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Page added on February 18, 2014
Feeding global population without degrading the environment a major challenge
Scientists are warning we are undertaking “the greatest challenge we have ever faced” in trying to get more from the earth to feed the world’s growing population.
Writing in and editing a special edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Professor Guy Poppy, of the University of Southampton, says the world’s approach needs to change in order to get more from the land without harming it.
“We cannot go backwards,” Professor Poppy says. “We have to get more from the farming environment because there’s a growing population. But we cannot do it in the same way as we have been doing for the last 2,000 years. We must make it more sustainable.”
This latest edition of the journal from the Royal Society includes the ‘Kavli Declaration’ which sets out a global vision for 2050 and calls for a more scientific approach to Sustainable intensification (SI) of crop production – a process whereby the yield increases but the impact on the land is minimal.
The journal’s authors say that a wider debate on the world’s most pressing questions needs to take place and we need to get better at protecting the environment and reacting when contaminations happen. Additionally investment and creativity is needed within new scientific technology so we develop plants or management practices which allow crops to protect themselves more effectively. Crucially, how we view the environment needs to evolve so that agriculture is seen as part of the environment and not something separate from all other ecosystems.
Professor Poppy comments: “The scientific research taking place in universities and institutes is key in helping us face this unprecedented challenge. For example, work to develop seeds so the resulting plants are better at defending themselves is vital. Furthermore, changing the way we look at agriculture to seeing it as part of the environment is important to ensure people in some of the most vulnerable places – for example where the forests meet agriculture – in the world can live healthier lives and be lifted out of poverty.”
Professor Poppy is leading a study in Malawi to look at how best to manage the forest/agriculture interface. The ASSETS project, which is also published in the special edition, has shown that issues differ depending on the area and may not fit with national policy or priorities and this needs to be taken into account. Moreover the trade-off between one benefit against another is an important factor.
Professor Poppy adds: “Countries like Malawi face a problem between producing enough food for themselves to live off whilst not degrading the environment, which is crucial for helping provide the food of the future. Many methods of agriculture or managing the environment are not sustainable. The trade-off question of allowing managers to see who wins and loses and how to deliver the optimal solution has been a big challenge in the past. It is a new aspect, possible through the work of Southampton, in solving this global challenge.”
13 Comments on "Feeding global population without degrading the environment a major challenge"
Northwest Resident on Tue, 18th Feb 2014 8:50 pm
No. Wrong. Portland Trailblazers making it out of the first round of playoffs is a “major challenge”. Feeding global population without degrading the environment is an impossibility. Not a technical impossibility of course — it COULD be done — IF the world powers would sit down together and be reasonable, logical, play nice, keep their hands on the table and allocate scarce resources fairly and equitably, and spend money to implement monumental teaching and training programs worldwide. IF all that could be done, then yeah, technically possible. But as we all know, hell will freeze over and the Pope will convert to Islam long before that big IF becomes reality. Therefore, it is impossible.
DC on Tue, 18th Feb 2014 9:10 pm
I agree, the very title of this article is ridiculous. We are degrading soil, water and land NOW, let alone mitigating damage that future population growth will cause. We have been damaging eco-systems at an accelerating rate for centuries, only recently the trend is picking up speed so fast, pretty much everyone is starting to recognize it. Our numbers, are unsustainable, and our idust-ag, is inherently destructive. The author has a poor grasp of the issue if he seeks to imply we can do ‘more of the same’ going forward-without doing ever more damage.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Tue, 18th Feb 2014 9:36 pm
If Guy would have said in the very beginning I would have felt better:
“We are in a predicament of reaching the limits of growth of our food system and practices. We are faced with the only option and that is to taking less from the earth to produce food. It will have to be in a sustainable system much as our ancestors did but more so. We will have to relearn many of the skill our ancestors used and improve on them to meet the needs of a population that must shrink but has not yet. Our productivity will increase but the gross amount of food will shrink. We will be moving out of intensive hydrocarbon, chemical, and erosive practices towards all the many permaculture based practices. We will have to go back to local based food networks that will be seasonal. Traditional food preparation and preservation practices must be promoted. All of these efforts must take place along with the greatest challenge we have ever faced and that is in reducing the global population to a carrying capacity associated with the natural health of our global ecosystem. This effort can’t start in 5 years. It must start now and will take generations. It will require education and priority over resources. If it does not start now we are faced with famine, hunger, and disease never before experienced in the history of Man. I ask the world’s scientist to support this effort in conjunction with the parallel effort to reduce AGW greenhouse gases in a symbiotic effort from the transformation of agriculture and our social structures.
J-Gav on Tue, 18th Feb 2014 9:37 pm
I’ve got news for professor Poppy: it isn’t just “countries like Malawi” that are up against this issue.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Tue, 18th Feb 2014 9:40 pm
@Gav – yea good point – like maybe the whole F**king planet
MSN fanboy on Tue, 18th Feb 2014 11:07 pm
As I’ve just said on Hobbes.
The irony of Malthus is that when he is proven correct.. no one will care lol
peakyeast on Tue, 18th Feb 2014 11:57 pm
I think prof.Poppy (what a name !!) forgot to put on the patch on his left eye – because he is clearly looking at the world in a one-eyed manner. … Hmm not sure how this Danish saying translates into english 😀
andya on Wed, 19th Feb 2014 1:30 am
Want moar yields, just add urea, works like a charm
Makati1 on Wed, 19th Feb 2014 1:53 am
I think Mother Nature is going to have some say in our species longevity. I also think she has already pulled the plug. Think of the weather anomalies lately. California, drying up, the UK with record floods, the polar vortex over the US, Australia needing new colors for their temperature chart on the high end, and on and on.
How do you grow food when it floods when it should be dry, then dries out and doesn’t rain when it should? When a late frost kills the buds on fruit trees, or an early frost kills a crop? When temperatures don’t even allow a crop to grow and fruit or goes to seed too fast due to high temps? When water is becoming the new gold in many food producing areas? When all we have left is sand and dead dirt for soil?
No, homo sapiens had his chance and blew it. We can try to mitigate the problems we have caused, but overcoming them is not in the cards. That’s my view.
Makati1 on Wed, 19th Feb 2014 1:58 am
Urea is only part of the problem, andya, but at least you are aware of soil needs. Good soil also needs potassium, phosphorus, trace metals/minerals, bacteria, worms, air, fungi, rotting plant life, and sunlight. We have killed of most of those and taken the plant life to make car fuels. We have strip mined the soil for so long, it no longer can produce anything of value without major input in costly materials, labor and time. It supposedly takes 100 years to make an inch of real topsoil.
stevefromvirginia on Wed, 19th Feb 2014 6:27 am
RE: ‘Polar Vortex’, it was called ‘winter’ back in the good old days. It was a lot colder in the Eastern US in 1994 and during the
stevefromvirginia on Wed, 19th Feb 2014 6:35 am
RE: ‘Polar Vortex’, it was called ‘winter’ back in the good old days. It was a lot colder in the Eastern US in 1994 when it was five below in DC and pipes were freezing all over town.
It was routinely colder during the 1960s and 70s. I grew up in Northern Virginia and the temps would routinely fall 10 below zero every year. Now? It never went below zero during the precious vortex, the Potomac River never froze over at all, in total it was cold for two days, in 1977 the Potomac froze over so you could walk all the way across. Ditto the Hudson River. It never really gets cold or cold for long periods any more. I was in Columbus Montana in 1969 when it got sixty below. It used to go fifty- or sixty below every year. Now?
So … farming is specific to pieces of land, habitat-sensitive. Everything is warming up and nobody knows what grows where any more. Too wet, too dry, too warm and too many bugs, weeds and fungus. We’re gonna feed more people … and the cars, too.
Right.
Kenz300 on Wed, 19th Feb 2014 3:28 pm
Sustainability needs to be a word more people understand.