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Towards food security

The scope of the problem

Food security concerns are not an unfortunate condition of some distant land but a very European problem. Europe is, at once, the world’s largest producer of food, the biggest exporter of food and the biggest importer, and our imports exceed our exports by a very substantial margin. In other words, what Europe does with agriculture counts, globally, and Europe will either be a big problem or part of the solution to the Food supply challenge. This is not to suggest that Europe must feed the world, although as time goes by, the moral and ethical weight of this question will mount. The big challenge must be reckoned with right here in Europe for very Eurocentric reasons: the linked needs for affordable nutrition and social stability being chief amongst them.

 

Food for thought

  • In 1970, each person needed 1/2 a football (soccer) pitch to grow their food (or 15 tennis courts). 
  • In 2000, this was only 1/3 of a pitch (or 9 tennis courts). 
  • In 2050, our grandchildren will have only 1/5 of football pitch (or 6 courts). 
  • In 2008/9, the world had only 3 weeks' stock of cereals. 
  • In 2003/4 wheat yield in the UK was 7.8 tonnes/ha; in Ukraine it was 1.5 t/ha. 
  • In the 40 years from 1963, population doubled to 6.3 billion; arable land area rose by only 5% (the numbers of malnourished hardly changed).
  • China has to feed a fifth of the world's population with less than 10% of global farmland.

 

The Population Factor

As these challenges to food production unfold the population’s demand for food will increase. By 2020, based on its current growth pattern, the world population is expected to reach 7.6 billion people. That compares to today’s population estimate of 6.7 billion. A 14% growth (900 million people) by 2020 is not insignificant. The outlook for 2050 is even more grave. The FAO estimates that agricultural production will need to increase by 70% by 2050 to cope with a 40% increase in world population. This translates into an additional one billion tonnes of cereals and 200 million tonnes of meat to be produced annually by 2050 (as compared with production in 2005/07).

 

The Implications

Doing all this will require a science-based governmental policy framework that enables farmers to meet the production challenge. This calls for consistently forward thinking food policies that are sadly lacking at the moment. The EU, for example, supports the FAO’s call for increased productivity on one hand while on the other European governments are actively blocking the uptake of agricultural technologies that have the potential to increase productivity for reasons that are mainly ideological. At present, European agricultural policy is neither addressing the complexity of the issues nor the reality of present day agriculture, which is, emphatically, a science and not a transient expression of public opinion.

 

The Land Imperative

What is very clear is that we can’t solve the problem by putting more land under the plough. The supply of agricultural land is severely limited and gone are the days when we would wish to cut down forests to grow food, whether here in Europe or anywhere else. Why not? Forests are essential to stem green house gas emissions and wild lands preserve biodiversity and maintain ecological balance. Forests, green belts, parklands and wilderness areas are both rightfully treasured and severely threatened in much of the world. This means that to meet the food supply challenge we will, by necessity, have to grow more food on the existing land base.

 

The Pest Connection

What has this to do with pests and the crop protection industry? Well, the answer is simple: without advanced pest management about 50 per cent of our present food crop production would be lost. Even with the best techniques, about 30 per cent is still lost to pests and disease, so there is plenty of room for innovation and improvement. The crop protection industry, therefore, has a critical and essential contribution to make to food productivity. Without effective pest management we most certainly will not measure up to the food supply challenge. We are also committed to doing this in a sustainable way that protects the environment and promotes biodiversity and not just in words but in our actions. Contrary to popular opinion, we prescribe and support measures which ensure the safe, environmentally sound use of our products.

 

For legislators

Given FAO and G7 warnings about the need to increase food productivity 70 per cent by 2050, it is reasonable to assert that food security will become the paramount societal and scientific issue for the foreseeable future. Understanding and addressing the complexity of increasing agricultural production is an urgent task for European policy makers with a caution that the biggest threat may not be not nature, but the ideological clutter that tends to obscure our vision… and what we need to clarify our vision on food supply is evidence, scientifically valid evidence.