The Global Case for Local Food

The current tragedy of Haiti's earthquake might have erased the memory of another recent instance when the small country made international headlines.

In April of 2008, Haitians took to the streets to protest the rising cost of food. But even a New York Times' piece on the country's current food shortages neglects to mention that the people of Haiti were hungry before the earthquake struck the impoverished island nation.

Noam Chomsky gives a little perspective on the origins of Haiti's food crisis, but we all know that Haiti is not the only nation with citizens that go hungry. Approaches to the global food crisis vary, but the common assumption that increasing crop yields is the answer belies a troubling truth: Enough food is produced in the world to provide over 2800 calories a day to everyone.

Over at The Atlantic, Slow Food USA's Josh Viertel expounds on how food production doesn't necessarily equal food security, but stopping Big Ag from making a buck off others' rumbling stomachs is no small task. Even the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization, which has to tread lightly lest it offend the world's top food producers, acknowledges that "in addition to projected investments in agriculture, further significant investment will be needed to enhance access to food." The FAO also calls for investment in primary agriculture "since agriculture not only produces food but also generates income and supports rural livelihoods."

In that vein, Treehugger notes that China, of all places, had some success reducing hunger in the early '80s. The solution? Family farms.

"Economic reforms in 1978 dismantled [China's] system of agricultural collectives, known as production teams, and replaced them with family farms. In each village, the land was allocated among families, giving them long-term leases on their piece of land.
The move harnessed the energy and ingenuity of China’s rural population, raising the grain harvest by half from 1977 to 1986. ... China eradicated most of its hunger in less than a decade—in fact, it eradicated more hunger in a shorter period of time than any country in history."

As our own Greg Plotkin wrote last week, the disarray in Haiti does present an opportunity for the country to re-establish its once prolific farming sector. And Haiti is just one of many nations that could benefit from revived agriculture – the World Bank increased spending on agriculture as an anti-poverty measure by 50 percent last year. But the true tragedy here is that it takes natural disasters and food shortages to get the UN and the World Bank to conclude what some of us have known for years: Sustainable farming isn't some hair-brained scheme. Nor is it a complicated policy that will take a ton of technology and money. It's simple, it's relevant, and it makes sense.

Photo credit: treesftf