Biodiversity: Farming Will Make or Break the Food Chain
BROOKLIN, Canada - As the world population swells to nine billion by 2050, global biodiversity will be under extreme pressure unless new ways to grow food are developed, experts say.
An additional one billion hectares of wild lands — mainly forests and savanna — will be converted to food production fields by 2050. While this may provide enough food, it is likely to result in a massive decline in biodiversity, undermining ecosystems that provide vital services such as clean water and air, and capture carbon to slow the build-up of climate-altering gases in the atmosphere. 
Sixty percent of the Earth’s ecosystems are in trouble right now, warned the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment report last year.
What state will they be in by 2050?
It depends how society decides to feed itself, says Louise Jackson of the University of California at Davis, and head of an agro-biodiversity task force at Diversitas, an international scientific organisation devoted to biodiversity research based in Paris, France.
“If all agricultural lands adopt the industrial, monocultural model, there will be enormous impacts on water and other essential services provided by diverse ecosystems,” Jackson told IPS.
Societies need to recognise the value of ecosystem services and encourage farmers to use methods that benefit biodiversity, she says.
Biodiversity refers to the amazing variety of living things that make up the biosphere, the thin skin of life that covers the Earth and is, as far as we know, unique in the universe. The trees, plants, insects, bacteria, birds and animals that make up forest ecosystems produce oxygen, clean water, prevent erosion and flooding, and capture excess carbon dioxide, among other things.
“There is an unbreakable link between human health and well being and ecosystems,” Walter Reid, director of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) and a professor with the Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, told IPS last year.
The MA is a 22-million-dollar, four-year global research initiative commissioned by the United Nations, and carried out by 1,360 experts from 95 countries. Its mission has been to examine ways to slow or reverse the degradation of the Earth’s ecosystems, including a look at what the future may be like in 2050.
The more species and diversity there are in an ecosystem, the more robust it is. Remove some species and it will continue to function. However, like a complex house of cards, removing key cards or too many cards results in a collapse.
For many ecosystems such as oceans, scientists do not know what the key cards are or how many lost species is too many.
Agriculture has been the biggest contributor to species loss in the past, but Jackson and others believe that valuing agricultural lands as both sources of food and biodiversity could slow the loss of future species.
“There are ways to enhance biodiversity even here in California where there are very intensive agricultural monocultures,” Jackson said.
Crop rotation, re-vegetating farm edges and integrating thin strips of land into farm fields to provide habitat for insect predators boosts biodiversity while reducing pesticide use and the impacts of chemicals on water and soil, she said.
The benefits to farmers include less spending on pesticides and fertilisers and improved soil quality due to enhanced microbial biodiversity.
However, such benefits often take years to emerge and pose short-term-financial risks for farmers. To offset these, society should support farmers with some form of payment for increasing biodiversity since everyone benefits from ecosystem services. At the same time, there ought to be strong penalties for chemical pollution, she says.
Conversion of the one billion hectares of wild lands into farmland can also be done in ways that preserve some biodiversity by leaving corridors of connected habitat so species can move from one place to another. Research in the Amazon has shown that islands of untouched forest surrounded by agricultural lands quickly begin to fray at the edges and slowly shrink.
“We can do better in terms of preserving biodiversity in converting forest into farmlands,” said Truman Young, an ecologist who is also at University of California, Davis.
“The problem in feeding the world is poverty not food production,” Young said in an interview.
While agreeing that more land will be needed in the future, the biggest current and future threats to biodiversity are food and timber export markets, and biofuels, he says.
“Brazil’s rural population is in decline even as more Amazonian rainforest is being cleared and turned into soy fields,” Young said.
Although some poor farmers are still trying to farm the Amazon, the main pressure today is large industrial farm operations that grow soy for export to Europe. The soy and timber barons of the Amazon have tremendous influence and power, making it difficult to slow deforestation of the region, he said.
The international community needs to counteract that by applying pressure on Brazil because the carbon that is being released by deforestation affects everyone on the planet, he argued.
The other major threat to biodiversity is the thirst for biofuels, derived from corn and sugar cane, among other things, and which experts say have already caused deforestation in Asia and parts of South America.
“Brazil, because of its size and climate, could become the biofuel capital of the world,” Young said.
And that could devastate the country’s biodiversity without adding much to the world’s energy supply. Europeans are turning away from biodiesel made from palm oil because it is causing deforestation. Biofuels only offer a benefit when agricultural waste products are used for conversion into fuel. The technology for doing that is not yet here, he said.
“Improving fuel efficiency is the fastest and easiest way to reduce use of fossil fuels,” Young noted.
Just as boosting ethanol or biodiesel production fails to solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, so does investing billions of dollars in research into genetically engineered crops, says Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute, a U.S. think tank.
“We already know how to grow enough food to feed the world. The problem is the food distribution system,” Mittal told IPS.
That system favours large-scale monocultures of a few specialised crops, and is destroying biodiversity. Ultimately that approach is a recipe for global famine, she said.
“We know how to end hunger and preserve biodiversity, but there are powerful corporate interests in opposition,” Mittal said.
Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service.
Anyone who is serious about biodiversity and food production should become familiar with Permaculture. If you aren’t, find out about it now. We are facing massive food security problems (honeybee dieoff, water shortage, soil depletion, lack of soil biology, the threats posed by GMO contamination, etc.). We all need to devote some time to learning how to grow food safely and sustainably. If you think this is someone else’s problem, think again. While the analysis is correct, the solutions suggested in this article are not serious enough.
Decreasing biodiversity is a serious problem; however, the underlying issue is overpopulation which feeds global warming, over fishing, pollution, you name it. Until we limit our numbers, the quality of life will continue to decline. However, that is only part of the problem.
The other major problem is a global economic system that requires growth to survive. Capitalists, i.e. investors, expect a return on their investment. When it doesn’t happen, they take their money elsewhere. Any company that doesn’t grow can’t raise capital for expansion or new technology. They become less competitive and the capital goes to companies that are growing. The cash infusion allows those companies to develop new products, create economies of scale, and grow even more. If you can’t attract investors in the form of shareholders, your next stop is the bank. If you don’t grow after the bank gives you the loan, you can’t pay the principal or interest. I don’t need to tell you what happens next. If that’s not a growth imperative, I don’t know what is. At the macro economic level, society needs to create markets for capital. When the overall economy contracts, businesses cut back to keep inventories in line with demand. If enough businesses do this layoffs follow, layoffs trigger further cutbacks ending in recession or worse. Repeated and prolonged recessions and depressions can cause political instability. I think that qualifies as an “imperative” as well.
It’s quite simple, never ending growth is not possible on a finite planet and it doesn’t matter whether it’s people or the economy. We need to rein in our reckless breeding and figure out a way to create all the goods and services we need without an infinitely expanding economy. If we don’t the impersonal forces of nature will do it for us.
Diversity is a source of life which also requires that we acknowledge and act as we are one, at least attempting harmony.
I will check out the Permaculture; thank you for this. We should also put gardens in the cities.
Check out Fairview Gardens. They claim to feed 500 families on 12 1/2 acres. They are an old farm begun in the 19th century situated in Southern California.
http://www.fairviewgardens.org/index.html
Bio-diversity is the answer, especially in agriculture. Farming that is based on nature’s wisdom is by unimaginable leaps and bounds more productive than industrial farming.
“never ending growth is not possible on a finite planet.” Gregory, truer words were never spoken but this is almost never discussed. and what ever happened to population control?
Re: biodiversity and the food supply, we must work at the grass roots level to educate and raise consciousness, particularly among the young. People are completely divorced from food production and nature in general. Start a community garden, encourage your local schools to get the kids involved in growing their food, join or start a Slow Food chapter. see www.slowfoodusa.org.
“BROOKLIN, Canada - As the world population swells to nine billion by 2050, global biodiversity will be under extreme pressure unless new ways to grow food are developed, experts say.”
More technological fixes to compound the problem of population growth. At least the POTUS is trying to do something about it, though killing people while saving zygotes leaves a lot to be desired.
Dangit!
I switched from cowmilk to soy last year because I read about how bad dairies are for the local watershed.
Now my monoculture soymilk is destroying the rainforest!
What next?
jjohnjj,
Why don’t you eat apples? No, wait! What was the name of the guy who two or three years ago did marathon swimming along Saint Lawrence and got skin rash, eye inflamation, lung irritation, etc. due to pollutants from the surrounding apple plantations? I give up - both on the guy’s name and apples.
jjohnj don’t give up your soy milk. You are not the cause of rainforest destruction industrial meat base diets are the major culprits. Most of the the soy and corn grown in the world goes to feed cattle, pigs and poultry. Meat based diet are also soaking up a huge amount of our fresh water resources as well. If more people would switch to plant or mostly plant based diets, we would could feed millions of more people and add lots of plant diversity. Read any of John Robbins great books for more information on this subject.
Of course, we also need make sure our plant diversity is protected by out lawing the patening of living things. Right now one of the biggest threats to plant diversity is Monsanto who is buying up diverse seeds and foisting their GMO seeds on hapless farmers around the world. For more information on this take a look at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=849146694200968214&hl=en
Mankind has been experiencing problems with agriculture since the time of the collapse of Sumer (apart from a few sustainable systems that have survived for millenia).
What’s happening in Brazil is the attempt to import cool temperate agriculture to a tropical region, and it will not work. The only result will be eroded landscape and the eventual creation of a desert.
As a permaculture designer, I am sometimes asked to help out in devastated regions - regions that have gone from sub-tropical to arid at the hands of agriculture, for example. We can and have built systems that build health soil (the basis for good agriculture and human health), rejuvenate water tables, drought-proof lands, and contribute to speciation as opposed to loss of biodiversity.
Despite land repair being relatively simple and easy, the process is an uphill battle due to lack of interest. There is definitely nothing in such work for Monsanto and other planet killers. They make their money off of the industrialisation of agriculture. But nature cannot be industrialised and attempts at doing so have a history of failure around the globe.
To end on an up note, even land that is seemingly beyond repair responds very quickly to good design that is in harmony with nature. For an example of a devastated site that was repaired, please see http://permaculturetokyo.blogspot.com/2006/12/jordan-kafrin-site-part-1.html (more articles are on the way regarding the project profiled).
Thanks Douglas Barnes for your post and link. Would you say that the problem is less over population than it is agricultural methodology?
Since knowing of Fairview Gardens and their claim to feed 500 families on 12 1/2 acres, I have had a recognition of the failure of industrial farming to be able to adequately address the world’s nutrition needs. In fact any agricultural solution that is industrial by design, seems to be much less effecient than traditional agriculture and especially permaculture types of design. That includes the super inhumane and environmentally destructive animal plants that produce milk, beef, ham, eggs, chicken, etc. They do so using chemicals that are extremely unhealthy as well as create an environment that is deadly to human life.
Ahh….Agribusiness, they have all the answers… for a fee.
They are working hard on things like “terminator seeds” and disposing of (making EXTINCT) strains of vegetables that have been handed down for hundreds if not thousands of years…..genetic material never to be available again. L
The idea that someone else has to grow your food is fairly new. Before television(1950’s) the majority of people grew the majority of there own food.
One day they’ll have us believing that we can’t wipe our own ass, and will have to hire someone to do that.
This is just taking more power away from the masses. The more they control of your basic needs, the more they can beat you down in wages, take away benefits,swing your vote and suck the life out of you.Water rights are being bought up, shelter costs are through the roof.
When I wanted to grow a garden in my teens, my Mother told me it was too hard, took lots of time, I would have to spray to keep bugs off and this and that wouldn’t grow in our climate. A couple years later she was eating unsprayed veggies, vine ripened watermelon, cantaloupe, tomatoes, opeppers etc.
I still have 125 pounds of potatoes, 40 lbs of onions, garlic, herbs etc, left from last years garden.
I used no diesel fuel, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides. No labor laws were broken and the birds are happy.
The answer is in your own back yard. Instead of mowing and dumping weed n feed, grub-x, etc. on it, how bout tilling it up and putting it to work for you? Consider it a tax free part time job with heath benefits. It really isnt much work at at all. The trick is to find a plot size right for you.
Do you know there are provisions in the Patriot Act to plow under backyard gardens if pests or disease is found? lol! what garden doesn’t have a few bugs or some disease? Course if we spray POISON all over the veggies then they will be happy. http://www.mofga.org http://www.nofa.org
Take the soil into your own hands.
we, all of us in the industrialised world, need to do a total shift about how we think about our food, where we get it from , what we pay for it, how it’s produced, who produces it and just exactly what is it? most westerners, especially Americans, are so far removed from any actual process involved with making food, even cooking it, that the idea of fecal matter as the best source of fertiliser available is beyond their grasp. so when some yahoo like john stoessel(sp?) goes on TV and says organic food is more dangerous than conventional because organic farmers use manure for fertilser but regular farmers use this nice clean synthetic petroleum based stuff, they buy it, hook,line and sinker. never mind the facts that the manure has been composted for months and broken down any harmful pathogens that may have one been present. and never mind the fact that that nice synthetic fertiliser is poison and kills the soil. and it’s really a very simple equation: you cannot grow healthy plants in unhealthy soil. healthy soil = healthy plants.
And can someone answer me a question? we call the farmers that use the synthetic fertilzers and use petro-chemical based pesticicides and plant Monsanto’s and Dow’s and Syngenta’s and Bayers’ and all the rest of the crooks frankencerops *conventional* agriculture. Ok,my question is WTFis conventional about dumping poisons all over the food I’m gonna put on my plate and feed to my family, much less splicing the genes of fish into tomatoes or some such thing? just what is conventional about that? and why do Americans just sit on their hands and not even demand labels that identify the food items that contain GMOs?