Food Security – Farming for the Future Part 1

Long ago food security meant making sure you stored your surplus during times of plenty and made provisions for the lean years. People in all countries around the world faced times of famine and survived them with varying degrees of success  but now such things are relegated to what we referred to as ‘developing countries’ but are they?

India is currently considering a Right to Food Bill which, if enacted, will make access to food a legally guaranteed right which will not only have to address the accessibly of food especially to the poor but also the availability. With such a large population and so much land dedicated to large agribusiness, mostly multinationals dedicated to export, short of banning such exports, putting this bill into action is easier said than done. But banning these exports may in fact be the result as more of the nation’s poor asks why are they feeding the world at the expense of their own people? Why are they kept hungry and destitute so a few can be rich beyond their imaginations?

During the last 50 years farm land in developed countries have been dwindling as large corporations seek cheaper imports in order to improve their bottom line. Unable to compete, small local farms are often sold, rezoned and developed for housing, so our food has to either travel further courtesy of our country cousins at a higher cost or be sourced overseas.

Even without the threat of climate change, population growth with the corresponding increase in demand for resources means that food and food security in the very near future become more of an issue, especially in developing countries which have already seen food driven civil unrest. We may see these countries taking back what is theirs, their productive land and leave developed countries facing food shortages, a corporate induced famine.

Some countries have seen the looming threat and already taken action. China for instance have already worked out that at the current level of population growth is not self sustainable. In only a few decades China will only be able to feed fifty percent of its own people with the resources within their own borders and so have already started actively acquiring agricultural assets in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia with the potential of adding more fuel to the fire when these resources become scarce.

So how do we protect ourselves from this threat of famine or a potential future food war?

As individuals we can take greater responsibility for our food security. Growing our own food, sourcing our food from local producers even if that does cost more, freshness should be worth the premium price and rejecting cheap foreign imports of foods that are or should be produced locally. There will always be foods that cannot be produced locally because of the climate or other growing conditions and these will have to be imported. Norway for instance would be hard pressed growing pineapples or bananas but it would be foolish to import food that is traditionally grown in your own backyard. It is even more disturbing to find items that are indigenous to your homeland being imported from other countries which are producing it in competition with our own suppliers. Australia importing macadamia nuts or barramundi fish from Vietnam would be almost sacrilegious.

But these actions alone will not be enough to ensure the security of food in developed countries. We need the attention and action of Governments applied to this issue, with a focus beyond the next election. It is foolish to assume that market forces and commercial interests will take care of it. Commercial interests are by their very nature greedy, self interested and always looking for the quick return. The Global Financial Crisis is a prime example of foolishly believing that the market will regulate themselves to the benefit of all. Action needs to be taken now but the real return may not be seen for a couple of decades at least. With possibly no or little immediate return, Governments need to act in the interest of the community as no action will not just be a lost opportunity but could prove to be disastrous, even deadly.

Concerted efforts will have to be made to recreate the farms closer to urban areas where the food will be consumed; improving their quality and freshness by reducing the miles they have to travel, reducing the length of time the produce will have to be in storage and reducing the carbon cost of production.

As it is unlikely that the land already consumed by expanding urbanisation will be reverted back to farming activity, to do this will require urban planners to think out of the box. Farms which traditionally took up large tracks of land may have to move up instead of out, with vertical farms, where crops are grown in multi-story buildings using hydroponics, solar power and recycled water.

Some land could be made available, peppered amongst the urban high-rise, high density landscape for use by the local residence for community farms.

Farmers markets could be created which not only attract nearby small farm holdings but also encourage locals to convert underutilised backyards into food producing gardens.

Locals gathering together and forming co-ops that share information, skills, seeds and excess produce between themselves could allow a community to raise a wider array of fruit and vegetables and keep costs down.

But this is still just chipping around the edges of the problem. It will take more than community gardens and co-ops to feed a growing population because those that have will still have to feed those that have not. More importantly right now we need to encourage our Governments to work and legislate proactively, possibly regulating the use and sale of agricultural land, preventing it from being taken over by urban sprawl or have it and water rights being controlled by overseas interests.

In the following editions I will explore these and other options for the future of farming and what we as individuals can do to ensure our own food security.