The REAL Farm Crisis

1
The REAL Farm Crisis

• Feeding a World of 10 Billion People

2
The Green Revolution

• The reality of Romantic Agriculture A
  constant struggle to survive in terrible
  conditions of great ignorance and constant,
  grinding toil and poverty.
• Not until the middle of the 20th century have
  most humans been freed from the personal
  necessity of daily food procurement.

3
Our World Food SupplyTwo key problems

• To produce sufficient quantities of desired foods
  to satisfy needs and to do it in environmentally
  friendly and economically sustainable ways.
• To distribute food equitably

4
Our World Food Supply

• Global food production is about 4.7 billion
  metric tons, 99 from the land.
• Plants produced 93 of the human diet, mainly
  from about 30 species, including 8 species of
  grains that provide 66 of the worlds food
  supply.
• The 7 of food that is from animal products also
  comes, indirectly, from plants.

5
World Food Production
(million metric tonnes)
6
World Cereal Production 1961-1992 (million
metric tonnes)
1961
1992
7
World Cereal Production and Yield Requirements

• Actual 1990 cereal production was 1,970 mmt.
  Actual 2000 production, 1,840 mmt Total 2000
  world consumption 1,871 mmt.
• Projected demand 2025 is 4,000 mmt.
• All cereal yield currently about 2.5 to 2.9 (tons
  per hectare). Will need to nearly double (to 4.5
  t/ha) by 2025.

8
Raising Yields on Existing Agricultural Lands

• Much of increased food supply will have to come
  from existing cropland.
• In many areas, increases in the 50 to 100 range
  are still possible - India, Latin America, E.
  Europe, former USSR.
• In other areas increases will be much more
  difficult - USA, China, W. Europe.

9
World Cropland Used 1961-1992 (Thousand
Hectares)
1992
1961
10
Bringing New Lands into Production The
Remaining Frontiers

• No opportunity in Asia, Europe. In fact, in W.
  Asia approx. 50 million ac. are under cultivation
  that should not be.
• Sub Saharan Africa and South America are only
  places left, and these have severe problems to be
  addressed.
• Some marginal cropland in US, but cannot be
  farmed without environmental damage.

11
What Can We Expect From Biotechnology?

• Green Revolution resulted from accidental
  increases in maximum genetic yield potential.
• Recent yield increases not due to increases in
  genetic yield potential, but due to increased
  resistance to diseases and insects.
• Existing transgenic crops also increase yield by
  increased pest resistance.
• Increasing maximum genetic yield potential may
  be possible with GMOs.

12
What Can We Expect From Biotechnology?

• Is it safe? Its tested by 3 government
  agencies. It is probably safe within knowable
  limits, say thousands of scientists.
• Is it environmentally risky? No product is
  without risk, but existing gmvs should have no
  competitive advantage over any other plant in a
  non-commercial environment.
• Can we survive without it? In the US, yes. In
  Africa, no.

13
The Good Old Days They Were Terrible

• We were poisoning ourselves.
• Over the past 30 years, we owe a great debt of
  gratitude to the environmental movement in the
  industrialized nations.
• The protection of air and water quality, of
  wildlife, soils, control of hazardous waste is
  taken for granted.
• In almost every category, more progress has been
  made than most activists are willing to admit -
  apocalypse sells.

14
A Moment on the Earthby Gregg Easterbrook,
Penguin, 1996

• 1. Ecological impulses must be grounded in logic,
  not sentiment.
• 2. In the Western world, the age of pollution is
  nearly over.
• 3. The West must resist its instant doomsday
  thinking and shift to protecting the environment
  in the Third World.

15

• 4. People are superior to plants and animals in
  the natural order. It is absurd for
  environmental dogma to consider the human role in
  nature to be bad.
• 5. Nature is not ending, nor is human damage to
  the environment unprecedented.
• 6. Nature may have an upper limit on its
  potential to foster life.

16
Summary

• To produce the 1990 US harvest with 1940 yields
  would have required an additional 460 million
  acres of equivalent cropland.
• Technology exists or is under development to feed
  10 billion people in the World, if we are
  allowed to use it.
• World population is 6 billion now, will be 10
  billion in 2050.
• To feed the current population with organic
  farming requires about 2 billion people to
  volunteer to depart the earth.

17
World Cereal Production-Area Saved Through
Improved Technology, 1950-2000 (Billions of Acres)
CEREAL PRODUCTION 1949-51 680 million
tonnes 1995-97 2,025 million tonnes
Land Spared
Land Used
18
The Heidelberg Appeal1992 Earth Summit - Rio

• The greatest evils which stalk our Earth are
  ignorance and oppression, and not science,
  technology, and industry, whose instruments, when
  adequately managed, are indispensable tools of a
  future shaped by Humanity, by itself and for
  itself, in overcoming major problems like
  overpopulation, starvation, and worldwide
  diseases.

19
Agricultural scientists and policy makers have a
moral obligation to warn political, educational,
and religious leaders about the magnitude and
seriousness of the arable land, food, and
population problems that lie ahead. If we fail
to do so in a forthright manner, we will be
negligent in our duty and inadvertently will be
contributing to the pending chaos of incalculable
millions of deaths by starvation. The problem
will not vanish by itself, to continue to ignore
it will make a future solution more difficult to
achieve. Dr. Normal Borlaug, 1970 Nobel Peace
Prize winner, Father of the Green Revolution
The man responsible for saving the lives of more
people than any other person in the history
of the world.