Phil Harris
While there has never been more food around, modern production is not really a ‘success’ story. In the face of a long term decline in fossil energy, there is significant doubt whether production relying on nitrogen fertilizer can ramp-up to feed the expected world population, or can even maintain existing levels. Similarly, in almost wholly urbanized industrial countries, ‘Western’ production equates to mechanized farming, which requires very significant fossil fuel. Future problems are potentially exacerbated by the spread of the up-market ‘Western’, urban, dietary pattern. Already much of global primary calories and protein are diverted to the meat sector. In addition, this dietary pattern exacts a high price on health.
Through the years, most of the world has lived in village ecosystems, and produced most of its food locally through those ecosystems. An important part of this farming is recycling the nutrients and exporting only relatively little outside the system, unlike the demands made on farming by our urban world. …
Modern agriculture as developed in the ‘West’ requires large amounts of fertilizer and other critical ‘system-ingredients’ including pesticides. Much of the rest of the world in recent decades has also significantly increased production using these inputs, and must rely on fertilizer, even in countries where the total requirement for fossil energy, fuel and fertilizer, and for example, herbicides, can be significantly lower than required for a Western farm.
Since the 1960s, new varieties of cereal have enabled much larger yields because they can use higher soil nitrogen N (NH4 and NO3 ions maintained in soil solution), and thereby make use of more synthetic N fertilizer. According to a publication of the International Fertilizer Industry Association, nitrogen fertilizer production requires perhaps 5% of world natural gas; 1.2% of total energy.
The energy budget for a fully mechanized crop is difficult to compute, but one example in Scotland suggests that N fertilizer accounts for 10 – 43% energy input into oil seed production on any one farm. A lot of energy is used directly by machinery. Farming in fully industrialized countries is almost wholly mechanized. …
Cereal grains are increasingly used for livestock feed. Most, for example, of the huge USA corn (maize) and soybeans crops goes for animal feed. When this use is combined with the increased demand for biofuels, it puts a serious strain on resources such as fertilizer that underpin grain supply. Asia—with 57% of the world’s population–is now attempting to adopt more of a Western style diet as well. This pattern is not sustainable, especially if oil and natural gas supplies are expected to decline over the long term. …
According to The Fertilizer Institute, world nitrogen demand grew by 17 percent, phosphate demand grew by 18 percent and potash demand grew by 23 percent from fiscal year 2000/2001 to 2006/2007. China, India and Brazil are the three largest contributors to the growth.
Thus, cereal grains are not rising as rapidly as Dyson predicted, but fertilizer use is still growing rapidly. With the growth in biofuels and meat, much of the additional grain does not proportionally feed more people.
Trends have been driven by profitability, and in the USA most of the monetary value of agriculture is ‘up-market’ in the livestock sector. Slightly over half is provided by livestock, slightly less than a quarter by horticultural crops and, less than a quarter by primary production, grain and oilseed crops (the remainder comes from cotton and other commodity crops).
Expanding the global ‘business as usual’ approach appears to guarantee poor success in the future.