by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Locally appropriate, simple and ecologically sustainable innovations in agriculture are the key to the reduction of poverty.
That is the summary of the report “State of the World 2011” by the American Worldwatch Institute. The report argues for the immediate extension of investment in sustainable agriculture, amongst which must be finance for agroforstery projects, agro-ecological research and diversity of species, which have been rather seriously neglected in the last years.
About billion people across the globe suffer real hunger and chronic malnutrition, and that despite the fact that more food is being produced today than every in human history, the report states.
The local and global distribution of food is unfair: especially in places such as Africa, where the population growth is going to increase strongly within the next couple of years, hunger and malnutrition are getting worse. The worldwide rise in food prices hit predominately the poorest in the world, at home and abroad.
Many governments around the world believe that they can raise food production by means of high yielding varieties and/or fertilizers. But for the majority of poor peasant farmers those methods are way too expensive and simply not available.
It is also not necessary to use such methods to improve agricultural yields. Research has shown that the methods of old of more-or-less organic farming could produce more food than all the chemical fertilizers and high yielding varieties will ever be able to. Agro-industry, however, and its suppliers do not want you and I to understand this and governments are, it would appear, in the pockets of big business involved in this industry in the same way as they are in the pockets of the military-industrial complex.
A productive change of agriculture and yields is possible, so also the report, if peasant farmers are aided through often simple but important innovations, especially the women farmers, who dominate the agriculture, as far as the production of food is concerned, in the majority of the Third World countries.
The solution to the problem rests in the ability of peasant farmers, men and women, to produce food that they also can be processed and marketed by them.
In view of the acute food price rises on the world agricultural markets we need an immediate change in the European Union agricultural policies and -politics.
Also, when we consider the issue of Climate Change, and also the fact that we are reaching Peak Oil and probably the peak of many other things, the European Unioin's agricultural politics must be realigned urgently. Some of the way that meat production is being conducted, in the EU and especially in countries such as the USA, with their feed lots, contributes, more than likely, to Climate Change. On the other hand, proper sustainable animal husbandry, such as keeping animals on the range, could even remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, as could sustainable agriculture pe se.
© 2011
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→Hunger in in a time of plenty
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