Tubes with holes

The world was brought up short in 2008 by soaring food prices on international markets. Food riots brought a spectre of a hungry world. That was with 6 billion. As world population is expected to reach 9 or 10 billion later this century, what will the picture be like? Fred Pearce is sure that population need not be a problem but a blessing. ‘Rising populations may bring more mouths to feed, but they also bring more hands to work and brains to think. We are not done yet.’

We are damaging water and soils. We use more than half of the world’s river flows each year, mostly to irrigate crops. We are recklessly mining irreplaceable underground water reserves. And now comes the threat of climate change.

But is it that we cannot grow enough, or that we are not growing crops right? The next agricultural revolution needs to get local, Pearce believes. It needs to help these poor farming communities find ways to manage their own soils better by using livestock to fertilize soils, conserving rainwater in case of drought, breeding and exchanging local crop varieties, and finding natural predators for troublesome pests. ‘Conservation farming has vast potential to protect soils. And simple drip irrigation systems could halve global water use by farmers. It’s not rocket science. It’s just tubes with holes in.’

In Africa, one ton of grain is what a hectare yields, Asians grow three tons and Europeans and North Americans upwards of five tons. Futurologist Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University in New York says that “if during the next 50 years or so, the world’s farmers reached the average yield of today’s U.S. corn grower, ten billion could be fed with only half of today’s cropland, while they eat today’s U.S. calories.” A bit exaggerated perhaps, but with some truth.

In West Africa, Dutch geographer Chris Reij has charted a revival since the famines of the 1970s. He says it is labor-intensive management of the land that often holds the key. “The idea that population pressure inevitably leads to increased land degradation is a much repeated myth,” he says. “It does not. Innovation is common in regions where there is high population pressure. This is not surprising. Farmers have to adapt to survive.”

Innovate to survive. Innovate the way we grow food. Innovate the way we produce and use energy. Innovate the way we use water. Even if it simply means tubes with holes!