Can Sustainable Food Feed the World?

Anytime a debate over organics or locavorism or eco-farming or GMOs springs up, naysayers inevitably claim that sustainable food can't "feed the world." They point to skyrocketing food needs thanks to a global population that's likely to reach 10 billion by 2050. Then they point to the increase in yields since industrial methods and genetically modified (GM) crops have been developed. The argument goes that in order to meet our future food needs, we need to utilize every tool at our disposal. Simply relying on outdated technologies will doom billions to starvation. It's an argument that sounds logical at first, but when you take a closer look, several flaws start to spring forth.

Firstly, do industrial methods and GM crops actually increase yields? A comprehensive report released in March of 2009 analyzed two decades of peer-reviewed research on GM crop yields, carefully isolating the effects of the introduced gene as opposed to other yield-boosters like breeding better plants the old-fashioned way through artificial selection. The report, titled Failure to Yield, concluded that GM crops have contributed little to nothing to the yield increases we've seen in recent decades.

As for other industrial practices, years of poorly controlled, short-term research (for example, studies comparing chemical fertilizers to no fertilizers or growing organic crops in nutritionally-depleted soil) gave the impression that conventional farming methods were superior to organic, low-input methods. However, more and more research is emerging that shows that there is no practical difference between organic and conventional farming methods in terms of yield. Organic systems also boast benefits such as improved soil health, increased yields over time, and much lower incidences of disease.

Furthermore, the spaghetti-on-the-wall approach of "utilizing every tool at our disposal" is not a good idea if certain tools exact terrible health and environmental damage. If a farming system has such severe downsides, then its superiority in other areas has to be unequivocally established before we can consider it worth trying. Studies haven't shown that chemical fertilizers and pesticides produce higher yields than organic farming methods, but we are paying the costs of their use all the same. Perhaps industrial methods make farming a bit easier for some, but that has very little to do with feeding the world, and it certainly doesn't outweigh the negatives, which affect everyone.

It's true that our food needs are growing at a pace far greater than we can currently keep up with, and innovation is necessary. But technology and sustainability are not mutually exclusive. The idea that sustainable agricultural techniques are all ancient throwbacks of a bygone era is myth. The biggest innovation in animal agriculture is arguably management-intensive grazing (MiG), which involves moving livestock over multiple small paddocks as often as several times a day. This technique is very different from how livestock have traditionally been managed, and by mimicking more natural herd behavior, it allows farmers to healthily raise many more animals on the same amount of land. Our great-grandparents could not have utilized this system because they didn't have the electric fencing and modern water-delivery systems that MiG relies on.

In the most recent issue of Acres U.S.A., famed eco-farmer Joel Salatin puts forth a huge list of technologies at his disposal that his Grandpa "would have given his right arm to have." The list includes sophisticated electric fence energizers; fiberglass posts; chippers; compact, four-wheel-drive, front-end loaders; PTO-powered manure and compost spreaders; and durable, UV-stabilized plastic for building hoop houses. Farmers and gardeners everywhere rely on soil testing labs to tell them which nutrients and minerals their soil needs. And even genetic technologies are allowing farmers to speed up artificial selection and more quickly select for better, naturally occurring genes. Agriculture can and should benefit from technology and innovation, and these advances don't need to fly in the face of the ecological systems that farming relies on.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that sustainable agriculture is, well, sustainable. It has the ability to continue indefinitely. In contrast, industrial agriculture is unsustainable. That means that eventually, it will fail. Industrial agriculture depletes the soil, diminishes fertility, destroys the environment, and largely relies on petroleum, a very limited and increasingly expensive resource. So yes, not only can sustainable food feed the world, but it is the only food system that future generations can truly rely on.

Photo credit: McKay Savage via Flickr