2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
Third World food resources may be more dynamic than even the optimists allow for. One of my most memorable experiences was watching a dam being built, in the hills of East Africa miles from the nearest road, by literally thousands of villagers - building it with their bare hands. There was not even a wheelbarrow in sight, but their phenomenal commitment - and sheer joy in working for the future of their community - was tangible. Indeed, my overall experience in Ethiopia largely supports the position that poverty is, to a great extent, the result of political decisions. Where, in that country, the people of even a famine-stricken province (Tigray), nearly the size of England, themselves decided to terrace the whole province (which has mountains over 16,000 feet high) they completed the task in less than two years. It was a magical experience to suddenly come across hills covered in hundreds of people all - voluntarily - working together to stop the soil erosion which, in the rainy season, famously turns the Nile (muddy) 'blue' for hundreds of miles.
In any case, mass food production may in future become a factory process; with genetically engineered cells grown in vats - perhaps on artificial islands making use of the three-quarters of the Earth's surface (the oceans) currently under-used. The limits to growth would then be greatly extended.
Growth of the basic, food resources in the third world may not be as limited as some pessimists would predict.
Lester Milbraith as "In my judgment the most important reality in today’s world is that modern industrial civilisation cannot be sustained."
The Economist[w] explains that the 47 per cent rise in food prices between 1993 and 1996 could be explained by just three facts; bad weather in America, reductions in the former Soviet Union following the removal of subsidies and the US and Europe taking 20 per cent of cropland out of production; to force the rise in prices which then did occur! To illustrate the potential for future gains, it points out that "...India successfully feeds twice as many people as Africa on 13% of the land area." More fundamentally, Jim Northcott (of the Policy Studies Institute) suggests that "...in the past the world market system has proved remarkably resilient in dealing with incipient shortages. As reserves run low and supplies become scarce, prices rise sharply and this encourages exploitation of new resources, development of improved technologies, and use of lower-grade or higher cost sources hitherto regarded as uneconomic...to the development of substitutes, to greater economy in use..." This is also a view held by a number of multinationals; but perhaps they can literally afford to be optimistic in this context.
Fred Pearce - writing in Geographical - counters the "...dogma [which] holds that [even] desert margins have a fixed 'carrying capacity'" by pointing out that in Nigeria and Kenya "...the opposite has happened. Rapidly increasing populations emerge from these studies as saviours of the landscape, rescuing it from rampant soil erosion, and protecting trees and conserving water." In justification of this view he quotes the famous case of the Machakos district of Kenya, where "...they found ways to dramatically boost farm yields in this apparently uninviting terrain and to feed and clothe an extra 3 per cent of their people every year...There were more trees in Machakos in 1990 than in 1930 [when the project started]...during the past 60 years, the cash value of farm outputs on every hectare of Machakos district has risen tenfold, and the output per head threefold."
The OECD (Michalski et al) warns that "A key concern is whether China - with 22% of the world population and yet only 7% of the arable land will be able to meet the surge in grain demand." Though, once more, the corollary of this supports the view that the reserves available in the rest of the world might be capable of considerable expansion.
Robert Paarlberg - associate at the Harvard Centre for International Affairs - also refers to Machakos, but widens this to explain that, contrary to popular opinion, farmers do look to the longer term "Hill farmers in some of the poorest countries in Africa have constructed terracing systems and have maintained those systems for hundreds of years. Poor farmers in Africa today are willing to plant slow-maturing perennial crops when given access to market-based price incentives." I can confirm the motivation of farmers in even the poorest of areas. One of my most memorable experiences was watching a dam being built, in the hills of East Africa miles from the nearest road, by literally thousands of villagers - building it with their bare hands. There was not even a wheelbarrow in sight, but their phenomenal commitment - and sheer joy in working for the future of their community - was tangible.
Paarlberg also describes the success of the green revolution "By switching to highly responsive seeds, more fertiliser use and expanded irrigation, India was able to double its total wheat production between the years of 1964/65 and 1970/71." On the other hand, there are now widespread doubts about the sustainability of the green revolution. Francesco Bray - professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara - reports, for instance, that "The 'modernization' of agriculture, as generally understood, entails the application of science, technology and capital to increase the output of just a few crops that have world markets...Monoculture reduces diversity. The intensive use of fossil fuels and chemical inputs creates pollution; often the inputs of energy equal or even exceed the output of crops. Large-scale mechanized operations hasten soil erosion..." This is a very different picture from the ideal of Machakos. On the other hand, Robert Paarlberg's explanation for the problems to be found elsewhere is "Agricultural resource abuse in developing countries reflects power abuse. It grows out of unbalanced power relations among farmers, between farmers and nonfarmers, or between farmers and their own governments." My own experience in Ethiopia largely supports this position. Poverty is, to a great extent, the result of political decisions. Where, in that country, the people of even a famine-stricken province (Tigray), nearly the size of England, themselves decided to terrace the whole province (which has mountains over 16,000 feet high) they completed the task in less than two years. It was a magical experience to suddenly come across hills covered in hundreds of people all - voluntarily - working together to stop the soil erosion which, in the rainy season, famously turns the Nile (muddy) 'blue' for hundreds of miles.
Michael Zey is one of the few futurists to pursue a concept of factory production, when he offers the description "At Washington State University a team of research chemical engineers have set up clusters of plants and animal cells which are suspended and agitated within bioreactors, tank-like fermenters, in a liquid solution of carbohydrates and salts."
Melissa Leach & James Fairhead (as reported by Kate De Seincourt) state that "...people have been reading the landscape backwards..." Comparing aerial photographs of Guinea in the 1950s with those of the 1990s "Again and again the recent photos showed more forest cover than there had been forty years ago - sometimes twice as much."
16 May 2003
Other pages you might like to consider are:
hits
Copyright © 2005 Future Observatory