Hunger in the World - is the current way of doing farming still up to date?


When the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) was founded in 1946 the fight against hunger in the world was one of its most important objectives. Since then a lot has been done to achieve this goal and after all in some cases, such as the green revolution, success could be reported – at least for some time. Nevertheless there were still 800 Million people suffering from hunger during the first World Food Summit in 1996. At that time a new goal was set: to reduce hunger by 50% until 2015. But even this goal does not appear to be realistic. Instead of declining, the number of hungry people has even increased.

There are many reasons for this development and agriculture takes only part of the blame. Globally sufficient food is produced to feed the actual world population of more than 6 billion people. The actual problems of hunger are not so much caused by shortcomings in the production, but much more in the distribution and access to food. Hence, hunger is at present more a socio-economic problem, which was demonstrated to the entire world by the soaring food prices in 2007 and 2008. Even that crisis had multiple causes, including low food stocks in some regions, and the speculation with bio fuels as well as with food commodities in international financial markets. However, the crisis has demonstrated the general political and strategic importance of food and its production, and hence of agriculture, even in a globalized world. It has further demonstrated that especially weak economies are particularly badly affected if they heavily depend on food imports. This can finally lead to political instability. Even in a globalized world it is therefore important to produce, whenever possible, the food where it is needed and not to trust only in surplus regions for feeding food deficit areas.

 

Even more demanding are the future challenges for agriculture. World population will increase until 2050 from some 6 billion now to over 9 billion people. Considering the more demanding consumer habits, such as the increased meat and milk consumption, crop production globally will have to double to match the expected demand. In addition to the food production, agriculture will increasingly have to produce renewable raw material and bio energy. Increase in production in the past was mainly achieved through technological progress, i.e. increasing yields. Expansion of agricultural land under cultivation contributed only to a minor extent to the overall increase of production. Also for the future increased yields will have to be the base for the necessary production increase, since available additional land is only available in few regions. In other regions, such as in Asia, land and water resources already now are scarce and increasingly limiting production increase. But, it is questionable whether the same kind of technological progress, which has led to the green revolution and which has enabled mankind to produce sufficient food until now, will also in future be the solution to the problem. Already now the global production increase is not keeping pace with earlier years. Miracle solutions are not in sight and the often mentioned biotechnology so far has hardly led to crops with significantly increased yield potential. Moreover in most cases the genetic potential of existing varieties is by far not realized, indicating other than genetic causes as yield limiting factors. In addition the currently practiced intensive agriculture has proven not to be sustainable: highest yields often only can be maintained with ever increasing fertilizer and agrochemical inputs. In some cases yields cannot be maintained despite high fertilizer inputs, as is the case in the home of the green revolution, India. In vast parts of Africa high fertilizer inputs only result in moderate yields which neither economically nor ecologically is sustainable. This alarming development shows a dilemma of the actual agricultural production: intensification of production to achieve highest possible yields is leading to undesired ecological consequences, such as pollution of the environment with plant nutrients and agrochemical residues, waste of limited freshwater resources and soil erosion. In addition this intensive way of agriculture is contributing directly to climate change with about 14% of the total green house gas emissions, particularly emissions of nitrous oxides, methane, but also carbon dioxide from soils. A less polluting agriculture, on the other hand, does not produce highest yields. A key cause for this dilemma is the soil, which is the base for any agricultural production. Intensification of agriculture up to now often goes along with more intensive soil tillage. This leads particularly in the tropical climates due to the prevailing high temperatures and intensive rainfall to a rapid decline in soil organic matter levels. In the tropics this can have dramatic consequences after only few years. The same processes also take place in moderate climates, but at a relatively slow pace, making them less visible. The consequences are a dramatic decline in soil fertility, water storage capacity and soil structure. Since soil organic matter also is directly related to soil life, a decline also results in lower biodiversity in the soil ecosystem and finally in declining nutrient availability. As a result the yields collapse. Erosion can lead to a total loss of fertile soil and to increased disease and pest problems in the crops. In extreme cases the remaining vegetation cover degrades with desertification as the final outcome.

 

Climate change presents another challenge to agriculture. Changing climates, rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns will lead to changes in the cropping patterns in the long term and require already now an adaptation of varieties to the changing conditions. However, the immediate threat to agriculture is the actually experienced variability in weather conditions, with unpredictable and often extreme events occurring, including extreme precipitations or extended drought periods. This requires a change of the cropping systems to more resilient and less vulnerable practices. Soil tillage again is a practice, which exposes the soil, makes it vulnerable to erosion but leads also to not productive water loss. Over the last few years, regional droughts as for example in Australia, Kenya and China, or floods after excessive rainfall, have caused loss of entire harvests in these regions, affecting the global food production and taking a toll on the existing food stock. This has also contributed to the recent soaring food prices and food crisis.

 

In view of these challenges, on one side the necessity for a dramatic increase in the overall production to feed the expected world population and on the other side the problems with sustainability of the existing intensive production methods, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has declared a new strategic objective: the sustainable intensification of crop production. The goal is, utilizing existing modern technologies, to achieve the required production increase while at the same time maintaining and enhancing the natural resources. This can be achieved using technology not against, but along with natural processes. A core element of this sustainable production intensification is “Conservation Agriculture”, which is based on three synergistically interacting principles:

1. minimum mechanical soil disturbance, ideally no-tillage

2. a permanent soil cover with crops or mulch

3. a diversified crop rotation with an appropriate percentage of legume crops.

 

This kind of agriculture, which is actually practiced worldwide on about 100 million hectares, has demonstrated that highest yields can sustainably be achieved with decreasing inputs of fertilizer and agrochemicals in the long term. Soil structure and life as well as biodiversity can be increased. Combined with other complementary technologies, such as integrated pest management, avoidance of soil compaction, agro-forestry, plant genetic progress and others this seems to be the most promising approach for solving the problem of world hunger. It can even help in fighting climate change by sequestering carbon in soils at an average rate of 0.2 t of carbon per hectare and year. Applied to the 1.5 billion ha of cropland agricultural soils could become one of the biggest available sinks for carbon-dioxide. Business as usual, a continuation of the present way of farming, instead, appears to lead to a dead end.

 

 

Core Themes