By Gretchen Knoth, M.A. Candidate, Global Human Development, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, and 2016 Next Generation Delegate
Food insecurity, defined as a lack of access to affordable, safe, and nutritious foods, affects 800 million people globally. The frustrating—but fundamentally reassuring—fact is that enough food is produced worldwide to feed those experiencing hunger and undernutrition. The major challenge we face today is not necessarily a matter of production but one of distribution: how to get food in the quantities needed to the places where it is needed most.
Food aid policies around the world are helping to contribute solutions to this challenge. Food for Peace, the emergency food assistance program managed by USAID, now has greater flexibility to distribute vouchers that can be used to buy food locally, saving time, money, and other resources that are critical in the midst of a crisis. China and other developing markets are also making investments in infrastructure a priority in their agricultural development plans in order to improve the flow of goods domestically and internationally.
However, removing barriers to the distribution and circulation of food is not the only challenge we face. Megacities and secondary cities, as described in Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ 2016 report Growing Food for Growing Cities: Transforming Food Systems in an Urbanizing World, are encroaching on arable land and pushing agricultural production to marginal, less productive soils. With the global population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, we will need a 50-60 percent increase in production in order to satisfy demand.
Climate change is adding even greater complexity to this challenge. The 2015-2016 El Niño system is one of the strongest on record, leading to more frequent and severe droughts in some regions with higher than average flooding and heavy rain in others. Given this new reality, we have to ask ourselves how we can increase production in a sustainable way that protects farmers from the impacts of changing weather patterns.
Some answers to this question have become far too polarized: too often, proponents of biotechnology and its associated practices (synthetic fertilizer and agrochemicals) sit in direct opposition to advocates for organic farming. However, this creates a false, and dangerous, binary. Scientific evidence demonstrates that GMOs increase yields by protecting crops from insects. Other varieties that are drought-resistant, saline, and flood tolerant are in development for commercial use. These technologies are absolutely critical to increasing the intensity and productivity of agricultural production without expanding the amount of land currently under cultivation.
Although there is robust evidence that organic farming systems reduce output per unit of land, organic farming provides many valuable and effective tools for improving soil quality and reducing runoff using natural methods. No-tillage farming, crop rotation, and intercropping are some examples. These approaches provide farmers with sustainable ways of increasing long-term productivity at little or no financial cost with great benefit to the environment.
Given the very real advantages (and disadvantages) to both modes of farming, it is time that both sides come together to address the constraints facing agriculture today if we want to feed the global population tomorrow.
Read previous posts in the Next Generation Delegation 2016 Commentary Series:
- Technological Transformation: A Way to Increase Food Availability around the World
- Institutional Support of Weather Index Insurance for Smallholder Integration
- Beyond the African Smallholder Productivity Gap
- Prudent Food Utilization Guarantees Sustainable Food Security in Light of Growing Urbanization
- Perspectives at the Global Food Security Symposium 2016
- Food Safety: An Opportunity Often Overlooked when Planning How to Feed Our Burgeoning Population
- Investing in Younger Generations Is Key to Solving World Hunger by 2050
- Made in _______: Distant Food Demand Lead to Local Water Issues
- Reevaluating the Agricultural Development Agenda
- Promoting Food Security While Avoiding the Nutrition Transition