Future food security and sustainability is a topic that has generated much in the world over the last year. Recent estimates predict the world population to reach 7 billion by the end of this year. Consider two other facts at this point- Homo Sapiens have been on Earth for approximately 200,000 years and at end of the Second World War in 1945, the population was approximately 2.4 billion. In little over 65 years, we have added over 4 billion to our number! Feeding this number in a world with changing standard of living and diets is going to be a challenge. Over the last 3 decades, the world has responded with generosity of scale drives such as Live Aid, with millions provided. All too often this has ended up siphoned off by corrupt regimes and not to the local people who need it. A speech I watched recenly on TED was particularly inspiring( Link Below) and perhaps showed the importance of more targeted investment. While the speech was on water management, I believe there are some applicable lessons for farming.
I would like to highlight the local knowledge of one group of the many rural people of the world, whose ingenuity could give us ideas on how to survive in the changing world.
The 'char' or island dwellers of the floodplains of Bangladesh are people who are exceptional. They have no permanent home but continuously move between the islands which appear and submerge constantly with tide, lunar activity and rainfall. Despite this they manage to grow crops like okra by using floating gardens made out of hyacinth (See photo- From National Geographic).
With inland water getting too salty, they have converted fields into shrimp and crab farms. Among the organisations who help such people include the Bangladeshi Rural Advancement Committee(BRAC), who conduct research in many areas of agriculture involving local farmers. So if you are thinking you can help, they and other organisations have a lot of information on their web pages:
Solving the problem of keeping a potential population of 9 billion by 2050 is not one that one individual can solve alone. However, there are simple things we can all contribute to like changing our diet and wasting less food. Eating less meat will mean more land for farming and to quote Prince Charles during his recent speech in Georgetown University 'For every pound of beef produced in the industrial system, it takes two thousand gallon of water.' And as a recent report on the future of Food and Farming says, the global food system is living outside its means and 'decisions made now will disproportionately influence the future.' So lets try and influence it in the right way!
