Feeding the World in the Twenty-First Century
Acram Taji
The invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago heralded the dawn of civilisation. It began with rain-fed, hand-hoe agriculture which evolved into animal-powered, scratch-tools agriculture, and finally into an irrigated agriculture along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. For the first time this allowed humans to produce food surplus and permitted the establishment of permanent settlements and urban societies which, in turn, engendered culture, science and technology. The rise and fall of ancient civilisation in the Middle East and Meso-America were directly tied to agricultural success and failure.
During the past 50 years progress has been made in increasing the yield and production of various crops especially the cereal crops in many countries. Clearly, the research that underpinned this progress has produced huge returns. Yet, despite more than tripling the world food supply during the past 30 years, the 'green revolution' of the 1960s and 1970s has not solved the problem of chronic under-nutrition for millions of poverty stricken people around the world. Due to unemployment or under-employment, most of these people are unable to purchase the food they need, despite its abundance in world markets.
In 1999 global food production of all types stood at 4.74 billion metric tons of gross tonnage and 2.45 billion tons of edible dry matter. Of this total, 99% was produced on the land - only about 1% came from the ocean, lakes and rivers, even though 70% of the earth's surface is covered with water. Plant products constituted 93% of the human diet, with about 15 crop species providing most of the world's calories and protein with the following 7-9 crops [namely wheat, rice, maize, potato, sweet potato (or yam), sugar cane (or sugar beet) and soybean] accounting for 65% of the world food supply. Animal products, constituting 7% of the world's diet, also came indirectly from plants. Had the world's food supply been distributed evenly the present food production would have provided adequate diets for 6.8 billion people. However, if the people of the Third World countries attempted to obtain 30% of their calories from animal products (as we do here in Australia, NZ, USA, Canada or EEC countries) a world population of only 2.6 billion people could have been sustained with the present world's food supply, i.e. about half the present population on earth. Therefore, there seem to be two key problems of feeding the world's population.
The first problem is the task of producing sufficient quantities of the desired foods to satisfy needs of the population, and more importantly to do this in environmentally and economically sustainable manners. The second problem is to distribute food equitably. Poverty is the main
impediment to equitable food distribution, which is made more severe by rapid population growth as well as political unrest in areas where some of this population growth is occurring.
The population increase has been exponential in the past century or so (1 billion in 1830, 2 billion in 1930, 3 billion in 1960, 5.4 billion in 1990). From the present population of around 6.5 billion it is projected that the world population will reach 8.3 billion by 2020, before stabilising at around 11 billion towards the end of this century.
This increase in population, coupled with the reduction in agriculturally useable land per capita (0.3 ha per head in 1980 to 0.22 ha per head in 2000) will put further pressures on the available land. Requirements of the continually growing population for food and fibre must thus be satisfied by an increase in yield. To meet the projected food demand for this increasing population , the average yield of all cereals need to be increased by 80% between now and 2020.
Bearing in mind that there are natural limits to increased productivity and limits to how much environmental manipulations can improve productivity; one way to improve productivity is through the so-called area of 'gene technology' (biotechnology). Indeed, one major aim of biotechnology is to increase yield (biomass), whilst maintaining stable human ecosystems.
In modern biotechnology we aim to make a living cell perform a task in a predictable and controllable manner. This can be achieved through gene manipulation. Of course we have been involved in choosing desirable genes for centuries. We have done this by 'selective breeding' which has resulted in the Merino sheep breed, rust-resistant wheat, and bacteria and fungi which produce high levels of antibiotics. What began as a modern biotechnology bandwagon, some 15 or so years ago, has developed some invaluable new scientific methodologies and products.
So far the greatest impact of this technology has been in medicine and public health. However, there are a number of developments that are either approaching commercial applications in agriculture or have already been commercialised. In animal agriculture, we have bovine somatatropic (BST) now widely used to increase milk production.
Transgenic varieties and hybrids of cotton, maize and potatoes containing genes from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), which effectively control a number of serious insect pests, are now being successfully used commercially. The use of such varieties will greatly reduce the need for insecticides. Progress has also been made in the development of cotton, maize, canola, soybean, sugar beet and wheat, with tolerance to a number of herbicides. This can lead to a reduction in herbicide use by much more specific dosages and interventions.
Since most of the research in the area of biotechnology is being conductedby the private sector (e.g. Monsanto, Florigene, Calgene, ForBio etc. ) which patents its inventions, those concerned with agricultural policy must face up to a potentially serious problem since most of the population increase is occurring in poor rural areas of the developing world which are dependent on agriculture. The questions are: 'How would these people afford the products of biotechnology research? What will be the attitude of these multinational agribusiness companies towards this large section of humanity that still lives largely outside the commercial market economy?’ These issues go far beyond economics; it is also a matter of deep ethical consideration.
Basically, the issue is whether small-scale farmers of the Third World also have a right to share the benefits of biotechnology. If the answer is yes, then what is the role of international and national governments to ensure that this right is met?.
The other part of the problem is that science and technology are under growing attack in the affluent nations where environmentalists claim that the consumer is being poisoned out of existence by the current agricultural practices. Of course their views are not unfounded. We know that in late 19th and early 20th century we were poisoning ourselves through wasteful industrial production systems.
Over the past 20-30 years in the industrialised nations pressures by the environmental movement has led to legislation to improve air and water quality, protect wildlife, control the disposal of toxic waste, protect the soils, and reduce the loss of biodiversity. Certainly, we must be environmentally responsible in our efforts to produce even greater quantities of food to feed our ever increasing population and the only way forward is through responsible use of the new technology. We cannot turn back the clock and use technologies that were adequate for a much smaller world population. But we must ensure that the products of this technology will reach the poor nations and will not remain a luxury affordable only by affluent societies. If the dissemination of the fruit of this technology is not widespread humanity in this century will face more mass starvations and deaths than were experienced in previous centuries.
An abstract of an address to the UNE Academic Women's Association in 2001
Acram Taji is a Professor and Vice- Dean in the School of Rural Science and Agriculture at the University of New England.
Further reading:
Norman Borlaug.
Feeding a world of 10
billion people: the miracle ahead
Plant Tissue Culture and Biotechnology ,3:119-127 (1997)
Jim Peacock. Gene technology and our future life style. Chemistry in Australia: August 1999, pp. 17-22.
David Suzuki. The sacred balance. Published by Allen and Unwin 1997
Acram Taji.
Agriculture in an era of
biotechnology. Australian Rural Science 1998/1999 pp 20-23.
Acram Taji. Genetic Engineering in
Plants- State of the Art.
Australian Rural Science - pp 48-51, 1996/1997.