Fertility
Without fertility, there's no food. If the plant has no nutrients, it can't grow. That's why you need to plant seeds in soil and they don't just sprout into plants by sitting around surrounded by air. But there are two radically different approaches to fertility, which I would characterize as "chemical" and "biological."
The chemical approach says that we know plants need N, P, and K. And they do. So under the chemical model, you make a fertilizer that has that stuff and dump it all over the plants. Nearly half of it leaches out into our waterways, but the plants get the rest and they grow. And the soil gets eroded gradually, so you'll always need to apply more fertilizer.
The biological approach is the key to our survival as a species and our ability to live in harmony with the world around us. Plants are actually clever enough to manipulate the soil microbes into bringing them all of the nutrients they need. That is - if we let them. And, for that matter, if we HELP them. So that's the goal. Encourage soil biodiversity and healthy water, mineral, and energy cycles and the plants will do the job from there.
I visited a brilliant place called The Rodale Institute, which I can best describe as a research farm, last month. They found a way to reduce oil usage by 2/3 AND increase yields. Now, the yields go down during your first few years as you transition from the chemical to the biological approach of fertilization & pest management BUT within 5 years you're the same and after that you get greater yields.
Instead of applying fertilizer, you grow a cover crop. The cover crop fixes nitrogen from the air into the soil for you and nourishes soil microbes. Then, in the same trip with your tractor, you kill the cover crop and plant your corn (or whatever). The soil microbes can now break down the cover crop and that biomass will become new soil. The nitrogen is already there - in the form the plants want to use it, and right where the roots of the plants are (not leaching out). And the cover crop acts as a mulch to surpress weeds.
So can we save our food supply? Absolutely. And this model is scalable. The Rodale Institute described one guy doing it with a 60 ft wide tractor, and another person using a home made tool in his garden that he just stomps on with his foot (and everything in between).
Why Less Food Doesn't Necessarily Mean More Hunger
The best way I can characterize this is to use Frances Moore Lappe's idea that we don't lack food, we lack democracy. Think about how much food we have now that goes to waste. Tons. For the last year I saw stats on (a few years ago, like 2006 or so), the U.S. had enough food for 3800 calories PER PERSON PER DAY. That includes the babies. They got the figure by looking at our production, minus exports plus imports. Now, we're fat but we're not THAT FAT. We throw a LOT of food away.
We throw it away yet we have hungry people. Those hungry people don't have money to buy that food so we throw it away. Restaurants would rather sell you a big portion size that you waste half of. We'd rather have grocery stores stocked full of everything in case we want it, even though they have to throw out a lot of spoilage each night. And they'd rather throw out that spoilage (in many cases) than donate it to the hungry because they fear lawsuits. We have the food and we throw it out.
I saw an amazing presentation a few weeks ago and unfortunately I don't have it on hand with me right now, but the main point of it was that hunger INCREASED as food production INCREASED (globally). Why? Because as fewer and fewer corporations gained control of the food supply, they were able to leverage efficiencies to increase supply, but they weren't willing to part with that food without being paid for it.
So that's how we have the predicament we're in now. There's a line from the Great Depression (I think) that describes it well... something like "Standing in the soup kitchen line knee deep in bread." There's a lot of food, there are a lot of hungry people, and there is no access for one to get to the other.
So does decreased productivity mean automatic starvation? No. Now, at a certain point yes. When production isn't going down from 3800 calories per person per day anymore, and it starts getting down below where we need it (say, 2000 calories per person per day) ok then yes, less food equals more hunger. But not now, and not for a long time.
That said, we DO need more democracy in this food system. If you examine HOW the productivity got so high when power became concentrated, one of the reasons is that companies are willing to engage in a whole lot of immoral SHIT that people (small farmers, small family businesses) were not willing to do on their own.
To give a brief example, let me share something I've been researching this past week. 100 years ago a slaughterhouse killed cows at a rate of about 50 per hour. Now some do as many as 400 per hour. Wow, that's increased productivity. But what's the cost? Tons of carpal tunnel and tendinitis among workers for one thing. But another problem is that animals are often butchered alive.
By law, most animals (poultry are exempt) MUST be stunned so they are totally unconscious and cannot feel pain before you start to cut them up, or even hang 'em upside down by a leg or whatever else you want to do. In the case of pigs, they scald them in water. When you force the workers to move at the rate of 400 per hour, the person doing the stunning decreases in their precision. A small family business would NOT be willing to do that. But a huge corporation? No problem. Go ahead, skin and cut up that cow while it's alive. We'll just pretend we don't know.
So yes, we produce a lot of food right now and we have a lot of hunger. And we're facing a fertility crisis if we don't turn things around. A lack of biodiversity, plus soil erosion, plus running out of oil will all really screw with our ability to go food if we don't change how we grow it. But will decreased productivity make us all go hungry? Nope. THAT is a myth.
I look very forward to working with the new administration to solve all of these problems. Unfortunately the ag establishment in DC is unwilling to address pretty much ANY of this (particularly in the USDA and in the House - the Senate's better) and we need a new president (Do you hear me Barack Obama?) who is willing to shake things up in order to get something done. |
