14th March, 2005

KEITH SUTER

There are conflicting reports on just how bad is the state of the world’s food. Is there really a shortage of food?

Last week I was speaker in Canberra at the annual Weekend of Ideas at the historic Manning Clark House (home of the late Australian historian). Thus year’s theme was “Food for Thought”. I was one of the speakers in the session on “Feeding the World”.

One of my tasks was to give an overview on the current state of the world’s food. I used the new book by the now late Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows: Limits to Growth - The 30 Year Update.

The first edition of this book, published in 1972, was the biggest selling environment book in world history. It helped trigger the international campaign for a healthier environment.

The new book naturally has some attention to food. It says that there is enough food (in theory) to feed everyone adequately. The total amount of grain produced in 2000 could keep eight billion alive at subsistence level (there were about six billion) - providing it were evenly distributed, not fed to animals, and not lost to pests.

But the food is not distributed equally. In developing countries, one-in-three children are malnourished. Two-hundred million people in India are chronically hungry as are 200 million in Africa and 40 million in Bangladesh. Nine million people die each year of hunger-related causes - this is 25,000 per day.

Therefore the problem is more one of the distribution of the current food supplies, rather than an overall shortage of food.

The number of hungry people has remained constant - even though the population has grown. This is a bit of an achievement - at least the situation has not become worse as the world has added extra people.

But the future has some worrying aspects. There is still a high population growth in some developing countries.

Meanwhile, China is getting richer and it is moving up the food chain. The original “Limits to Growth” book spoke about the planet running into problems in around the year 2040. That is still the problem, with the dramatic growth of China’s economy being a development that the authors did not expect back in 1972. Now China is losing arable land to factories and roads.

The book notes that there is a controversy over genetically modified crops. The authors say simply that the “jury is still out” on this new technology. It is not clear either that genetic engineering is needed to feed the world - or that it is sustainable.

People in developing countries are not hungry because there is a shortage of food - they are hungry because they cannot afford to buy food. Therefore, plenty of expensive high-tech food will not necessarily help them. Genetic engineering may not necessarily be the key.

Meanwhile the authors argue that there are other ways of increasing food output without having to go down the controversial genetic engineering route. Sustainable agriculture is the key.

Instead of seeing soil as a limitless resource to be exploited as much as possible, the authors challenge us to employ ecologically sound agricultural techniques that reverse soil degradation. Such methods include terracing, contour ploughing, composting and crop rotation. It is possible to grow more food by looking after the soil.

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