The Future of the Global Food System
by Collin Dunn, Corvallis, OR, USA on 02.19.08
Photo credit: Green Map System
Wired has an interesting dispatch from the AAAS Annual Meeting on the future of the global food system. The annual meeting, that took place last weekend in Boston, featured a speech by Per Pinstrup-Andersen, a professor of food at Cornell, who argues that the global food system is broken and needs to be fixed. How? He has some ideas about how to make our food system more sustainable and more efficient.
But first, what are we up against? "There are 850 million food insecure people, and several hundred million obese people. Clearly the system is broken." Further, the global implications of climate change on our food system are immense: "Climate change will affect primarily low-income farmers in the tropics and sub-tropics. 70% of the world's poor people are in rural regions in those geographies." And, he argues, the locavore/100 Mile Diet trend that's so in vogue right now ain't gonna cut it.
"'On one hand, we want to help the poor farmer, but on the other hand, we want to eat food produced locally,' he said. 'There is a bit of a contradiction there.'" We've heard this kind of rhetoric before -- rice is a great example -- and, though we agree with most of what the good professor says, it's important to maintain the proper perspective when it comes to considering how we all procure our food.
From a global perspective, yep, things are not great; as individuals of relatively wealthy nations, though, what are we to do? Pinstrup-Andersen has some ideas about what the science priorities of food should be -- "1. Land and water use efficiency. We need to produce more with less. 2. Mitigation and adaptation to market and climate risks and uncertainties. 3. Development of alternative feedstock for biofuel. 'What we are doing with highly-subsidized corn ethanol is not the way to go.' 4. Research on future options for small farmers. 5. Research on implications of structural changes in food marketing. -- but when it comes to the things each of us does every day, the TreeHugger rules still apply: buy what you can locally; be sure to support sustainable food systems with foods -- coffee, tea, chocolate, rice, etc. -- that you can't get locally; and, above all, be thoughtful and mindful about where your food comes from.
We all can't help determine food system policy from the top down, but we can ensure that the right systems are supported from the ground up; that way, as global systems are reformed, we can all benefit from a stronger local system already in place. More interesting stuff over at ::Wired
Permaculture is the answer to these problems..... Check out your local Permaculture source for education. In the Midwest, it's Midwest Permaculture
Permaculture is *an* answer to those problems, but not the only one.
Clearly the murky world of global trade and agriculture is more complex than a choice between buying locally OR supporting "poor farmers".
Looking deeper might reveal the reasons why such farmers are poor or struggling - whether it's the dumping of subsidised agricultural surpluses which destroy local markets, or the liberalisation of markets which again destroy local markets and the ability of local farmers to compete against subsidised imports from the US or the EU.
As the global food sovereignty movement demonstrates, one of the most meaningful ways to improve the global food system is through community self-determination - that is, for communities to be able to determine their own food policies, to have the right to grow the food they want in methods appropriate to their landscapes and communities, rather than having policies imposed by International Financial Institutions like the WTO or the IMF, or being subject to the vagaries of the global market. Supporting local farmers, and cultivating local economies is a crucial aspect of cultivating resilient communities that are able to sustainably meet their own needs.
For more information on food sovereignty, visit http://www.nyeleni2007.org