How to Deal with the Food Crisis
The title of this article in the Wall Street Journal is “‘Saudi Arabia of Milk’ [that’s New Zealand in case you hadn’t guessed] Hits Production Limit.”
Don’t let that fool you. It has some very interesting statistics on the relation between farm size, efficiency, and capital investment. In an atmosphere when even supposedly responsible organizations are suggesting that that answer to the world’s food problems lies with small farms and traditional agriculture, this well-researched and informative article is a welcome antidote.
Interesting article. I don’t take issue with the stats, but I do have some problems with how some of them are framed.
“ASHBURTON, New Zealand — As global food costs rise, triggering protests from Egypt to Indonesia, it’s clear the world needs more production.”
“But in a recent report, the World Bank argued that “sharply increased investment” in agriculture is needed to meet the world’s food needs, especially in places like sub-Saharan Africa, where it said food imports are expected to more than double by 2030 and agricultural productivity has lagged.”
“The World” producing more food doesn’t solve regional distribution problems. I don’t mean just physical distribution, I’m talking more about politics and economic disparities.
Another thing about the article that keeps nagging at me is the last line, “”How are we going to feed China?” he asked. “I honestly don’t believe we have the capital to do it.””
A dairy farmer in New Zealand worrying about feeding China. A bit comical, no?
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“Policy makers and social critics generally like it that way: Small farms keep rural communities alive and, especially in developing countries, provide needed jobs. But there are problems with small farms, when it comes to reacting quickly to a rise in food needs. They tend to be less productive than larger ones. And they often lack capital for the heavy investment in new productive capacity that many economists say now is needed.”
The argument here could easily be reversed, “larger farms do little to serve rural communities, they don’t provide enough jobs” etc..
I see this kind of either or arguing on both sides fairly often. Big ag versus small, organic farming.
And there are botanists and scientists using technology to complement rural, “traditional” farming methods in desertified regions. For example hydrogels within the context of drought resistant agriculture. Yes, one scientist involved in such projects tells me that he runs into resistance from policy makers who embrace “organic” as the solution with little understanding of a particular technology (or even what organic is).
I don’t know why that is, maybe because “organic” seems so simple and easy to understand.
Of course, we can have hours of fun discussing what “organic” means within the contexts of botany, agriculture, as a kind of commercial “brand” and so on.
Sometimes when I talk to people about this sort of thing, I get the impression that it’s more “organic has to be benign at least” rather than “organic is better”.
Whereas science and technology are harder for the average person to comprehend than something like “all natural” so there’s this kind of suspicion about it.
Ji Young,
Absolutely, this article does not talk about distribution of food. That’s a terribly important question, of course, but not one that the article tackles.
“A dairy farmer in New Zealand worrying about feeding China. A bit comical, no?”
Hmm. I’m not sure it’s so comical. I think the “we” in his sentence probably refers to “us, the world.” But more generally one of the things that has happened over the last century has been that food shortages and famines have become regarded as world problems.
At the time of the French Revolution you could have starving people twenty miles down the road and nobody cared partly because nobody could do anything about it. Transport was so bad the price of grain doubled about every ten or fifteen miles (unless there was a convenient river, sea or canal).
Now I don’t want to say that the world reaction to food shortage is perfect. It’s not. The distribution problems which we all know are as much political as economic have not been solved. Millions of people still go short. Furthermore the reaction of the advanced world is partly self-interested. They are more worried about food shortages in places where it might threaten their own interests. Or where there might be a chance for profit. That’s human nature.
But the fact remains that compared to a century or a couple of centuries ago we
(a) know about the geography of hunger
(b) believe it is a problem that demands a response that goes beyond the nation state
(c) often feel some degree of personal moral responsibility
(d) are groping our way to some solutions
So I agree. At first sight it seems comical.
It reminds me of a family in-joke. When my sister had a dinner party for her 21st birthday, one of the guests was a nice boy of about 17 who had just failed most of his “O” Levels (British national exams taken at 16). He was however at Eton and had absorbed the ethos of the school on whose playing fields the battle of Waterloo was famously won and empire embarked on. He turned to my uncle and as a conversational gambit said “What do you think we should do about the Chinese?” He’s picked the wrong topic. My uncle’s chief interests were gossip about starlets and politicians and horse racing. But the family still trots out the question when someone is being a bit presumptuous.
But on second sight, I’d say it was overall a good thing that New Zealand dairy farmers were thinking about the Chinese market.
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/2008/05/09/8-ways-to-fix-the-global-food-crisis.html?PageNr=1
“8 Ways to Fix the Global Food Crisis” is more in depth article about the “Food Crisis”.
Thanks for the link Ji Young. It’s on my breakfast reading list.
And your comments have brought home to me that I have to think carefully about what I call my posts. I never meant that the article about NZ dairy farming was THE answer to the food crisis. Just that I thought that on one issue it went beyond the usual facile remarks that get bandied about.
Hi Rachel
I didn’t have any issues with your post and I know that you didn’t mean to suggest it was THE answer. I just had a lot of problems with the way the journalist framed the stats.