Issues 69, December 2004,
Food Security

Editorial

When people in Australia and other developed countries talk about security they usually mean safety from terrorism, or financial security. However, for millions of people around the world food security is a much bigger threat than war, and a healthy bank account is an impossible dream.

Meryl Williams (p.4) says food security is when people “are not sure how they will meet their food needs because they cannot produce enough food themselves, or they do not have enough money to buy food, or the food they get does not nourish them enough”.

The different forms of insecurity are related. War is certainly a major contributor to lack of food security, while food security is one of the best protections against war and terrorism. As Tim Fischer says (p.6): “Fighting for food is perhaps the most understandable of all human instincts”. Fischer quotes Admiral Chris Barry: “History has shown us that better access to life’s essentials, basic infrastructure and political democracy diminishes the likelihood of inter- and intrastate conflict… The lesson is clear - we must be prepared to do more, rather than less, to maintain peace and security.”

There was a time when the main cause of hunger was  a failure to produce enough food. Whether because of drought, flood or disease, large regions would fail to grow the food they needed, and transport systems were not adequate to bring replacement meals in.

This has rarely been the problem in recent times. As far back as the Irish famines of the 1840s the world witnessed a country exporting food while a million of its people died of hunger. At the time Irish corn was exported to England under armed guard because the local population was too poor to pay for it, and when the local staple of potatoes was wiped out by a fungal disease there was nothing for the peasants to eat. In a pattern that has been repeated many times since, the problem was not a shortage of food but unequal distribution of wealth to pay for it.

Today many developing countries produce luxury food crops such as coffee, chocolate and mangoes for the rich world, often on land once farmed for local needs. But without these cash crops the nations cannot afford to pay for imports such as medicines, manufactured goods or infrastructure.

The challenge of feeding the 800 million people who currently don’t get enough food each day, or the hundreds of millions more whose supply is tenuous involves much more than simply increasing production. On the other hand, with the global population predicted to grow by around three billion over the next 50 years, increased production is certainly going to be necessary.

Sources of Food

As Professor Tim Reeves (p.7) notes, crops represent 70% of global food calories, and most of this is made up of just three species - any efforts in food security need to start with them. Adam Barclay (p.14) explains why rice is so important, with 2004 named the International Year of Rice. It is disturbing that many countries are cutting back on crop research at a time when progress in improving yields is slowing.

However, one of the clearest lessons of all famines is that to be food secure a population should rely on diverse sources of food. A narrow diet means that a single disease that wipes out the main food source can cause utter devastation. Even in good times over-reliance on one particular food usually leads to deficiencies in one nutrient or another.

Dr Ken Street (p.10) is seeking out rare varieties of wheat and barely in Central Asia. The more varieties the world has at its disposal, the better chance we will have of finding one that is resistant to a particular disease, grows well in certain conditions or has some other desirable trait.

Were it not for the discovery of a variety of dwarf wheat in Japan in 1946, starvation worldwide would be far greater than it is today. Crop scientists spent years trying to grow wheat that would produce more grains per plant in order to boost production. However, when the weight of the ears grew too high, a strong wind would cause the crop to fall over, ruining everything. The dwarf wheat’s greater strength, crossed with high-yielding varieties, caused the “Green Revolution” that enabled millions of people to feed themselves who could never have done so otherwise. Street’s work may turn up a similarly precious variety, but it needs to happen fast - many rare crops are being driven to extinction by landclearing, climate change or introduced species.

Dr John Vercoe (p.25) describes the role livestock can play in improving food security, noting: “An important difference between livestock and cropping farmers is that with crops, the income is derived once or twice a year when the crop is harvested but, with commodities like milk and eggs and to some extent chickens and pigs, the income can be derived at any time that the farmer wishes to sell”. Most ocean fisheries are badly depleted. Aquaculture is essential if fish are to keep their place in the global diet. “Current trends project a global shortfall of up to 80 million tonnes per annum in seafood supply within the next 30 years,” says Professor Robert Kearney (p.33).

However, Geoff Russell (p.29) argues that most of the time meat consumption is a contributor to food insecurity, not a defence against it. “From the point of view of world food production, any food suitable for humans that is fed to animals reduces the amount available for humans. You always put more food into the animal than you get out.” If people in the developed world want to help fight hunger, one of the best things they can do is eat less meat, particularly grain-fed cattle.

Water

No discussion about food security is complete without considering the role of water. Much of the world lacks drinking water that is free from diseases. This alone is a huge problem, but even where there is enough water to drink and cook with there is often not enough to grow crops. After all it takes 1000 litres to grow 1 kg of a cereal, and far more for 1 kg of meat, so much more water is needed to grow food than to drink.

Professor Frank Rijsberman discusses the different ways water scarcity is defined. This debate has major implications for how we address problems of water shortage. The traditional technique of building big dams has been widely criticised for drowning villages and good agricultural land, and depriving the environment of the water it needs both to flourish and to sustain our needs on it.

One solution to inadequate surface water is to tap groundwater supplies. The first problem with this is obvious - groundwater is a resource that only replenishes very slowly. If we use it up too fast we will find ourselves in an even worse situation in future. However, Bangladesh shows there are other problems as well (p.41). Small impurities in groundwater from certain areas can accumulate into poisonous dosages over time, leading to an epidemic of disease.

One of the hottest controversies when it comes to food is the issue of genetic modification (GM). Mark Tester (p.15) argues: “New GM also provides opportunities to alter the composition of food in order to increase its nutritive value, such as the increase in mineral and vitamin content of grain achieved in ‘golden rice’. Increases in food production are also possible as a result of improvements in overall plant qualities (e.g. dwarfing rice) and by increased tolerance to biotic stresses (pests and diseases) and abiotic stresses (e.g. low temperature, drought, salinity).”

However, Bob Phelps (p.18) claims that “GM crops cannot solve world hunger. Those currently grown commercially - soy, corn, canola and cotton - are usually less productive than conventional crops”.

The crop varieties that are useful to rich farmers and agribusinesses are not always the same as those that small family farmers need. Some varieties are suited to being grown with expensive chemicals and large machinery. Others respond better to plenty of labour. A crop that is only useable by the richest farmers will actually expand the wealth gap, potentially leading to more food insecurity, not less. The research that Tester is conducting on genetically modified crops is designed to benefit farmers on degraded land - often those closest to hunger. This is very unusual - most GM research is for profit and designed to suit the farmers in the best position to pay, not those with the greatest need.

Looking to the Future

As if the challenges of feeding a growing population are not enough, farmers are increasingly dealing with the effects of climate change. John Zilman (p.42) writes: “If we look around the world over the past century, and especially at the food situation in the developing countries, we find that most of the worst famines and the most widespread death from starvation have been directly caused, or severely exacerbated by, failure of the monsoon or of the ‘normal’ seasonal rains, sometimes coupled with other extreme climatic events such as heatwaves and bushfires”. As temperatures rise, rainfall patterns will change, often leading to more extreme events. Hard as it is to abolish hunger now, it will get harder the longer we wait.

However, if all this is making you depressed I recommend you read Rick Coleman’s article on permaculture in the developing world (p.45) Coleman demonstrates that innovative, small-scale solutions are often possible in ways that boost food production, provide valuable crops for trade, improve sustainability and provide a more diverse diet. Global food security is possible - we just need to find the right solutions.

I’d like to thank Cathy Reade of the Crawford Fund for her assistance in finding many of the authors for this edition. The Crawford Fund works to address most of the issues discussed in this edition. More information is at www.crawfordfund.org

Stephen Luntz
Editor