Environmental Science

LESSON 17. Food Resources

• Global food production would not meet the food requirements of the world’s estimated 7.8 billion people by 2020.

• Food prices are expected to jump by 20% in the next ten years as prolonged droughts and floods take their toll on food production.

• The report, which looked at the impact of climate change on four cereals - wheat,`rice, maize and soybean - pointed out that

•  global wheat production will experience a 14 percent deficit between production and demand

•  Rice production will experience 11 percent deficit, and

•  percent deficit in maize production.

•  Soybean is the only crop showing an increase in global production, with an estimated five percent surplus.

• Current wheat production is estimated to decline to 663 million tons by 2020 yet772.3 million tons is the estimated need at that time, creating a gap of 109 million tons.

• Rice is estimated to grow to 692.1 million tons by 2020 yet demand at that time is estimated at 775.1 million –creating a shortage of 82.9 million tons.

• Maize production stands at 826.2 million tons and is estimated to grow to 849.1 million tons by 2020 yet demand at that time is estimated at 933.7 million ton, creating a shortage of 85 million tons.

 WORLD FOOD PROBLEMS AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS:

1) Population growth: Food production in 64 of the 105 developing countries is lagging behind their population growth levels.

2) Poor agricultural practices: Poor environmental agricultural practices such as slash and burn, shifting cultivation, or ‘rab’ (wood ash) cultivation degrade forests.

3) Degradation of agricultural lands: Globally 5 to 7 million hectares of farmland is degraded each year. Loss of nutrients and overuse of agricultural chemicals are major factors in land degradation. Water scarcity is an important aspect of poor agricultural outputs. Salinization and water logging has affected a large amount of agricultural land worldwide.

4) Our fertile soils are being exploited faster than they can recuperate.

5) Forests, grasslands and wetlands have been converted to agricultural use, which has led to serious ecological questions.

6) Use of genetically modified seed variety, without minding the conducive environment for such experimentation, will seriously affect the land ecosystem.

7) Our fish resources, both marine and inland, show evidence of exhaustion.

8) There are great disparities in the availability of nutritious food. Some communities such as tribal people still face serious food problems leading to malnutrition especially among women and children.

9) Loss of Genetic Diversity: Modern agricultural practices have resulted in a serious loss of genetic variability of crops. India’s distinctive traditional varieties of rice alone are said to have numbered between 30 and 50 thousand. Most of these have been lost to the farmer during the last few decades as multinational seed companies push a few commercial types. This creates a risk to our food security, as farmers can loose all their produce due to a rapidly spreading disease. A cereal that has multiple varieties growing in different locations does not permit the rapid spread of a disease.

Food security: It is the ability of all people at all times to access enough food for an active and healthy life. It is estimated that 18 million people worldwide, most of whom are children, die each year due to starvation or malnutrition, and many others suffer a variety of dietary deficiencies. The earth can only supply a limited amount of food. If the world’s carrying capacity to produce food cannot meet the needs of a growing population, anarchy and conflict will follow.

The following 3 conditions must be fulfilled to ensure food security

- Food must be available

- Each person must have access to it.

- The food utilized must fulfill nutritional requirements

Options To Achieve Food Security

Food security is closely linked with population control through the family welfare program. It is also linked to the availability of water for farming. Food security is only possible if food is equitably distributed to all. Many of us waste a large amount of food carelessly. This eventually places great stress on our environmental resources.

1) Institutional support for small farmers: A major concern is the support needed for small farmers so that they remain farmers rather than shifting to urban centers as unskilled industrial workers.

2) Trade related issues: International trade policies in regard to an improved flow of food across national borders from those who have surplus to those who have a deficit in the developing world is another issue that is a concern for planners who deal with International trade concerns. ‘Dumping’ of under priced foodstuffs produced in the developed world, onto markets in undeveloped countries undermines prices and forces farmers there to adopt unsustainable practices to compete.

3) Protecting genetic diversity: The most economical way to prevent loss of genetic diversity is by expanding the network and coverage of our Protected Areas. Collections in germplasm, seed banks and tissue culture facilities, are other possible ways to prevent extinction but are extremely expensive. The most effective method to introduce desirable traits into crops is by using characteristics found in the wild relatives of crop plants. As the wilderness shrinks, these varieties are rapidly disappearing. Once they are lost, their desirable characteristics cannot be introduced when found necessary in future.

4) Ensuring long-term food security may depend on conserving wild relatives of crop plants in National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries. If plant genetic losses worldwide are not slowed down, some estimates show that as many as 60,000 plant species, which accounts for 25% of the world’s total, will be lost by the year 2025. Scientists now believe that the world will soon need a second green revolution to meet our future demands of food based on a new ethic of land and water management that must be based on values which include environmental sensitivity, equity, biodiversity conservation of cultivars and in-situ preservation of wild relatives of crop plants.

5) Environmental friendly farming methods: Shift from chemical agriculture to organic farming, practicing integrated nutrient management (INM), integrated pest management (IPM).

6) Several crops can be grown in urban settings, including vegetables and fruit which can be grown on waste household water and fertilizers from vermi-composting pits.

7) Prevention of water and land degradation: Pollution of water sources, land degradation and desertification must be rapidly reversed. Adopting soil conservation measures, using appropriate farming techniques, especially on hill slopes, enhancing the soil with organic matter, crop rotation and managing watersheds at the micro level are a key to agricultural production to meet future needs.

8) Population control: Most importantly food supply is closely linked to the effectiveness of population control programs worldwide.

9) Education: Educating women about nutrition, who are more closely involved with feeding the family, is an important aspect of supporting the food needs/security of many developing countries.

10) Changing food habits : Today the world is seeing a changing trend in dietary habits. As living standards are improving, people are eating more non-vegetarian food. As people change from eating grain to meat, the world’s demand for feed for livestock based on agriculture increases as well. This uses more land and water  per unit of food produced and the result is that the world’s poor do not get enough to eat.

11) Women play an extremely vital role in food production as well as cooking the meal and feeding children. In most rural communities they have the least exposure to technical training and to health workers trained in teaching/learning on issues related to nutritional aspects. Women and girls frequently receive less food than the men. These disparities need to be corrected.

12) Alternate Food Source: Food can be innovatively produced if we break out of the current agricultural patterns.

This includes

- Working on new avenues to produce food, such as using forests for their

multiple non-wood forest products such as fruit, mushrooms, sap, etc. which can be used for food if harvested sustainably. Of course, this takes time, as people must develop a taste for these new foods.

- Using unfamiliar crops such as Nagli, which are grown on poor soil on hill

slopes is another option. This crop grown in the Western Ghats now has no market and is thus rarely grown. Only local people use this nutritious crop themselves. It is thus not as extensively cultivated as in the past. Popularising this crop could add to food availability from marginal lands. (snake gourd in Italy)

- Several foods can be popularized from yet unused seafood products such as seaweed

as long as this is done at sustainable levels. We must not only provide food for all, but also work out more equitable distribution of both food and water, reduce agricultural dependence on the use of fertilizers and pesticides (which have long term ill effects on human wellbeing) and provide an increasing support for preserving wild relatives of crop plants in Protected Areas.

World Food Day – October 16th

Case study - The Aral Sea Tragedy

The Aral sea, covering an area the size of Lithuania, started receding in the 1960s

after Soviet state planners diverted its water sources, the Amu Dar ya and the Syr Dar’

ya rivers, to irrigate cotton on other crop. From 1960 to 1990, the area of irrigated land

in central Asia increased from 3.5 million hectares to 7.5 millino ha. Cotton production

soared, making the region the world’s fourth largest producer. But by 1980s the annual

flow of fresh water into the Aral was barely one-tenth of the 1950 supply. The salinity

level increased, destroying the sea’s flora and fauna. The change in water chemistry

wiped out huge populations of fish. The decline of the fish populations in turn, wiped out

the commercial fishing industry on the lake. Today, fishing boats sit in the desert many

kilometers from the water’s edge. The lakebed sediments that are now exposed on the

desert floor become airborne quite easily, contributing to large dust storms in the region.

In 1989, Aral sea was divided into a smaller northern sea and a large southern one.

Drinking water in the region contains four times more salt per liter than

recommended by the world health organization. This has caused increases in kidney

disease, diarrhea and other serious ailments. Tuberculosis has reached epidemic

proportions. Cancers, lung diseases and infant mortality are 30 times higher than they

used to be because the drinking water is heavily polluted with salt, cotton fertilizers and

pesticides.

When the former sovient Union diverted the Ama Dariya and the Syr Dariya (the rivers which fed the Aral Sea) to grow cotton in the desert, they created an ecological and human disaster. What was the fourth biggest inland sea is now mostly desert. All of this was done in the name of cotton (grow where it would not grow naturally).

The worsening health and environmental problems of people living the Aral Sea

basin, which consists of part of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, are the direct consequences of man-made environmental disaster in the region. The children of Muynak have made a playground out of the wrecks of ships, which might have provided food and a future for them.

Experts say the disaster has left behind a 36 000 km2 area of seabed covered with accumulated salts, which the wind carries away and deposits over thousand of squares kilometers of cultivated land. Pesticides and fertilizers have also found their way into water and irrigation channels, poisoning food and drinking water affecting the lives of about five million people.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, international donor agencies rushed to the central Asian region to asses the environmental impact of the shrinking of the Aral Sea and to find ways of restoring it to its original level. Now, almost a decade later, after countless studies and reports have been written, experts say that restoration is impossible and efforts should now focus on avoiding a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Aral Sea is not an example of a success in water resource management. In

fact, it is a classic example of what can happen if we don’t start to take action before a crisis begins. Still, the Aral Sea is very instructive sustainability case study, as it demonstrates how few environmental problems are not international in scope. The world is getting increasingly smaller and the problems require multinational solutions.(Benny Joseph, 2006)