food | ukwatch.net

GM won't yield a harvest for the world

Tim Holmes — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 14:12:42 +0000

The biotechnology industry has never been shy of making outlandish claims on behalf of its products. Back in the late 1990s we were sold genetically modified soya and oilseed rape on the promise that it would feed the world. On closer examination, it became clear that these first-generation GM crops were more about intensifying chemical agriculture and sealing corporate control of the food chain than feeding starving babies in Africa. Consumers, especially in Europe, rose in revolt, and the industry was forced into retreat.

But big companies like Monsanto, Syngenta and BASF are not easily kept at bay for long. Now their PR-men have discovered a new line in emotional blackmail: that without GM crops we will be unable to produce enough food in an era of climate change. Transgenic crops will be able to grow in drought-stricken, saline areas, we are assured, helping to augment food supplies in an era of rapidly intensifying crisis. So is it time to follow in the steps of the UK environment minister Phil Woolas and reassess the potential of GM? As Woolas says: “There is a growing question of whether GM crops can help the developing world out of the current food price crisis. It is a question that we as a nation need to ask ourselves.” So is he right?

I doubt it. For starters, the current food price crisis is only partly about supply. Yes, falling harvests have affected the amount of food available, and the recent severe flooding in the US midwest certainly won’t help the situation. But, as with oil, rising demand is the biggest factor driving prices towards the stratosphere. As countries such as India and China get richer and adopt more western diets, they consume more meat, sucking grain off the market to feed growing numbers of livestock. The misconceived rush to biofuels has further intensified the problem, gobbling up vast quantities of corn and soya in order to produce the fuel Americans and Europeans need to feed their addiction to the car. Underlying all this, the human population continues to grow, adding another 80 million mouths every single year.

But look a little closer at the companies which are promising our salvation – and which Woolas rushed to meet yesterday under the aegis of the Agricultural Biotechnology Council – and their motivations seem somewhat less than altruistic. According to the Canada-based ETC Group, big biotech companies have already filed some 532 patents on “climate-ready” genes at patent offices around the world. I doubt these companies have any intention of giving out free seeds to the world’s poorest farmers: instead, they seal up intellectual property rights in transgenic crops and force growers to pay a licence fee. Traditional practices of saving or exchanging seeds are of course forbidden. This concentration of ownership of the food chain is not going to reduce hunger; it is much more likely to intensify it.

I am not arguing that these companies are somehow bad or evil. It is their job to maximise profits – anything else, and their directors would quickly be punished by loss-making shareholders. It is entirely natural therefore that they seek to retain ownership over their inventions, in this case by seeking patents on transgenic seeds. But on the other hand, they should not claim that their products are going to feed the world either – allowing their public relations teams to create soft-focus adverts of hungry people being fed is utterly misleading.

There are also much deeper ethical questions around GM which have never been addressed – and cannot be addressed by science, because they lie outside the scientific arena. One is the question of whether it is ethically justified to mix genetic material from completely unrelated organisms, like viruses and potato plants. GM proponents constantly argue that this is simply another stage on from traditional selective breeding techniques, but this is clearly untrue. Mixing DNA from unrelated species is an entirely different undertaking, and one which raises all sorts of new risks – as well as deeper questions about humankind playing God. In my view, the technology moves entirely in the wrong direction, intensifying human technological manipulation of nature when we should be aiming at a more holistic ecological approach instead.

If something goes wrong with a transgenic organism, this raises a whole new category of risk. Traditional pollution – whether of toxins like DDT or radioactive waste – will mix and eventually be dispersed or broken down in the environment. Genetic pollution on the other hand is self-replicating because it is contained in living organisms; once released, it can never be recalled, and possibly never controlled as GM superweeds, bacteria or viruses run rampant and breed. I am not raising scare stories here: there are countless cases recorded internationally now where GM crops have begun to infest supposedly organic or GM-free fields.

It may be, as Woolas suggests, that we need to swallow these ethical and ecological concerns in an era where rapidly rising global temperatures and diminishing oil supplies are already putting serious constraints on food production. Would I be prepared to reconsider my opposition to GM so that a million Sudanese or Ethiopians don’t have to watch their children starve as the rains fail once again? Yes, of course. But am I prepared to accept GM just so that rich consumers – whether in Beijing or Birmingham – can drive around in biofuelled SUVs? No. Which of these options is more likely is not about technology or science, it’s about economics and social policy. And that requires us to keep asking difficult questions, and to not be browbeaten by emotionally manipulative advertising from profit-seeking corporations.

Small Is Bountiful

Tim Holmes — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:40:16 +0000

I suggest you sit down before you read this. Robert Mugabe is right. At last week’s global food summit he was the only leader to speak of “the importance … of land in agricultural production and food security”.(1) Countries should follow Zimbabwe’s lead, he said, in democratising ownership.

Of course the old bastard has done just the opposite. He has evicted his opponents and given land to his supporters. He has failed to support the new settlements with credit or expertise, with the result that farming in Zimbabwe has collapsed. The country was in desperate need of land reform when Mugabe became president. It remains in desperate need of land reform today.

But he is right in theory. Though the rich world’s governments won’t hear it, the issue of whether or not the world will be fed is partly a function of ownership. This reflects an unexpected discovery. It was first made in 1962 by the Nobel economist Amartya Sen(2), and has since been confirmed by dozens of further studies. There is an inverse relationship between the size of farms and the amount of crops they produce per hectare. The smaller they are, the greater the yield.

In some cases, the difference is enormous. A recent study of farming in Turkey, for example, found that farms of less than one hectare are twenty times as productive as farms of over ten hectares(3). Sen’s observation has been tested in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand, Java, the Phillippines, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. It appears to hold almost everywhere.

The finding would be surprising in any industry, as we have come to associate efficiency with scale. In farming, it seems particularly odd, because small producers are less likely to own machinery, less likely to have capital or access to credit, and less likely to know about the latest techniques.

There’s a good deal of controversy about why this relationship exists. Some researchers argued that it was the result of a statistical artefact: fertile soils support higher populations than barren lands, so farm size could be a result of productivity, rather than the other way around. But further studies have shown that the inverse relationship holds across an area of fertile land. Moreover, it works even in countries like Brazil, where the biggest farmers have grabbed the best land(4).

The most plausible explanation is that small farmers use more labour per hectare than big farmers(5). Their workforce largely consists of members of their own families, which means that labour costs are lower than on large farms (they don’t have to spend money recruiting or supervising workers), while the quality of the work is higher. With more labour, farmers can cultivate their land more intensively: they spend more time terracing and building irrigation systems; they sow again immediately after the harvest; they might grow several different crops in the same field.

In the early days of the Green Revolution, this relationship seemed to go into reverse: the bigger farms, with access to credit, were able to invest in new varieties and boost their yields. But as the new varieties have spread to smaller farmers, the inverse relationship has reasserted itself(6). If governments are serious about feeding the world, they should be breaking up large landholdings, redistributing them to the poor and concentrating their research and their funding on supporting small farms.

There are plenty of other reasons for defending small farmers in poor countries. The economic miracles in South Korea, Taiwan and Japan arose from their land reform programmes. Peasant farmers used the cash they made to build small businesses. The same thing seems to have happened in China, though it was delayed for 40 years by collectivisation and the Great Leap Backwards: the economic benefits of the redistribution that began in 1949 were not felt until the early 80s(7). Growth based on small farms tends to be more equitable than growth built around capital-intensive industries(8). Though their land is used intensively, the total ecological impact of smallholdings is lower. When small farms are bought up by big ones, the displaced workers move into new land to try to scratch out a living. I once followed evicted peasants from the Brazilian state of Maranhao 2000 miles across the Amazon to the land of the Yanomami Indians, then watched them rip it apart.

But the prejudice against small farmers is unshakeable. It gives rise to the oddest insult in the English language: when you call someone a peasant, you are accusing them of being self-reliant and productive. Peasants are detested by capitalists and communists alike. Both have sought to seize their land, and have a powerful vested interest in demeaning and demonising them. In its profile of Turkey, the country whose small farmers are 20 times more productive than its large ones, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation states that, as a result of small landholdings, “farm output … remains low.”(9) The OECD states that “stopping land fragmentation” in Turkey “and consolidating the highly fragmented land is indispensable for raising agricultural productivity.”(10) Neither body provides any supporting evidence. A rootless, half-starved labouring class suits capital very well.

Like Mugabe, the donor countries and the big international bodies loudly demand that small farmers be supported, while quietly shafting them. Last week’s food summit agreed “to help farmers, particularly small-scale producers, increase production and integrate with local, regional, and international markets.”(11) But when, earlier this year, the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge proposed a means of doing just this, the US, Australia and Canada refused to endorse it as it offended big business(12), while the United Kingdom remains the only country that won’t reveal whether or not it supports the study(13).

Big business is killing small farming. By extending intellectual property rights over every aspect of production; by developing plants which either won’t breed true or which don’t reproduce at all(14), it ensures that only those with access to capital can cultivate. As it captures both the wholesale and retail markets, it seeks to reduce its transaction costs by engaging only with major sellers. If you think that supermarkets are giving farmers in the UK a hard time, you should see what they are doing to growers in the poor world. As developing countries sweep away street markets and hawkers’ stalls and replace them with superstores and glossy malls, the most productive farmers lose their customers and are forced to sell up. The rich nations support this process by demanding access for their companies. Their agricultural subsidies still help their own, large farmers to compete unfairly with the small producers of the poor world.

This leads to an interesting conclusion. For many years, well-meaning liberals have supported the fair trade movement because of the benefits it delivers directly to the people it buys from. But the structure of the global food market is changing so rapidly that fair trade is now becoming one of the few means by which small farmers in poor nations might survive. A shift from small to large farms will cause a major decline in global production, just as food supplies become tight. Fair trade might now be necessary not only as a means of redistributing income, but also to feed the world.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/foodclimate/statements/zwe_muga…

2. Amartya Sen, 1962. An Aspect of Indian Agriculture. Economic Weekly, Vol. 14.

3. Fatma Gül Ünal, October 2006. Small Is Beautiful: Evidence Of Inverse Size Yield
Relationship In Rural Turkey. Policy Innovations. http://www.policyinnovations.org/ideas/policy_library/data/01382

4. Giovanni Cornia, 1985. Farm Size, Land Yields and the Agricultural Production function: an
analysis for fifteen Developing Countries. World Development. Vol. 13, pp. 513-34.

5. Eg Peter Hazell, January 2005. Is there a future for small farms? Agricultural Economics, Vol. 32, pp93-101. doi:10.1111/j.0169-5150.2004.00016.x

6. Rasmus Heltberg, October 1998. Rural market imperfections and the farm size— productivity relationship: Evidence from Pakistan. World Development. Vol 26, pp 1807-1826. doi:10.1016/S0305-750X(98)00084-9

7. See Shenggen Fan and Connie Chan-Kang , 2005. Is Small Beautiful?: Farm Size, Productivity and Poverty in Asian Agriculture. Agricultural Economics, Vol. 32, pp135-146.

8. Peter Hazell, ibid.

9. http://www.new-agri.co.uk/00-3/countryp.html

10. OECD Economic Surveys: Turkey – Volume 2006 Issue 15, p186.
This is available online as a Google book.

I was led to refs 9 and 10 via Fatma Gül Ünal, ibid.

11. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/foodclimate/HLCdocs/declaration…

12. International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), 2008. Global Summary for Decision Makers. www.agassessment.org

13. IAASTD, viewed 9th June 2008. Frequently Asked Questions. www.agassessment.org

14. Eg Terminator seeds.

10 reasons why organic can feed the world

tim — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 20:47:12 +0000

1. Yield

Switching to organic farming would have different effects according to where in the world you live and how you currently farm.

Studies show that the less-industrialised world stands to benefit the most. In southern Brazil, maize and wheat yields doubled on farms that changed to green manures and nitrogenfixing leguminous vegetables instead of chemical fertilisers.1 In Mexico, coffee-growers who chose to move to fully organic production methods saw increases of 50 per cent in the weight of beans they harvested. In fact, in an analysis of more than 286 organic conversions in 57 countries, the average yield increase was found to be an impressive 64 per cent.2

The situation is more complex in the industrialised world, where farms are large, intensive facilities, and opinions are divided on how organic yields would compare.

Research by the University of Essex in 1999 found that, although yields on US farms that converted to organic initially dropped by between 10 and 15 per cent, they soon recovered, and the farms became more productive than their all-chemical counterparts.3 In the UK, however, a study by the Elm Farm Research Centre predicted that a national transition to all-organic farming would see cereal, rapeseed and sugar beet yields fall by between 30 and 60 per cent.4 Even the Soil Association admits that, on average in the UK, organic yields are 30 per cent lower than non-organic.

So can we hope to feed ourselves organically in the British Isles and Northern Europe? An analysis by former Ecologist editor Simon Fairlie in The Land journal suggests that we can, but only if we are prepared to rethink our diet and farming practices.5 In Fairlie’s scenario, each of the UK’s 60 million citizens could have organic cereals, potatoes, sugar, vegetables and fruit, fish, pork, chicken and beef, as well as wool and flax for clothes and biomass crops for heating. To achieve this we’d each have to cut down to around 230g of beef (½lb), compared to an average of 630g (1½lb) today, 252g of pork/bacon, 210g of chicken and just under 4kg (9lb) of dairy produce each week – considerably more than the country enjoyed in 1945. We would probably need to supplement our diet with homegrown vegetables, save our food scraps as livestock feed and reform the sewage system to use our waste as an organic fertiliser.

2. Energy

Currently, we use around 10 calories of fossil energy to produce one calorie of food energy. In a fuel-scarce future, which experts think could arrive as early as 2012, such numbers simply won’t stack up. Studies by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs over the past three years have shown that, on average, organically grown crops use 25 per cent less energy than their chemical cousins. Certain crops achieve even better reductions,including organic leeks (58 per cent less energy) and broccoli (49 per cent less energy). When these savings are combined with stringent energy conservation and local distribution and consumption (such as organic box schemes), energy-use dwindles to a fraction of that needed for an intensive, centralised food system. A study by the University of Surrey shows that food from Tolhurst Organic Produce, a smallholding in Berkshire, which supplies 400 households with vegetable boxes, uses 90 per cent less energy than if non-organic produce had been delivered and bought in a supermarket.

Far from being simply ‘energy-lite’, however, organic farms have the potential to become self-sufficient in energy – or even to become energy exporters. The ‘Dream Farm’ model, first proposed by Mauritius-born agroscientist George Chan, sees farms feeding manure and waste from livestock and crops into biodigesters, which convert it into a methane-rich gas to be used for creating heat and electricity. The residue from these biodigesters is a crumbly, nutrient-rich fertiliser, which can be spread on soil to increase crop yields or further digested by algae and used as a fish or animal feed.

3. Greenhouse gas emissions and climate change

Despite organic farming’s low-energy methods, it is not in reducing demand for power that the techniques stand to make the biggest savings in greenhouse gas emissions.

The production of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, which is indispensable to conventional farming, produces vast quantities of nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential some 320 times greater than that of CO2. In fact, the production of one tonne of ammonium nitrate creates 6.7 tonnes of greenhouse gases (CO²e), and was responsible for around 10 per cent of all industrial greenhouse gas emissions in Europe in 2003.6

The techniques used in organic agriculture to enhance soil fertility in turn encourage crops to develop deeper roots, which increase the amount of organic matter in the soil, locking up carbon underground and keeping it out of the atmosphere. The opposite happens in conventional farming: high quantities of artificially supplied nutrients encourage quick growth and shallow roots. A study published in 1995 in the journal Ecological Applications found that levels of carbon in the soils of organic farms in California were as much as 28 per cent higher as a result.7 And research by the Rodale Institute shows that if the US were to convert all its corn and soybean fields to organic methods, the amount of carbon that could be stored in the soil would equal 73 per cent of the country’s (would-be) Kyoto targets for CO² reduction.8

Organic farming might also go some way towards salvaging the reputation of the cow, demonised in 2007 as a major source of methane at both ends of its digestive tract. There’s no doubt that this is a problem: estimates put global methane emissions from ruminant livestock at around 80 million tonnes a year,9 equivalent to around two billion tonnes of CO²,10 or close to the annual CO² output of Russia and the UK combined.11 But by changing the pasturage on which animals graze to legumes such as clover or birdsfoot trefoil (often grown anyway by organic farmers to improve soil nitrogen content), scientists at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research believe that methane emissions could be cut dramatically. Because the leguminous foliage is more digestible, bacteria in the cow’s gut are less able to turn the fodder into methane. Cows also seem naturally to prefer eating birdsfoot trefoil to ordinary grass.

4. Water use

Agriculture is officially the most thirsty industry on the planet, consuming a staggering 72 per cent of all global freshwater at a time when the UN says 80 per cent of our water supplies are being overexploited.12,13

This hasn’t always been the case. Traditionally, agricultural crops were restricted to those areas best suited to their physiology, with drought-tolerant species grown in the tropics and water-demanding crops in temperate regions.14 Global trade throughout the second half of the last century led to a worldwide production of grains dominated by a handful of high-yielding cereal crops, notably wheat, maize and rice. These thirsty cereals – the ‘big three’ – now account for more than half of the world’s plant-based calories and 85 per cent of total grain production.15

Organic agriculture is different. Due to its emphasis on healthy soil structure, organic farming avoids many of the problems associated with compaction, erosion, salinisation and soil degradation, which are prevalent in intensive systems.16 Organic manures and green mulches are applied even before the crop is sown, leading to a process known as ‘mineralisation’ – literally the fixing of minerals in the soil. Mineralised organic matter, conspicuously absent from synthetic fertilisers, is one of the essential ingredients required physically and chemically to hold water on the land.

Organic management also uses crop rotations, undersowing and mixed cropping to provide the soil with near-continuous cover. By contrast, conventional farm soils may be left uncovered for extended periods prior to sowing, and again following the harvest, leaving essential organic matter fully exposed to erosion by rain, wind and sunlight. In the US, a 25-year Rodale Institute experiment on climatic extremes found that, due to improved soil structure, organic systems consistently achieve higher yields during periods both of drought and flooding.17

5. Localisation

The globalisation of our food supply, which gives us Peruvian apples in June and Spanish lettuces in February, has seen our food reduced to a commodity in an increasingly volatile global marketplace. Although year-round availability makes for good marketing in the eyes of the biggest retailers, the costs to the environment are immense.

Friends of the Earth estimates that the average meal in the UK travels 1,000 miles from plot to plate.18 In 2005, Defra released a comprehensive report on food miles in the UK, which valued the direct environmental, social and economic costs of food transport in Britain at £9 billion each year. In addition, food transport accounted for more than 30 billion vehicle kilometres, 25 per cent of all HGV journeys and 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2002 alone.19

The organic movement was born out of a commitment to provide local food for local people, and so it is logical that organic marketing encourages localisation through veg boxes, farm shops and stalls. Between 2005 and 2006, organic sales made through direct marketing outlets such as these increased by 53 per cent, from £95 to £146 million, more than double the sales growth experienced by the major supermarkets.20 As we enter an age of unprecedented food insecurity, it is essential that our consumption reflects not only what is desirable, but also what is ultimately sustainable. While the ‘organic’ label itself may inevitably be hijacked, ‘organic and local’ represents a solution with which the global players can simply never compete.

6. Pesticides

It is a shocking testimony to the power of the agrochemical industry that in the 45 years since Rachel Carson published her pesticide warning Silent Spring, the number of commercially available synthetic pesticides has risen from 22 to more than 450.21

According to the World Health Organization there are an estimated 20,000 accidental deaths worldwide each year from pesticide exposure and poisoning.22 More than 31 million kilograms of pesticide were applied to UK crops alone in 2005, 0.5 kilograms for every person in the country.23 A spiralling dependence on pesticides throughout recent decades has resulted in a catalogue of repercussions, including pest resistance, disease susceptibility, loss of natural biological controls and reduced nutrient-cycling.24

Organic farmers, on the other hand, believe that a healthy plant grown in a healthy soil will ultimately be more resistant to pest damage. Organic systems encourage a variety of natural methods to enhance soil and plant health, in turn reducing incidences of pests, weeds and disease.

First and foremost, because organic plants grow comparatively slower than conventional varieties they have thicker cell walls, which provide a tougher natural barrier to pests. Rotations or ‘break-crops’, which are central to organic production, also provide a physical obstacle to pest and disease lifecycles by removing crops from a given plot for extended periods.25 Organic systems also rely heavily on a rich agro-ecosystem in which many agricultural pests can be controlled by their natural predators.

Inevitably, however, there are times when pestilence attacks are especially prolonged or virulent, and here permitted pesticides may be used. The use of organic pesticides is heavily regulated and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) requires specific criteria to be met before pesticide applications can be justified.26

There are in fact only four active ingredients permitted for use on organic crops: copper fungicides, restricted largely to potatoes and occasionally orchards; sulphur, used to control additional elements of fungal diseases; Retenone, a naturally occurring plant extract, and soft soap, derived from potassium soap and used to control aphids. Herbicides are entirely prohibited.

7. Ecosystem impact

Farmland accounts for 70 per cent of UK land mass, making it the single most influential enterprise affecting our wildlife.27 Incentives offered for intensification under the Common Agricultural Policy are largely responsible for negative ecosystem impacts over recent years. Since 1962, farmland bird numbers have declined by an average of 30 per cent. During the same period more than 192,000 kilometres of hedgerows have been removed, while 45 per cent of our ancient woodland has been converted to cropland.28

By contrast, organic farms actively encourage biodiversity in order to maintain soil fertility and aid natural pest control. Mixed farming systems ensure that a diversity of food and nesting sites are available throughout the year, compared with conventional farms where autumn sow crops leave little winter vegetation available.29

Organic production systems are designed to respect the balance observed in our natural ecosystems. It is widely accepted that controlling or suppressing one element of wildlife, even if it is a pest, will have unpredictable impacts on the rest of the food chain. Instead, organic producers regard a healthy ecosystem as essential to a healthy farm, rather than a barrier to production.

In 2005, a report by English Nature and the RSPB on the impacts of organic farming on biodiversity reviewed more than 70 independent studies of flora, invertebrates, birds and mammals within organic and conventional farming systems. It concluded that biodiversity is enhanced at every level of the food chain under organic management practices, from soil micro-biota right through to farmland birds and the largest mammals.30

8. Nutritional benefits

While an all-organic farming system might mean we’d have to make do with slightly less food than we’re used to, research shows that we can rest assured it would be better for us.

In 2001, a study in the Journal of Complementary Medicine found that organic crops contained higher levels of 21 essential nutrients than their conventionally grown counterparts, including iron, magnesium, phosphorus and vitamin C. The organic crops also contained lower levels of nitrates, which can be toxic to the body.31

Other studies have found significantly higher levels of vitamins – as well as polyphenols and antioxidants – in organic fruit and veg, all of which are thought to play a role in cancer-prevention within the body.32

Scientists have also been able to work out why organic farming produces more nutritious food. Avoiding chemical fertiliser reduces nitrates levels in the food; better quality soil increases the availability of trace minerals, and reduced levels of pesticides mean that the plants’ own immune systems grow stronger, producing higher levels ofantioxidants. Slower rates of growth also mean that organic food frequently contains higher levels of dry mass, meaning that fruit and vegetables are less pumped up with water and so contain more nutrients by weight than intensively grown crops do.33

Milk from organically fed cows has been found to contain higher levels of nutrients in six separate studies, including omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin E, and beta-carotene, all of which can help prevent cancer. One experiment discovered that levels of omega-3 in organic milk were on average 68 per cent higher than in non-organic alternatives.34

But as well as giving us more of what we do need, organic food can help to give us less of what we don’t. In 2000, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that organically produced food had ‘lower levels of pesticide and veterinary drug residues’ than non-organic did.35 Although organic farmers are allowed to use antibiotics when absolutely necessary to treat disease, the routine use of the drugs in animal feed – common on intensive livestock farms – is forbidden. This means a shift to organic livestock farming could help tackle problems such as the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

9. Seed-saving

Seeds are not simply a source of food; they are living testimony to more than 10,000 years of agricultural domestication. Tragically, however, they are a resource that has suffered unprecedented neglect. The UN FAO estimates that 75 per cent of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost over the past 100 years.36

Traditionally, farming communities have saved seeds year-on-year, both in order to save costs and to trade with their neighbours. As a result, seed varieties evolved in response to local climatic and seasonal conditions, leading to a wide variety of fruiting times, seed size, appearance and flavour. More importantly, this meant a constant updating process for the seed’s genetic resistance to changing climatic conditions, new pests and diseases.

By contrast, modern intensive agriculture depends on relatively few crops – only about 150 species are cultivated on any significant scale worldwide. This is the inheritance of the Green Revolution, which in the late 1950s perfected varieties Filial 1, or F1 seed technology, which produced hybrid seeds with specifically desirable genetic qualities.37 These new high-yield seeds were widely adopted, but because the genetic makeup of hybrid F1 seeds becomes diluted following the first harvest, the manufacturers ensured that farmers return for more seed year on year.

With its emphasis on diversity, organic farming is somewhat cushioned from exploitation on this scale, but even Syngenta, the world’s third-largest biotech company, now offers organic seed lines. Although seedsaving is not a prerequisite for organic production, the holistic nature of organics lends itself well to conserving seed.

In support of this, the Heritage Seed Library, in Warwickshire, is a collection of more than 800 open-pollinated organic varieties, which have been carefully preserved by gardeners across the country. Although their seeds are not yet commercially available, the Library is at the forefront of addressing the alarming erosion of our agricultural diversity.

Seed-saving and the development of local varieties must become a key component of organic farming, giving crops the potential to evolve in response to what could be rapidly changing climatic conditions. This will help agriculture keeps pace with climate change in the field, rather than in the laboratory.

10. Job creation

There is no doubt British farming is currently in crisis. With an average of 37 farmers leaving the land every day, there are now more prisoners behind bars in the UK than there are farmers in the fields.38

Although it has been slow, the decline in the rural labour force is a predictable consequence of the industrialisation of agriculture. A mere one per cent of the UK workforce is now employed in land-related enterprises, compared with 35 per cent at the turn of the last century.39

The implications of this decline are serious. A skilled agricultural workforce will be essential in order to maintain food security in the coming transition towards a new model of post-fossil fuel farming. Many of these skills have already been eroded through mechanisation and a move towards more specialised and intensive production systems.

Organic farming is an exception to these trends. By its nature, organic production relies on labour-intensive management practices. Smaller, more diverse farming systems require a level of husbandry that is simply uneconomical at any other scale. Organic crops and livestock also demand specialist knowledge and regular monitoring in the absence of agrochemical controls.

According to a 2006 report by the University of Essex, organic farming in the UK provides 32 per cent more jobs per farm than comparable non-organic farms. Interestingly, the report also concluded that the higher employment observed could not be replicated in non-organic farming through initiatives such as local marketing. Instead, the majority (81 per cent) of total employment on organic farms was created by the organic production system itself. The report estimates that 93,000 new jobs would be created if all farming in the UK were to convert to organic.

Organic farming also accounts for more younger employees than any other sector in the industry. The average age of conventional UK farmers is now 56, yet organic farms increasingly attract a younger more enthusiastic workforce, people who view organics as the future of food production. It is for this next generation of farmers that Organic Futures, a campaign group set up by the Soil Association in 2007, is striving to provide a platform.

Ed Hamer is a freelance journalist

Mark Anslow is the Ecologist’s senior reporter

References

1 Andre Leu, ‘Organic Agriculture Can Feed the World’ in Organic Farming, Winter 2007, citing Jules Pretty, 2001

2 Pretty, 2006. http://www.rimisp.org/getdoc.php?docid=6440

3 Pretty, 1999, ‘The Living Land’.

4 Cited in Woodward, 2003. http://www.efrc.com/?i=articles.php&art_id=42&highlight=organic

5 Fairlie, 2007, ‘Can Britain Feed Itself?’, The Land, Winter 2007-8.

6 EEA data for EU-15, 2003, for nitric acid production cited by Soil Association

7 Drinkwater LE et al. ‘Fundamental differences between conventional and organic tomato agroecosystems in California’, Ecological Applications 1995, 5(4), 1098-1112.

8 http://www.newfarm.org/depts/NFfield_trials/1003/carbonsequest.shtml

9 US EPA, 1998, ‘Ruminant Livestock and the Global Environment’

10 Using a multiplier factor of 24.5

11 Russia annual CO2 emissions: 1,524,993,000 tonnes; UK annual CO2 emissions: 587,261,000 tonnes.

12 Weis, T. (2007) The global food economy: the battle for the future of farming, Zed Books, London.

13 UNESCO (2006) United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation, World Water Development Report 2006: http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap/wwdr/index.shtml

14 Alteiri, M. (1987) Agroecology: The Scientific Basis of Alternative Agriculture, Westview Press, Boulder.

15 FAO (1997) The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Food Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Rome.

16 Lampkin, N. (1990) Organic Farming, Farming Press Books, Ipswich.

17 Lim Li Ching (2005) Organic Outperforms Conventional in Climate Extremes, web accesses: http://www.i-sis.org.uk/OrganicOutperforms.php

18 FOE (2006) http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/press_releases/green_new_year_resolutions_…

19 Defra (2005) The Validity of Food Miles as an Indicator of Sustainable Development: Final report, Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs.

20 Soil Association (2006) Organic Market Report 2006, Executive Summary, Soil Association, Bristol.

21 Whitehead, R. (1999) UK Pesticide Guide, British Crop Protection Council, CABI Publishing, Cambridge.

22 World Health Organisation (1990) The Public Health Impact of Pesticides Used in Agriculture, WHO, Geneva

23 Pesticide Action Network UK (2007) Pesticides on a Plate, A consumer guide to pesticide issues in the food chain, PAN UK, London

24 Sustain (2003) Myth and Reality, Organic vs. non-organic: the facts, Sustain, London.

25 Francis, C. A. & Clegg, M. D. (1990) Crop Rotations in Sustainable Production Systems, Sustainable Agriculture Systems 107-122

26 International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (1998) Basic Standards for Organic Production and Processing, IFOAM, Germany

27 Soil Association (2006) How does organic farming benefit wildlife? Soil Association 2006.

28 Spencer, J. & Kirby, K. (1992) An inventory of ancient woodland for England and Wales, Biological Conservation 62, 77-93.

29 IFOAM (2003) Organic Agriculture and Biodiversity information sheet, International Federation of Organic Agriculture and Management.

30 Hole, A. G., Perkins, A. J., Wilson, J. D., Alexander, I. H., Grice, P. V., Evans, A. D. (2005) Does Organic Farming Benefit Biodiversity? Biological Conservation, 122, 113-130.

31 Worthington V. Nutritional quality of organic versus conventional fruits, vegetables, and grains. Journal of Complimentary Medicine 2001; 7 No. 2: 161–173

32 Soil Association, 2008: http://tinyurl.com/3aye3g

33 Gundual Azeez, Policy Manager, Soil Association, Personal Communication 01/2008.

34 Soil Association, 2007: http://tinyurl.com/3e3fby

35 Food and Agriculture Organisation, Food Safety & Quality as Affected by Organic Farming, Report of the 22nd regional conference for Europe, Portugal, 24-28 July 2000.

36 FAO (1997) The State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, Food Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, Rome.

37 Shiva, V. & Gitanjali, B. (2002) Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security, The Impact of globalisation, Sage Publications, London.

38 Soil Association (2006) Organic Works Report: An investigation into employment on organic farms conducted by University of Essex 2005.

39 ISEC (2002) Bringing the Food Economy Home: Local Alternatives to Global Agribusiness, Zed Books, London.

The Insanity of Biofuels

tim — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:47:21 +0000

There is something obscenely ironic that whilst the poor starve and struggle over soaring food prices, the rich convert food into fuel so they can carry on driving in their large gas-guzzling vehicles.

The rich world is rushing to invest in biofuels as one of the solutions to climate change. Fuels made from corn, sugar, or maize are seen as producing less carbon dioxide than conventional fuels from oil. As Western nations belatedly struggle to come to grips with the daunting challenge of radical reductions in climate changing gases, biofuels offer a theoretical solution.

What biofuels conveniently mean for America and Europe is that they can carry on driving and flying, thinking they have a clean conscience over climate change. Such is their appeal that last year the US Congress mandated a fivefold increase in their use. Europe, too, is committed to raising the share of biofuels in transport from current levels of around 2% to at least 10% by 2020.

The only problem for those who support biofuels is that despite this rush, never a week goes past without further evidence of their harmful effects. These range from rainforest destruction to being partly to blame for rising food costs.

In March, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Rajendra Pachauri was the latest in a long line of people who warned of the problems of biofuels.

Speaking at the European Parliament, he said “We should be very, very careful about coming up with biofuel solutions that have major impact on production of food grains and may have an implication for overall food security.”

Pachauri warned that the rush to convert corn to ethanol in the US was having an adverse knock-on effect on the agricultural sector. A fifth of the US’s corn crop is now used to brew ethanol for motor fuel. As farmers rush to plant corn, the acreage of other crops, particularly soybeans, has been cut. The rocketing demand for corn has also meant the price has gone up. Ironically other critics argue that the process of converting corn into ethanol actually releases more carbon dioxide per gallon than simply burning conventional fuels.

Then last month, Pachauri’s warning was followed by both the Bolivian President Evo Morales and President of Peru, Alan Garcia, who said using land for biofuels was putting food out of reach for the poor. They were responding to Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva who had tried to dismiss claims that biofuels are responsible for the recent rise in global food prices.

Also last month, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, did not mince his words when blaming biofuels for making the poor starve. “This is silent mass murder,” he said. Last year he said biofuels were “a crime against humanity.”

As the politicians squabble over whether biofuels are to blame for rising food prices, the poor continue to starve and the price of food becomes ever more expensive. Global food prices have increased by 83 percent in the last three years, according to the World Bank. As basic food staples become too expensive to buy for millions, anger has spread rapidly. At least six people were killed in riots over food prices that contributed to the dismissal of Haiti’s prime minister last month. Millions are struggling to survive on the island after food prices have increased 45 percent since the end of 2006.

In Africa, there have been riots in Ivory Coast, and Senegal and Egypt where the military is assisting baking bread. In Mozambique some six people were killed and in Cameroon an estimated 100 killed in protests linked to the food prices. In Burkina Faso, where there were also riots in February over food, the unions have now called for a general strike. In South Africa, there have been protest marches.

Meanwhile in Asia, fifty people were injured after factory workers protested against the food rises near Dhaka. Indonesia has also seen protests, whereas Vietnam has seen panic buying. Pakistan has reintroduced some rationing, while India has banned the export of most rice. The ruling coalition in Malaysia was very nearly ousted by voters who cited food as one of their major concerns. Last week, the Philippine government said it was introducing “rice access cards” for help the poor buy grain.

In Latin America, there have been riots in Mexico, whilst farmers went on strike for three weeks in Argentina. In Peru, farmers blocked key road links. In Europe, Russia, which has seen a six per cent increase in food prices since the beginning of the year, has been forced to freeze the price of milk, bread, eggs and cooking oil.

Coupled with rising oil prices, rising food prices are creating global tension. “This is a perfect storm,” President Elías Antonio Saca of El Salvador told the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Cancún, Mexico last month. “How long can we withstand the situation? We have to feed our people, and commodities are becoming scarce. This scandalous storm might become a hurricane that could upset not only our economies but also the stability of our countries.”

Other voices agree the situation is getting critical. Earlier this month, Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General warned that the global food crisis could have grave implications for international security, economic growth and social progress. “If not handled properly, this crisis could result in a cascade of others and become a multidimensional problem affecting economic growth, social progress and even political security around the world,” Ban told a conference in Ghana.

Last week, Ban Ki-Moon went further, saying that the UN was setting up a special task-force to address the food shortages, which was designed to avert “social unrest on an unprecedented scale”. Ban said “The first and immediate priority, that we all agree, is that we must feed the hungry”.

A second priority should be to ban biofuels that could be used for food crops. The inescapable fact is that biofuels are partly to blame for the rising food costs. The International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington argues that biofuel production accounts for a quarter to a third of the recent increase in global commodity prices. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations comes up with a slightly smaller figure of biofuels being responsible for between 10 to 15 percent rise in food.

So concerned was it over biofuels impacts that last month, the European Environment advisory panel urged the EU to suspend its 10 per cent goal by 2020. The panel, made up of some of Europe’s most prestigious climate scientists, called the 10 percent target “overambitious” whose “unintended effects are difficult to predict and difficult to control.” Laszlo Somlyody, the panel’s chairman and a professor at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics said: “The idea was that we felt we needed to slow down, to analyze the issue carefully and then come back at the problem.”

Rather than slow down, countries in the EU are speeding up. In Britain, new legislation passed last month means that all gasoline must contain at least 2.5 per cent biofuel. The same day that the legislation was passed, one of Britian’s most respected conservation charities, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, condemned the law as “over-hasty” and “utter folly”.

The situation is now getting even more ironic. As many simply cannot afford to eat, the rich world is now squabbling over the huge subsidies it gives its biofuel producers to produce more biofuels. Last week, European biodiesel producers triggered the prospect of a new transatlantic trade war by urging the EU to impose penalties on “unfair” biofuel subsidies from the US.

The subsidy allows US exporters to undercut European rivals by up to a quarter. The subsidy system is also being exploited by ruthless commodity traders, who are actually adding to climate change.

Known as “splash and dash” within the industry, the legal trick makes a mockery of the purpose of biofuels, which are meant to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide. The biofuel is being needlessly shipped from Europe to the US and then back again. The traders buy biodiesel on the European market and then ship it to the US. There it is “splashed” with gasoline which means that conventional gasoline is added to the biodiesel so that traders can qualify for the export subsidy. Then the cargo is “dashed” or shipped back to Europe and resold at a subsidized price which then undercuts European producers.

Peter Power, a spokesman for EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson, said “We will not under any circumstances tolerate unfair trade.” The EU and US are now threatening to take their argument to the World Trade Organisation.

It is also beyond irony that as they say they will not tolerate trade that is unfair to their own industries, they seem content to tolerate the fact that millions of people are slowly dying of hunger….

The Pleasures of the Flesh

tim — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:10:04 +0000

Never mind the economic crisis. Focus for a moment on a more urgent threat: the great food recession which is sweeping the world faster than the credit crunch.

You have probably seen the figures by now: the price of rice has risen by three-quarters in the past year, that of wheat by 130%(1). There are food crises in 37 countries. One hundred million people, according to the World Bank, could be pushed into deeper poverty by the high prices(2). But I bet you have missed the most telling statistic. At 2.1bn tonnes, last year’s global grain harvest broke all records(3). It beat the previous year’s by almost 5%. The crisis, in other words, has begun before world food supplies are hit by climate change. If hunger can strike now, what will happen if harvests decline?

There is plenty of food. It is just not reaching human stomachs. Of the 2.13bn tonnes likely to be consumed this year, only 1.01bn, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), will feed people(4).

I am sorely tempted to write another column about biofuels. From this morning all sellers of transport fuel in the United Kingdom will be obliged to mix it with ethanol or biodiesel made from crops. The World Bank points out that “the grain required to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle with ethanol … could feed one person for a year”(5). Last year global stockpiles of cereals declined by around 53m tonnes(6); this gives you a rough idea of the size of the hunger gap. The production of biofuels this year will consume almost 100m tonnes(7), which suggests that they are directly responsible for the current crisis. In the Guardian yesterday the transport secretary Ruth Kelly promised that “if we need to adjust policy in the light of new evidence, we will.”(8) What new evidence does she require? In the midst of a global humanitarian crisis, we have just become legally obliged to use food as fuel. It is a crime against humanity in which every driver in this country has been forced to participate.

But I have been saying this for four years and I am boring myself. Of course we must demand that our governments scrap the rules which turn grain into the fastest food of all. But there is a bigger reason for global hunger, which is attracting less attention only because it has been there for longer. While 100m tonnes of food will be diverted this year to feed cars, 760m tonnes will be snatched from the mouths of humans to feed animals(9). This could cover the global food deficit 14 times. If you care about hunger, eat less meat.

While meat consumption is booming in Asia and Latin America, in the United Kingdom it has scarcely changed since the government started gathering data in 1974. At just over 1kg per person per week(10), it’s still about 40% above the global average(11), though less than half the amount consumed in the United States(12). We eat less beef and more chicken than we did 30 years ago, which means a smaller total impact. Beef cattle eat about 8kg of grain or meal for every kilogramme of flesh they produce; a kilogramme of chicken needs just 2kg of feed. Even so, our consumption rate is plainly unsustainable.

In his magazine The Land, Simon Fairlie has updated the figures produced 30 years ago in Kenneth Mellanby’s book Can Britain Feed Itself? Fairlie found that a vegan diet grown by means of conventional agriculture would require only 3m hectares of arable land (around half the current total)(13). Even if we reduced our consumption of meat by half, a mixed farming system would need 4.4m hectares of arable fields and 6.4 million hectares of pasture. A vegan Britain could make a massive contribution to global food stocks.

But I cannot advocate a diet I am incapable of following. I tried it for about 18 months, lost two stone, went as white as bone and felt that I was losing my mind. I know a few healthy-looking vegans and I admire them immensely. But after almost every talk I give, I am pestered by swarms of vegans demanding that I adopt their lifestyle. I cannot help noticing that in most cases their skin has turned a fascinating pearl grey.

What level of meat-eating would be sustainable? One approach is to work out how great a cut would be needed to accommodate the growth in human numbers. The UN expects the population to rise to 9bn by 2050. These extra people will require another 325m tonnes of grain(14). Let us assume, perhaps generously, that politicians like Ms Kelly are able to “adjust policy in the light of new evidence” and stop turning food into fuel. Let us pretend that improvements in plant breeding can keep pace with the deficits caused by climate change. We would need to find an extra 225m tonnes of grain. This leaves 531m tonnes for livestock production, which suggests a sustainable consumption level for meat and milk some 30% below the current world rate. This means 420g of meat per person per week, or about 40% of the UK’s average consumption.

This estimate is complicated by several factors. If we eat less meat we must eat more plant protein, which means taking more land away from animals. On the other hand, some livestock is raised on pasture, so it doesn’t contribute to the grain deficit. Simon Fairlie estimates that if animals were kept only on land that’s unsuitable for arable farming, and given scraps and waste from food processing, the world could produce between a third and two thirds of its current milk and meat supply(15). But this system then runs into a different problem. The FAO calculates that animal keeping is responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions. The environmental impacts are especially grave in places where livestock graze freely(16). The only reasonable answer to the question of how much meat we should eat is as little as possible. Let’s reserve it – as most societies have done until recently – for special occasions.

For both environmental and humanitarian reasons, beef is out. Pigs and chickens feed more efficiently, but unless they are free range you encounter another ethical issue: the monstrous conditions in which they are kept. I would like to encourage people to start eating tilapia instead of meat. It’s a freshwater fish which can be raised entirely on vegetable matter and has the best conversion efficiency – about 1.6kg of feed for 1kg of meat – of any farmed animal(17). Until meat can be grown in flasks, this is about as close as we are likely to come to sustainable flesh-eating.

Re-reading this article, I see that there is something surreal about it. While half the world wonders whether it will eat at all, I am pondering which of our endless choices we should take. Here the price of food barely registers. Our shops are better stocked than ever before. We perceive the global food crisis dimly, if at all. It is hard to understand how two such different food economies could occupy the same planet, until you realise that they feed off each other.

References:

1. Eg http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/7284196.stm

2. World Bank, 14th April 2008. Food Price Crisis Imperils 100 Million in Poor Countries, Zoellick Says. Press release. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/NEWS/0,,contentMDK:21729143~men…

3. Food and Agriculture Organisation, April 2008. Crop Prospects and Food Situation.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ai465e/ai465e01.htm

4. ibid.

5. World Bank, 2008. Biofuels: The Promise and the Risks. http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/EXTWDRS/EXT...

6. Gerrit Buntrock, 6th December 2007. Cheap no more. The Economist.

7. Food and Agriculture Organisation, April 2008, ibid.

8. Ruth Kelly, 14th April 2008. Biofuels: a blueprint for the future? The Guardian.

9. Food and Agriculture Organisation, April 2008, ibid.

10. The British government gives a total meat purchase figure of 1042g/person/week for 2006.
http://statistics.defra.gov.uk/esg/publications/efs/datasets/UKHHcons.xl…

11. There’s a discussion of global average figures here: http://envirostats.info/2007/09/18/0406/

12. See Food and Agriculture Organisation, 2006. Livestock’s Long Shadow. Figure 1.4, p9.
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e.pdf

13. Simon Fairlie, Winter 2007-8. Can Britain Feed Itself? The Land.

14. Based on the current population of 6.8bn consuming 1006mt of grain.

15. Simon Fairlie, forthcoming. Default livestock farming. The Land, Summer 2008.

16. Food and Agriculture Organisation, 2006. Livestock’s Long Shadow.
ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a0701e/a0701e.pdf

17. The FAO (ibid) gives 1.6-1.8. On April 12th, I spoke to Francis Murray of the Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, who suggested 1.5.

An Agricultural Crime Against Humanity

JamieSW — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:26:41 +0000

It doesn’t get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty per cent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava(1). The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the county of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought(2). It would surely be quicker and more humane to refine the Swazi people and put them in our tanks. Doubtless a team of development consultants is already doing the sums.

This is one of many examples of a trade described last month by Jean Ziegler, the UN’s special rapporteur, as “a crime against humanity”(3). Ziegler took up the call first made by this column for a five-year moratorium on all government targets and incentives for biofuel(4): the trade should be frozen until second-generation fuels – made from wood or straw or waste – become commercially available. Otherwise the superior purchasing power of drivers in the rich world means that they will snatch food from people’s mouths. Run your car on virgin biofuel and other people will starve.

Even the International Monetary Fund, always ready to immolate the poor on the altar of business, now warns that using food to produce biofuels “might further strain already tight supplies of arable land and water all over the world, thereby pushing food prices up even further.”(5) This week the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation will announce the lowest global food reserves in 25 years, threatening what it calls “a very serious crisis”(6). Even when the price of food was low, 850 million people went hungry because they could not afford to buy it. With every increment in the price of flour or grain, several million more are pushed below the breadline.

The cost of rice has risen by 20% over the past year, maize by 50%, wheat by 100%(7). Biofuels aren’t entirely to blame – by taking land out of food production they exacerbate the effects of bad harvests and rising demand – but almost all the major agencies are now warning against expansion. And almost all the major governments are ignoring them.

They turn away because biofuels offer a means of avoiding hard political choices. They create the impression that governments can cut carbon emissions and – as Ruth Kelly, the British transport secretary, announced last week(8) – keep expanding the transport networks. New figures show that British drivers puttered past the 500 billion kilometre mark for the first time last year(9). But it doesn’t matter: we just have to change the fuel we use. No one has to be confronted. The demands of the motoring lobby and the business groups clamouring for new infrastructure can be met. The people being pushed off their land remain unheard.

In principle, burning biofuels merely releases the carbon they accumulated when they were growing. Even when you take into account the energy costs of harvesting, refining and transporting the fuel, they produce less net carbon than petroleum products. The law the British government passed a fortnight ago – by 2010, 5% of our road transport fuel must come from crops(10) – will, it claims, save between 700,000 and 800,000 tonnes of carbon a year(11). It derives this figure by framing the question carefully. If you count only the immediate carbon costs of planting and processing biofuels, they appear to reduce greenhouse gases. When you look at the total impacts, you find that they cause more warming than petroleum.

A recent study by the Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen shows that the official estimates have ignored the contribution of nitrogen fertilisers. They generate a greenhouse gas – nitrous oxide – which is 296 times as powerful as CO2. These emissions alone ensure that ethanol from maize causes between 0.9 and 1.5 times as much warming as petrol, while rapeseed oil (the source of over 80% of the world’s biodiesel) generates 1-1.7 times the impact of diesel(12). This is before you account for the changes in land use.

A paper published in Science three months ago suggests that protecting uncultivated land saves, over 30 years, between two and nine times the carbon emissions you might avoid by ploughing it and planting biofuels(13). Last year the research group LMC International estimated that if the British and European target of a 5% contribution from biofuels were to be adopted by the rest of the world, the global acreage of cultivated land would expand by 15%(14). That means the end of most tropical forests. It might also cause runaway climate change.

The British government says it will strive to ensure that “only the most sustainable biofuels” will be used in the UK(15). It has no means of enforcing this aim – it admits that if it tried to impose a binding standard it would break world trade rules(16). But even if “sustainability” could be enforced, what exactly does it mean? You could, for example, ban palm oil from new plantations. This is the most destructive kind of biofuel, driving deforestation in Malaysia and Indonesia. But the ban would change nothing. As Carl Bek-Nielsen, vice chairman of Malaysia’s United Plantations Bhd, remarked, “even if it is another oil that goes into biodiesel, that other oil then needs to be replaced. Either way, there’s going to be a vacuum and palm oil can fill that vacuum.”(17) The knock-on effects cause the destruction you are trying to avoid. The only sustainable biofuel is recycled waste oil, but the available volumes are tiny(18).

At this point the biofuels industry starts shouting “jatropha!” It is not yet a swear word, but it soon will be. Jatropha is a tough weed with oily seeds that grows in the tropics. This summer Bob Geldof, who never misses an opportunity to promote simplistic solutions to complex problems, arrived in Swaziland in the role of “special adviser” to a biofuels firm. Because it can grow on marginal land, jatropha, he claimed, is a “life-changing” plant, which will offer jobs, cash crops and economic power to African smallholders(19).

Yes, it can grow on poor land and be cultivated by smallholders. But it can also grow on fertile land and be cultivated by largeholders. If there is one blindingly obvious fact about biofuel it’s that it is not a smallholder crop. It is an internationally-traded commodity which travels well and can be stored indefinitely, with no premium for local or organic produce. Already the Indian government is planning 14m hectares of jatropha plantations(20). In August the first riots took place among the peasant farmers being driven off the land to make way for them(21).

If the governments promoting biofuels do not reverse their policies, the humanitarian impact will be greater than that of the Iraq war. Millions will be displaced, hundreds of millions more could go hungry. This crime against humanity is a complex one, but that neither lessens nor excuses it. If people starve because of biofuels, Ruth Kelly and her peers will have killed them. Like all such crimes it is perpetrated by cowards, attacking the weak to avoid confronting the strong.

References:

1. IRIN Africa, 25th October 2007. Swaziland: Food or biofuel seems to be the question. http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=74987

2. Energy Current, 29th October 2007. Swaziland joins biofuel drive despite mounting food crisis. http://www.energycurrent.com/index.php?id=3&storyid=6359

3. Grant Ferrett, 27th October 2007. Biofuels ‘crime against humanity’. BBC Online.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7065061.stm

4. George Monbiot, 27th March 2007. A Lethal Solution. The Guardian.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/27/a-lethal-solution/

5. Valerie Mercer-Blackman, Hossein Samiei, and Kevin Cheng, 17th October 2007. Biofuel Demand Pushes Up Food Prices. IMF Research Department.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2007/RES1017A.htm

6. Jacques Diouf, quoted by John Vidal, 3rd November 2007. Global food crisis looms as climate change and fuel shortages bite. The Guardian.

7. John Vidal, 3rd November 2007. Global food crisis looms as climate change and fuel shortages bite. The Guardian.

8. Department for Transport, October 2007. Towards a Sustainable Transport System:
Supporting Economic Growth in a Low Carbon World. http://www.dft.gov.uk/about/strategy/transportstrategy/pdfsustaintranssy…

9. Department for Transport, 2007. Transport Statistics Great Britain 2007. Table 7.1. Road traffic by type of vehicle: 1949-2006
http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics/datatablespublications/tsgb/2007edi…

10. HM Government, 2007. The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations Order 2007. http://www.opsi.gov.uk/SI/si2007/draft/20078818.htm

11. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, October 2007. Biofuels – risks and opportunities, p4. http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/environment/rtfo/289579

12. PJ Crutzen, AR Mosier, KA Smith and W Winiwarter, 1 August 2007. N2O release from agro-biofuel production negates global warming reduction by replacing fossil fuels. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions 7, pp11191–11205. http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/7/11191/2007/acpd-7-11191-2007.pd…

13. Renton Righelato and Dominick V. Spracklen, 17th August 2007. Carbon Mitigation by Biofuels or by Saving and Restoring Forests? Science Vol 317, p902. doi 10.1126/science.1141361.

14. AFP, 17th October 2007. IMF concerned by impact of biofuels on food prices. http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h0RVoVwPFlD8MXLYyQbxHamr9NYw

15. Lord Bassam of Brighton, 29th March 2007. Parliamentary answer. Column WA310. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200607/ldhansrd/text/70329w00…

16. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, October 2007. Biofuels – risks and opportunities, p5. http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/roads/environment/rtfo/289579

17. Benjamin Low, 24th February 2006. CPO Prices Seen Up In 06 As Biodiesel Fuels Demand
http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/060224/15/3yy2x.html

18. You can see the calculations here: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/

19. Helene Le Roux, 27th July 2007. Singer, songwriter and activist promotes green energy in Africa. Engineering News Online. http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article.php?a_id=112872

20. John Vidal, ibid.

21. Mark Olden, 25th October 2007. Observations on: biofuels. New Statesman.
www.newstatesman.com/200710250020

Sense of Hummus

JamieSW — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 00:34:41 +0000

WHY BEING VEGAN IS PART OF THE SOLUTION

Dish out the tofu and crack open yet another oversized tub of hummus. It’s time to ditch the dairy and celebrate World Vegan Week which kicks off this Saturday (27th). Although you’d be joining a growing movement (now quarter of a million strong in the UK), meat consumption has increased four fold in the past fifty years and now livestock outnumbers humans three to one! Yet 850 million people still go hungry worldwide with an estimated five million children dying each year due to malnutrition. The rearing of farm animals has forced millions of small farmers off the land and the agricultural techniques employed are having an ever more harmful effect on our planet. OK, so maybe the vegan thing is going through a bit of a rebrand at the mo’, but as well as being about respecting the life of all the living creatures with which we share out planet, veganism is also one way we can tackle food poverty and climate change.

Take the forests (Please! International logging corporations especially welcome!). Trees are essential storers of carbon dioxide and help to regulate our climate – but are being chopped down at the rate of 13 million hectares a year. Already almost one-third of the world’s forests have been converted to agriculture use and the World Resources Institute reckons that 60% of current deforestation involves clearing the way for food production. One fifth of this is being used to graze cattle and another 10% is utilised for grain production to feed the beasts themselves.

But of course, land in the UK is much more valuable if you build on it – so most of the feed for our livestock is imported from abroad. Europe as a whole imports 70% of its protein for cattle feed, leading to one European Parliament report sating that, “Europe can feed its people but not its farm animals.” Some six million acres of land in Brazil is being used to grow soya beans for animals in Europe alone – at the same time as 20 million Brazilians suffer from malnutrition. In fact it takes ten times more land to produce one kilo of protein from meat than its does from soya. “If present trends of meat-eating continue” says science writer, Colin Tudge, “then by 2050 the world’s livestock will be consuming as much as 4 billion people do.” A plant based diet requires just 20% of the land of that required by an omnivore.

TAKING THE PESCATARIAN

And its not just the land that’s the problem. Fish-munching ‘veggies’ should beware that more than a quarter of all the world’s fisheries are fully exploited. In Canada at least 140 distinct varieties of salmon are already extinct and many more dolphins, turtles and seals are caught up and killed in giant fishing nets. Not that all the fish caught is eaten – biologist Lee Alverson calculates that around 27 million tonnes of fish are wasted every year because they are the wrong kind or size for the fussy supermarket shopper (that’s more than the total amount of fish eaten in 1950). Shrimp boats that drag the bottom of the sea are the most wasteful, scooping up 10 kilos of other marine life for every one kilo of shrimp that’s actually used.

Last November the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation reported that livestock production accounts for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions – more than all the world’s transport combined! Head of the FAO’s Information Unit, Henning Steinfeld says that “livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”

Animal foods account for most of the energy used in agriculture, sometimes up to 20 times more energy per ‘edible tonne’ than grain production! Housing pigs and chickens in huge windowless sheds requires loads of energy for artificial ventilation, conveyor belts and electric lighting. You don’t need refrigeration or freezers to store yer fresh veg!

The fleshy tastes of an increasingly wealthy population, from whom the big food corporations are only to willing to extract as much profit as possible, are on the rise. People are consuming more meat and dairy every year. During the first fifty years of the 21st century, meat production and milk output are both set to double. Many formerly subsistence farmers are turning to grow cash crops for animal feed because it pays better. Such intensive monoculture threatens biodiversity and moves local farmers further away from sustainable agricultural systems. But it’s not the poor eating the meat – a US citizen consumes 15 times more beef than someone from Honduras. The Danes are the biggest pig munchers, getting through their way through twice their own body weight in pork each year, ten times more than a South African.

If you can get a perfectly healthy diet from a vegan diet (and you can) why kill animals to feed ourselves? Pigs have to be given powerful antibiotics during their short (six months) lives, in an attempt to tackle the diseases rife in the filthy battery conditions in which over 95% of them are kept. Poultry farmers send 800 million chickens to slaughter each year in the UK, most of which are kept in huge sheds containing up to 40,000 birds. Two thirds of all eggs are produced by battery chickens which have to live in an area smaller than an A4 piece of paper, even though their wingspan is four times bigger. The more rustic sounding ‘barn egg’ laying chicken gets an A3 sized bit of paper to live on whilst to call a chicken ‘free range’ all the bird must have is ‘access to the outdoors’ during day light hours (on the way to the slaughter house, perhaps?).

Then there’s the torture-in-a-tin that is foie-gras, where ducks and geese are force fed until their livers swell ten times its normal size. The French polish off 30 million ducks a year in order to munch on this ‘delicacy’ and Viva! is running a campaign to outlaw the cruel industry – check www.viva.org.uk/campaigns/foiegras/index.html for more info about the campaign.

- See www.vegansociety.com to learn more about how the animal-free diet can save the planet.