absolved. It is like buying indulgences.

dupe