Chapter 4: Cultivating Food Security

Danielle Nierenberg and Brian Halweil

For many people around the world, poverty, soil degradation, population growth, and water shortages continue to be the main causes of hunger. But the biggest threats to global food security in coming decades will likely be quite different; on top of these traditional concerns are a range of new and unprecedented threats that will challenge food production at both the local and national levels, including the loss of crop and livestock diversity, the emergence of new agricultural diseases, and the interplay between agriculture and climate change.

The disturbing pictures of Asian farmers recently forced to incinerate millions of chickens because of avian flu foreshadow the variety of new farm diseases—like Nipah virus and mad cow disease—that have emerged in recent years, and that threaten both the food chain and human health. At the same time, uniformity in our crop fields and livestock herds not only invites new diseases, but also leaves our farms wide open and vulnerable to the spread of food-borne pathogens and malicious bio-warfare attacks. Perhaps the most important new threat, however, will arise from the interplay between agriculture and climate change. Plant scientists from Asia have found that rising temperatures may reduce grain yields in the tropics by as much as 30 percent over the next 50 years.

Yet just as the current and evolving threats to food security are numerous, so are the solutions. Our most important tool is not new chemicals or fertilizers or genetically engineered seeds, but a new approach to farming that depends on the knowledge of farmers and the sophisticated use of the environment around them.