Agriculture Future Trends & Food Security
The Future of Agriculture is Localization

This page is in my website to create awareness about the need for a new way of thinking about the future of food.  There are today and will be ever increasing opportunities in the future for small scale locally produced agriculture.  To see what we are doing personally about this opportunity, visit Neal Creek Farm.

Most people in the world rely on some form of grain as their primary food source.  In the USA, Canada and other developed economies, grain is used primarily as livestock feed.  We literally eat high on the hog.

Modern day American agriculture is extremely dependent on petroleum for motive power for equipment, chemical herbicides and pesticides, nitrogen fertilizer made mostly from natural gas, and fuels for transporting food over long distances mostly by truck and airplane.  The average meal travels over 1,500 miles to get to the dinner table.  We are consuming nearly 10 calories of fossil fuels to produce 1 calorie of food.  This is not sustainable.

We are at or very near (some say we have already passed) peak oil production.  The price of oil will continue to rise due to increasing demand for energy to fuel emerging economies like China and India, the two most populated countries in the world.  If world population continues to increase at the rate of 70 million people a year, the future of agriculture is clear.  Population and energy trends are in direct opposition to food security.

Background:  From Lester Brown's book Outgrowing the Earth

From 1950 to 1984 world grain production expanded faster than population, raising the grain produced per person from 550 pounds (250 kilograms) to the historical peak of 750 pounds (339 kilograms), an increase of 34 percent. This positive development initially reflected recovery from the disruption of World War II, and then later solid technological advances. The rising tide of food production lifted all ships, largely eradicating hunger in some countries and substantially reducing it in many others.

Since 1984, grain harvest growth has fallen behind that of population, dropping the amount of grain produced per person to 670 pounds (308 kilograms) in 2004, down 9 percent from its historic high point. Fortunately, part of the global decline was offset by the increasing efficiency with which feed grains are converted into animal protein, thanks to the growing use of soybean meal as a protein supplement.

Several long-standing environmental trends are contributing to the global loss of agricultural momentum. Among these are the cumulative effects of soil erosion on land productivity, the loss of cropland to desertification, and the accelerating conversion of cropland to non-farm uses. All are taking a toll, although their relative roles vary among countries.

Now two newer environmental trends—falling water tables and rising temperatures—are slowing the growth in world food production. In addition, farmers are faced with a shrinking backlog of unused technology. The high-yielding varieties of wheat, rice, and corn that were developed a generation or so ago are now widely used in industrial and developing countries alike. They doubled and tripled yields, but there have not been any dramatic advances in the genetic yield potential of grains since then.

The use of fertilizer, which removed nutrient constraints and helped the new high-yielding varieties realize their full genetic potential during the last half-century, has now plateaued or even declined slightly in key food-producing countries. Among these are the United States, countries in Western Europe, Japan, and now possibly China as well. Meanwhile, the rapid growth in irrigation that characterized much of the last half-century has also slowed. Indeed, in some countries the irrigated area is shrinking.

The bottom line is that it is now more difficult for farmers to keep up with the growing demand for grain. The rise in world grain land productivity, which averaged over 2 percent a year from 1950 to 1990, fell to scarcely 1 percent a year from 1990 to 2000. This will likely drop further in the years immediately ahead.

If the rise in land productivity continues to slow and if population continues to grow by 70 million or more per year, governments may begin to define national security in terms of food shortages, rising food prices, and the emerging politics of scarcity.

The Future of Agriculture is Localization:  by Ron Castle

Food crops other than grain face the same future challenges that Lester describes above.

Since 1950, American corporate agribusiness has consolidated food supplies into a relatively small number of companies.  This consolidation was made possible by cheap energy which has also resulted in relatively cheap food prices.  We use more energy per capita than any other country in the world.

Corporate agribusiness has resulted in the major demise of the family farm and the loss of local food supplies.  Long distance transportation has replaced local food resources in many areas.  The days of cheap energy are fading quickly.  The rise in oil prices will directly impact both food prices and eventually the reliability of supply.

Local agriculture for local markets is the trend of the future, which is history repeating itself.

I have collected old books on farming for almost 30 years.  On my shelf is a book written in 1864 titled "Ten Acres Enough: A Practical Experience" published by James Miller, Bookseller, Publisher and Importer, 522 Broadway, New York.  The author, who decided to remain anonymous to avoid people pestering him (his words), sold his small manufacturing business in Philadelphia in 1855 and moved his family to an 11 acre farm in central New Jersey.  He paid $1,000 for the land and house, over the course of three years invested $1,970.86 in inputs and sold $4,658.94 in farm products while feeding his family of five from the production of the farm.  He raised strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, peaches, early cabbages and other produce and sold his crops to the fresh markets in New York City and Philadelphia which were supplied overnight by train.  Now we know why New Jersey is named the Garden State?  He also sold berry plants to his neighbors, a significant source of income.  He used no fossil fuels, herbicides or pesticides.  He fertilized his soil with composed leaves, wood ashes, plaster (a source of lime) and manure.  A typical wage at the time was about $12 a month and perhaps three times that for a factory manager.  An average income over three years of $896.02 was well above average. 

I use this example because most people have no idea about agriculture before fossil fuels or how the large cities of that time got their food.  The produce from the Ten Acres Enough farm was hauled by a horse drawn wagon to the train station in the late afternoon and was delivered by rail overnight to the markets.  Compare that to California tomatoes that have been picked green, stored for months in refrigerated warehouses, loaded into trailers, ethylene (a hydrocarbon) gassed to make them turn red and trucked 1,500 miles to your grocery store.  And we wonder why they taste like cardboard?

Affordable food of the future will be locally produced and locally consumed.  Small scale agriculture will be profitable again.  And, food will be more seasonal in nature, as it still is to a large degree in current day Italy.  Organic agriculture will be the rule rather than the exception.  Weed control, water conservation, soil moisture retention and ways to increase agricultural productivity without petroleum and natural gas will be increasingly important.