“In this era of
tightening world food supplies, the ability to grow food is fast becoming a new
form of geopolitical leverage. Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.” – Lester R. Brown, author of a new book :Full Planet, Empty Plates: The
New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity
My past posts have
touched on the agricultural impacts in
environmental degradation and health/nutritional problem. Brown goes even further to exert that 'food is now the weakest link of human civilization'. I haven’t read his new book, but from this
video and an article published by the man himself , he does present a convincing case that food looks to be an important
challenge of the future. While I'm sure many would disagree or view with
scepticism his catastrophic doomsday predictions, if he has gotten his facts
right about the number households going below the "minimum threshold"
and preparing for foodless days as a norm, and this really does warrant for
greater action. Whether you would agree if this is the most
important environmental problem or not, one thing is for sure: any solution has
to take into account (especially light of climate uncertainty and the social
trends (population boom and diet shifts)) that any environmental solution that
touches on both 1) production/food security and 2) environmental
sustainability. Foley et al (2011)
explains that in the past, systems and movements have
addressed one or the other but not both. With a new insight gained on the
different types of problems ahead of us, any viable solution cannot, as far as
possible, ignore both issues or bring
the two into conflict (i.e. it cannot be a zero-sum game!)
Stay tuned for the
next post in which I will try to lay out some principles by which we could
evaluate practical alternatives for the future :)
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