Another decade down

Farmers face new challenges and old ones

…Ten years ago, the likes of best-selling authors Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), had not yet surfaced with their hard-hitting questions about modern agriculture, food policy and the linkages to public health. Pollan’s influence on public perceptions has been so significant, some agri-industry donors have threatened to pull their donations if universities invite him to speak without also providing an industry speaker to counterbalance.

We’d never heard of a “locavore” a decade ago. And no one talked too much about the concept of “sustainability,” a word that now peppers almost every dialogue related to food and agriculture. Biofuels were somewhat naively promoted as a solution to farm income problems as well as an answer for Peak Oil.

As we head into the next decade, the cost of farming is increasingly being measured in more than economic terms. Society is weighing in on the issues in a way farmers and the industry are unaccustomed to seeing. It is partly because the “feed the world” debate is heating up. There is a cacophony of views emerging, with some powerful voices weighing in.

One dominant view says the world needs to pull out all stops and focus on production, specifically yield and nutrition-boosting technologies such as Vitamin A-enriched rice, in order to meet the projected 70 per cent increase in food demand by 2050. This production focus pays homage to the environmental and social upheaval caused by the first Green Revolution, but essentially preaches more of the same. However, the technology providers are currently facing scrutiny from a public increasingly suspicious they are becoming too concentrated and powerful.

Another view promotes harnessing the productive capacity of the world’s small-scale farmers, while focusing on more soil-building and less energy-intensive and water-intensive production practices. This camp argues the very things that provide mainstream production agriculture with its yield advantage — energy intensive inputs and uniform genetics — will prove to be its downfall in an erratic climate coupled with rising energy costs. It promotes biodiversity — genetics selected according to local environmental conditions — and farming systems that mimic natural ecosystems.

“Productivity or sustainability — they say you have to choose,” said Microsoft mogul Bill Gates, whose charitable foundation is investing heavily in developing agriculture in impoverished countries.

Winnipeg Free Press