Jules Pretty: We want a kind of agriculture that’s productive. We need it, there are a billion people hungry in the world today. But, at the same time, we’re running out of planet, and we can’t afford to be damaging the environmental resources that agriculture largely relies upon.
Jules Pretty is an agricultural expert at the University of Essex in the United Kingdom. He’s an author of a late 2009 Royal Society report on the science of global agriculture.
Jules Pretty: What we’re saying is, look at the system first of all, and see how you can manipulate it. If you can get spiders and beetles to eat all your pests, then great. Do that first. If you can’t, then you might have to use a pesticide.
He illustrated the point, with an example from East Africa.
Jules Pretty: Scientists working on the chemical signals that plants give off realized that if you had the right kind of grasses next to your maize fields, those grasses repelled the pests that would normally come to eat your maize. So if you have a mixed system, and design it very carefully, you don’t need to use any pesticides to kill the pests. That’s a way of getting productive agricultural systems without having to cause harm to the environment, but you really need top science because you need to understand the relationships.
Pretty believes this approach, if used globally, would cut down on farming’s environmental impacts and increase food production. He added that global food production will have to increase by 50 – 100% in the next 30 to 40 years, in order to feed Earth’s growing population.
Dr. Pretty calls this new approach to farming “agroecology.”
Jules Pretty: Ecology is all about interactions between aspects of natural systems. So agroecology is all about linkages between different parts of the farm. It’s the relationships of predation, relationships between insects and plants, plants and their environment. We’re saying, if you look at all of those things together, there are ways that we can manipulate and change those to lead to better outcomes for farmers.
He said that agroecology is not the same as organic farming, because organic farming is bound by certain legal restrictions. It also requires expensive certification.
Jules Pretty: Organic farming follows certain rules that have been established. Agroecology says if you are going to use fertilizers, use them carefully. Let’s augment natural processes of biological control, and not destroy and undermine them.
Pretty said that investments in agriculture have been dwindling over the past 20 years, and increased investments will be necessary in order to achieve food security for a population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.
Dear Jules Pretty,
Thanks for your comments. Perhaps much of the world in which we live has gone utterly mad. Whatsoever is politically correct, economically expedient, socially convenient and culturally prescribed appears to be automatically espoused loudly as “the truth”. Ideological idiocy prevails over science. Greed rules this world. Intellectual honesty, personal accountability, moral courage and doing the right thing are rarely expressed.
As a consequence, the human community appears to be inadvertently making a colossal mess of our planetary home, Earth. Everyone can see what is happening but few people are willing to speak out about what they can observe occurring around us. Billions of people are recklessly engaged in per-capita overconsumption and scandalous hoarding of resources; in megabillion-dollar pyramid schemes and unsustainable large-scale industrial enterprises; and in overpopulating the planet.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. What happens if it turns out that human population dynamics are common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species? What does that mean? From my humble inexpert perspective, it means increasing production of food the world over equals increasing numbers of human organisms worldwide; less available food for consumption equals less humans; and no food equals no people. Just that simple.
Jules, imagine our failure to acknowledge that human population dynamics is essentially similar to the population dynamics of other species as the greatest misperception in human history because this failure could eventually result in a global ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort. In such circumstances would experts not have a duty to science and humanity that would lead them to correct so vital a mistaken impression of what could somehow be real? It appears to me that many too many experts have willfully rejected the best available science of human population dynamics by ignoring certain evidence and chosen to let stand, as if scientific, preternatural thinking based upon specious understandings derived from inadequate ‘scientific’ investigations.
Extant research of human population dynamics appears to directly contradict the near-universal misconception that humanity needs to increase in a seemingly endless way global food harvests in order to meet the needs of a growing population. The best available research indicates just the opposite: that, just like other species, the size and availability of the human food supply is the independent variable upon which the global human population depends for existence.
Please note, too, that this relationship cannot be conveniently passed over as a “chicken and egg” situation. That appears to be one of the ways many people have found to miss the point of the science. Because an adequate enough understanding of the relationship between food supply and its effect on human numbers could have profound implications for the future of life as we know it on Earth, perhaps this relationship could be made the subject of authentic communication.
Thanks again to you, Deborah Byrd, Beverly Spicer, Bruce McClure and the EarthSky community for speaking out.
Sincerely,
Steve Salmony
Great article…although two additional points could be mentioned: 1) Instead of just accepting that the population will be 9,000,000,000 by 2050, we could actively encourage people to lower the birth rate. 2) Since the food intake of cows and other food animals has results other than meat (i.e. feces, body heat, etc.) obviously it takes more than 1kg of grain to produce 1kg of meat. It’s actually more like 27lbs of grain, in the case of beef. Therefore encouraging people to eat more vegetarian meals will reduce the amount of farmland necessary to feed each person.
Dear Jon and Jules Pretty,
Of course, there are many humane ways to incentivize people to have fewer children and lower the fertility rate.
Perhaps I am mistaken but it appears the human community is currently saddled with a widely shared, consensually validated and pernicious misperception: that food production must be endlessly increased to feed a growing population. Where are the experts who are reporting that this misconception could be a product of preternatural thought and pseudo-scientific investigation borne mainly of political convenience and economic expedience? Have these experts not noticed that peer-reviewed articles are extant that directly contradict these prevailing mistaken impressions regarding human population dynamics. This is a tragedy in the making. How are people to respond ably to the human-driven threats before humanity if the best available science regarding human population dynamics is rejected?
From my humble inexpert perspective, the best available science of human population dynamics has been and continues to be willfully ignored by most experts. I would like to make an appeal to the Earth&Sky community now. It is not anything new. The entire point of the AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population during the past decade of denial has been to encourage open discussion of the best research on the population dynamics of the human species, population dynamics that have led us to be overpopulating the Earth in a dangerous way. Please, someone with expertise or a group of experts, please comment on the research by David Pimentel and Russell Hopfenberg which indicates with remarkable simplicity and clarity that human population numbers could be a function of food supply; that food supply is the independent variable and absolute population numbers of the human species is the dependent variable; that the population dynamics of the human species is essentially similar to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species.
Sincerely,
Steve
The facts of human nature are that when you bring people into the modern age, the birth rate goes down…aside from learning about birth control, the perception that “if you want to eat in your old age, you’d better raise a large bunch of kids who can support you” fades away when your modernized agricultural methods lower the real cost of food in terms of calories produced per labor hour and per acre…
The populations of many European countries are collapsing…same for Japan…same can be expected in China, particularly as there are about 30 million males who will not be able to find wives to have families…I do not buy the 9 billion person planet theory…Overpopulation is a bugaboo that has been shown to be false. Look at the advanced countries…if you want population control, bring civilization to the underdeveloped world…starting with modern agriculture and medicine, sanitation, commerce.
Dear Doug,
Do you or anyone else in the Earth&Sky community think there is any chance at all that Paul Ehrlich, despite his poor showing as prognosticator and gambler, will be shown to be one of the greatest scientists of all time?
After all Paul Ehrlich is the forerunner for recent research by Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel that appears to indicate with remarkable simplicity that human population dynamics are essentially similar to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species.
Since many too many population experts remain silent about this research and blogmeisters associated with the mass media refuse to discuss the peer-reviewed evidence, perhaps you could take a look at it, make your comments, and encourage by your example others to do the same. You can find the article, Human Population Numbers as a Function of Food Supply, by Hopfenberg and Pimentel on the worldwide web or at the links below.
Thank you,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://www.panearth.org/
http://sustainabilityscience.org…
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Great, important article by Lindsay Patterson. I guess I’m sort of practicing agroecology in my yard. I do companion planting in square-foot-gardens, minimizing the space needed as well as pesticide use. I live in a very modest income neighborhood and since I live alone, I share my harvests with my neighbors. This year, I even asked what they wanted me to add to the gardens. Agroecology is smart gardening, or in Dr. Pretty’s much larger context, smart food production.
I’m a little confused by Steve Salmony’s missives. Is he advocating for decreased food production in order to eliminate the potential over-population problem? That’s just crazy. Population growth has been a concern of mine for the past thrity years but I’m a bit nerdy and think about these things.
I agree with Doug to a degree, however, modernizing societies isn’t the whole answer. Giving women opportunities outside of the home is important. In societies where women work, there is a reduction in population growth. However, I think of my very modern Catholic rheumatologist who has seven children. There are cultural and spiritual complications when it comes to population control. To me, population growth has always been an obvious problem. But the majority of everyday people just don’t think about it and don’t care about it. How do you get people to think about it and care about it? (Certainly not by starving them.)
Fantastic article. Thank you.
Excellent and informative article. Thanks!
Dear Sheryl in Alabama,
We have a food distribution problem not a food production problem.
No amount of rationalization or excuse will pass muster when the issue is the conscious denial of science.
The abject failure of every major legitimate scientific group to respond to the exceptionally strong evidence of human population dynamics and human overpopulation of the Earth from Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel is simply inexcusable. All have been effectively ignoring research from outstanding scientists who have devoted their lives to actually observing data and trying to interpret it in an intellectually honest manner.
The willful avoidance of the open discussion of science, especially the scientific research of human population dynamics, is as unconscionable as it is destructive. Experts who have remained silent need to be stood up to and directed to assume their responsibilities to science and their duties to humanity. Is there a reasonable justification for elective mutism in response to carefully collected and honestly analyzed data?
The tasks at hand for scientists are to freely acknowledge, critique and interpret evidence, I suppose, and to encourage that evidence to be examined from different viewpoints. It is irresponsible and pernicious for scientists to remain silent because they are slowing the development of momentum for necessary change in population policy and programming, I believe.
Thank you , I love to read about other vegetarians as it gives me the strength to continue. I have about a thousand vegetarian feeds in my google reader, but another can’t hurt!! I did manage to find a good lentil recipe here, but I’ll be sure to try yours too. Thanks!
Modern agriculture is the reason we can feed folks. If we try to go back t othe methods of 1900, folks will starve. The answers lie in individuals owning and controling property and the market pressures regulating crop planting. Free business and trade are the answers.
Dear Sheryl in Alabama, Benjamin Napier and Jules Pretty,
How on Earth are we going to adequately feed the hungry and starving, and simultaneously not keep ‘feeding the problem’ of human overpopulation?
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/frostovertheworld/2011/02/2011259341259393.html
How is it possible for so many top rank experts of great stature to be adamantly advocating for more “food production to feed a growing population” and yet be failing to mention the profound implications of skyrocketing absolute global population numbers on Earth? For such a thing to be occurring in 2011 appears preposterous. It is morally outrageous and dangerous both to future human well being and environmental health, I believe, for well established experts to be reporting ubiquitously in high-level discussions such things as are directly contradicted by unchallenged scientific research of human population dynamics and human overpopulation. Is it possible that so-called, self-proclaimed experts are not aware of peer-reviewed, published research in their area of expertise that indicates the food supply is the independent (not dependent) variable and human population numbers is the dependent (not independent) variable with regard to the relationship between human population numbers and food supply? It appears that many too many experts are collectively reporting specious theory and data regarding the human population that cannot be supported by the best available scientific evidence, I believe.
The food supply is the independent variable not the dependent variable. Human population numbers is the dependent variable not the independent variable. The believers in demographic transition theory and in the idea that “we must increase food production to feed a growing population” are simply mistaken. The false promise of Demographic Transition Theory, that population stabilization will somehow occur benignly and automatically a mere four decades from now, as well as the upside down thinking that human population numbers is the independent variable and food supply is the dependent variable, are at least two of the crucial and deliberate misunderstandings that are being deployed to direct the human community down a patently unsustainable “primrose path” no human being with feet of clay would ever choose to go.
The uncontested scientific finding of the relationship between food supply and human population numbers is being obscured and denied by the very experts upon whom the human community relies for guidance and direction. Conscious obsfucation and willful denial by ‘the brightest and best’ of the scientific finding regarding the relationship between food supply and human population numbers has been occurring pervasively for way too long a time. This incredible failure of nerve by ‘the smartest guys in the room’ in my not-so-great generation has got to be acknowledged, addressed and overcome.
The children’s future is being stolen by thieves of the highest order. And what is the communal response? A code of silence! Are people going to choose yet again to be bystanders at a moment when bold action, intellectual honesty and moral courage are required? Willful blindness, hysterical deafness, elective mutism and utter passivity cannot continue. The children will soon enough express their anger and disbelief at what the elders in my not-so-great generation have either failed to do or else done poorly “on our watch”, while wealthy and powerful crooks in high places robbed those among us who are still young of a good enough future.
How on Earth are we going to adequately feed the hungry and starving, and simultaneously not keep ‘feeding the problem’ of human overpopulation? This is the question no one is asking, the one that needs to be asked.
Please speak out loudly and clearly….
Sincerely,
Steve