I am a native Oregonian
and I have lived the majority of my life in a farming community. Farming was
just how my family and I lived. It seemed like a healthy and responsible way to
live, and it is. What I didn’t know was the path that mass agriculture has taken
from survival to profit,and the opportunities we have today to live more
sustainably.
Today we face the
problem of food sustainability because of massive population growth(Foley, Solutions for a Cultivated Planet). In attempting to meet the needs
of the growing population many resort to methods that increase pollution in the
air and in water. We have and always will be seeking new ways and practices
that will allow us to better meet the food and energy needs of the world population.
However, what may be beneficial now may not be sustainable in the long term.
Can we really feed every person on the planet without sacrificing biodiversity?
Current Agriculture
Currently over 4.9 billion hectares of our planet's surface is
taken up by pastures and cropland (About 38%!). This number is also constantly
rising, about 3% between 1985 and 2005. A study by nature in 2011 also found
that “worldwide
agriculture has already cleared or converted 70% of the grassland, 50% of the
savanna, 45% of the temperate deciduous forest, and 27% of the tropical forest
biome” (Solutions). While the amount of land used for agriculture and
livestock is rising, the rate of increasing crop production is slowing.
A recent study by Rodrigues et al. compared the alpha and
beta diversity as well as production of microbes in the Amazon. They sampled
both forest and pasturelands, finding pasturelands to be more ubiquitous in
composition and more productive. I question whether the tradeoff between the
ecosystem services of the Amazon rain forest for crops is justifiable though.
Recently mass
agriculture, the use of large portions of land for the production of food or
other commodities in a monoculture, has been the cause of some disturbing
problems both in terms of biodiversity and economically. In North America a
recent climactic event was the “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s. The Dust Bowl was
caused by a severe drought that turned the once productive grasslands of North
America into a wasteland of churning soil. The drought dried out the soil and
the wind stirred it up into massive clouds, driving people from their homes and
off their land. The reason the soil blew away is often attributed to the lack
of plant matter to cover the soil and protect it.
An image of the dust clouds seen throughout
the ‘Dust Bowl’
(Image found at www.english.illinois.edu).
Much of the land in
temperate zones is being reallocated for uses other than agriculture, while
areas like the tropics, the poster child for biodiversity, are using more land
for pastures and agriculture. The possible consequences of the destruction of
ecosystems for human food sustainabilty rivals that of global warming. Some of
these consequences include increasing greenhouse gas emissions, the
intensification of agriculture, siphoning fresh water from natural resources,
the reduction of biodiversity, reducing important ecosystem services and pollution
(Foley).
The intensification of
agriculture, modifying/managing lands used for farming in a way that increases
production, is often achieved through fertilizers, irrigation, pesticides,
herbicides, and the use of equipment that allows crops to be harvested and
maintained quickly and in large quantities. The use of fertilizer has increased
over 500% in the last half century. This along with irrigation use nearly
doubling in the same time has caused the pollution and depletion of fresh water
and an increase in energy use. An example of agriculture’s devastating effects
can be seen if we were to look at the Aral Sea in 1973 and 2013.
Aral Sea in 1973 (Left) and 2013 (Right)
(Images found using Google Earth).
This massive draining of
a natural water source was caused by the former Soviet Union’s efforts to
divert water for the farming of cotton and other products to be exported (The
Other Inconvenient Truth).
Organic Farming
Organic farming, an
agriculture technique that involves the use of non-chemical or petroleum based
products in the management and production of crops, has become vastly more
popular. In 2006 it was recorded that over 76 million acres worldwide were
organically farmed (Chivian, 395). Nearly 7.5 million and growing in China and
South America, and 25 million in Australia are organically farmed. This pales
in comparison to the over 12 billion acres farmed worldwide, but there is
potential in the progression.
What are the benefits of
organic farming? A study that took place across Europe, North America and New
Zealand found that biodiversity tended to be higher on organic farms versus
their conventional counterparts (398). The study attributed this to three types
of practices: the reduction of pesticides and fertilizers that were inorganic,
management of noncrop areas such as field margins in a way that provided
habitat for wildlife, and the “juxtaposition of arable fields with those
supporting livestock” (398). Further benefits included that a greater
colonization of roots by mycorrhizae occurred (398). These mycorrhizae improve
the health of plants and soil as well as reducing pests/disease, increasing
drought resistance and tolerability of heavy metals (398).
Just like conventional
farming, organic farm seeks to meet the nutritional needs of a rapidly growing
world population. A study from the Rodale Institute compared the yields of
soybean crops between conventional and organic fields. The study found that both
produced roughly the same yield, but in years of drought, the organically
farmed fields produced yields that were up to 40% higher than their
conventional counterparts (399). This higher yield in drought years can be
directly related to the increased biodiversity of organic farming. Future
implications of this study could be seen if applied to recent droughts. One
recent drought in Russia, which is one of the global leaders in wheat
production, left the world in a scramble for the grain.
Other studies in
comparing the yields of conventional and organic crops by the University of
Essex found that in developing world farms (covering about 74 million acres)
crop yields increased by 90% when organic methods were used (399). A study by
the University of Michigan compared the yields of 293 foods and found that
organic methods produced 30% higher yields on average. Even greater yields were
seen in developing countries (399).
We May All Be Able to Eat
Our current farming
practices have allowed us to increase our ability to meet the demands of a
growing world population, but the ways we are increasing the production of our
crops is depleting the Earth of life by reducing biodiversity and destroying
valuable ecosystems. Organic farming has been shown to reduce our dependency on
petroleum and products that pollute waterways and now may be able to increase
food production to feed our planet’s population.
Works
Cited
Balmford, Andrew, Rhys Green, and Ben
Phalan. "What Conservationists Need to Know about
Farming." The Royal Society (2012): 2714-724. Web. 25 May 2013.
Chivian, Eric, M.D., and Aaron Bernstien,
M.D., eds. Sustaining Life:
How Human Health
Depends on Biodiversity. New York: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.
Foley, Jonathan. "Jonathan Foley: The
Other Inconvenient Truth." TED.
N.p., Apr. 2012. Web.
24 May 2013.
<http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_foley_the_other_inconvenient_truth.html>.
Foley, Jonathan A. "Solutions for a
Cultivated Planet." Nature 478 (2011): 337-42. Web.
Rodrigues, Jorge L. M. "Conversion of
the Amazon Rainforest to Agriculture Results in Biotic
Homogenization of Soil Bacterial
Communities." PNAS 110.3 (2012): 988-93. Web. 22
Apr. 2013.
