Food for thought

At ARI, we talk a lot about food - about food production, access to food, food consumption, food culture. Underneath all the discussions of how to raise tomatoes or chickens, of how to process miso or kiwi jam, lies the Big Question: How can we achieve sustainability in food production? Will the earth be able to support the next generation?

I found an interesting article published by Science that gives an overview of the sustainability question and proposes some possible paths to future food security. One path involves closing the "yield gap," the "the difference between realized productivity and the best that can be achieved using current genetic material and available technologies and management." As the article explains,

"Low yields occur because of technical constraints that prevent local food producers from increasing productivity or for economic reasons arising from market conditions. For example, farmers may not have access to the technical knowledge and skills required to increase production, the finances required to invest in higher production (e.g., irrigation, fertilizer, machinery, crop-protection products, and soil-conservation measures), or the crop and livestock varieties that maximize yields. After harvest or slaughter, they may not be able to store the produce or have access to the infrastructure to transport the produce to consumer markets... It has been estimated that in those parts of Southeast Asia where irrigation is available, average maximum climate-adjusted rice yields are 8.5 metric tons per hectare, yet the average actually achieved yields are 60% of this figure… Substantially more food, as well as the income to purchase food, could be produced with current crops and livestock if methods were found to close the yield gaps."

ARI is trying to close the yield gap by teaching farmers about more efficient methods of rice cultivation, more effective means of fertilizer application, more lucrative ways of processing and storing harvested crops. Sustainability must start at the local level of individual farmers and individual farms. As one staff member told me, "It's not about feeding the world, it's about feeding one community at a time." I'm still unsure what I think about food security issues (particularly about the ability of organic farming to feed communities on a large scale), but I feel lucky to live in a community where I have the opportunity to reevaluate my relationship with food.