When the famine in Ethiopia ended in 1985 with a million deaths, nobody expected that it would be the last major famine for more than three decades. Contrary to almost all predictions, mass starvation as a cause of death has almost completely disappeared from the face of the earth, with the exception of North Korea. In the 1960s, the number of people dying from famine per capita was 100 times higher than in the previous decade.
Although hunger lingers among the world’s poorest, the world is better nourished than ever before, even as the human population has doubled since the 1960s. Even more remarkable is that this was accomplished without plowing any additional land. Aside from the increasing amount of land being devoted to the nonsense of growing biofuels, less land is being farmed today than 50 years ago.
If we tried to feed today’s nearly eight billion people with the average agricultural yields of 1960, when most agriculture was organic, then we would have to farm over 85 percent instead of less than 35 percent of the global land area. Cut down the entire Amazon rainforest, drain every swamp, rid Siberia of trees, irrigate much of the Sahara — we still couldn’t do it.
Feeding the world has been made possible by synthetic fertilizers and genetic science. Half of the nitrogen atoms in your body come from ammonium factories, many of them in Russia. It was so successful that we became complacent, thinking we could go back to older, less productive ways and turn our noses up at the latest advances in genetics.
The government’s recent farm bill said little about food security, while the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy was all about producing less food, not more. Influenced by the mystical whistle of Vandana Shiva, the Sri Lankan government has recently forced the organic practice on all of its farmers. The result is a collapse in earnings, a financial crisis, starvation, and a political and humanitarian crisis.
The Russian blockade of Odessa and Mariupol, cutting off the plentiful wheat that normally flows from Ukraine’s rich, black soil, threatens the biggest food crisis in decades. When supplies run low, North Africa, heavily dependent on Ukrainian exports, becomes a political powder keg. With food prices rising fast, northern England might not be much different.
If we had introduced genetically modified crops 25 years ago, European farmers would now have higher yields, with lower emissions, less use of chemical pesticides and greater biodiversity in their fields. We know this because this is the experience of farmers who have adopted these crops elsewhere.
The food our farmers produce would be safer, more nutritious and healthier because that’s what scientists make elsewhere and were about to do it to the varieties we grow here before the rug was pulled out from under them . This technophobic jolt was based on completely false fears. “Science has proven no harm from the use of genetically modified crops,” concludes an authoritative recent study by Spanish scientists.
The UK government is taking a welcome step to reverse this madness by allowing trials of genetically engineered crops, with the possibility of extending this to animals in the future. This means that instead of creating random mutations in plants with gamma rays, as they are doing now, and then hoping to find better strains among the mutants, geneticists can use so-called Crispr enzymes, adapted from bacteria to cut the genetic codes of to optimize plants in a precise and predictable way.
It would be logical to ease the way for genetically modified or “transgenic” crops next, given the ample evidence supporting their safety. This would allow farmers to drastically reduce the fungicides sprayed on potatoes and cut emissions from plowing: in short, truly “organic”. The public is now mostly on the side of GM crops, but politicians and officials are still wary of some die-hard activists fighting the latest war.
Not only are we lagging behind America, Argentina, Australia and China in applying green technology, much of which was invented in Britain – but also in parts of Africa. Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya are beginning to introduce GM crops and are seeing great results when they do so. The insect-resistant cowpea, for example, has four times the average yield of conventional varieties.
In a world facing potential mass starvation, farmers not only have an incentive but almost an obligation to be productive. If you watched the ` you would probably get the impression that much of Britain’s farming is ‘organic’, ie without synthetic fertiliser. In fact, less than 3 per cent of Britain’s farmland feeds the worried wealthy in this way, but there is constant pressure on farmers to go down this route. However, cultivation with artificial fertilizers is not only economically sensible, but also ecologically good. Studies by Professor Andrew Balmford of Cambridge University show that productive agriculture saves more land for nature per unit of food, thereby increasing biodiversity and generating fewer emissions.
The urgent need for technology and innovation to support productive agriculture is why this week I joined a group of politicians, scientists and environmentalists to found Science for Sustainable Agriculture, who are wary of a political drift toward less-intensive farming Warning yields while urging the government to put science at the heart of UK food policy.
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