(This is Part 8 of a continuing series. Go back to Part 7.)
Overcutting, overgrazing and overplowing deliver a short-term, temporary increase in the production of grains and meat. And indeed, grain production has tripled in the last 50 years while meat production has quintupled. This is the primary effect or surface effect.
However, this same process is creating a long-term effect that is exactly the opposite—an increasing desertification of the world's cropland. World grain area reached a peak of 732 million hectares in 1981 and has since declined to 647 million hectares; grainland per person has shrunk by over half since 1950. This is the secondary effect.
To approach food production on a causal level means to approach it on a sustainable level. There are three basic ways of accomplishing this, and all three will be needed.
The first way is to adopt minimum tillage or no tillage practices. Historically, farmers have prepared land for seeding by plowing, disking or harrowing the soil. This disturbance of the soil renders it much more suseptible to erosion by wind or water.
In minimum tillage practice, farmers simply drill seeds into the soil with little or no preparation. This is a small disturbance in a narrow band of soil which leaves the rest of the soil undisturbed and protected by crop residues. Other practices, such as tree shelterbelts and strip cropping, can also preserve precious topsoil.
The second way to approach food production on a sustainable level is through attaining human population stabilization. Without this crucial step, which affects the entirety of humanity's ecological challenges, all other steps will sooner or later become almost academic.
Population stabilization, in turn, will require much larger investments than currently in three areas: education, health and family planning, especially in poor countries.
The third way to approach food production on a causal, sustainable level is to reduce animal herd and flock sizes to prevent overgrazing. For this we humans will need to look seriously at eating lower on the foodchain, that is, eating a diet grounded in the plant kingdom.
What about feeding grain to livestock instead of grass? This is not a sustainable solution. It takes approximately 20 times as much land and 100 times as much water to produce a pound of meat as to produce a pound of grain.
It can readily be seen, therefore, that for sustainable food production humanity as a whole will most likely need to shift, sooner or later, to a plant-based diet.
Keeping in mind our distinction between symptoms and causes, we now turn to that subject:
(This is the end of Part 8. Go to Part 9.)
—jim sloman, 9.21.04 for May 18
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