Lately I have been thinking a lot about food, and more precisely sustainable and environmentally friendly food.

You see, I look at what we here in the developed world eat, and then I see images of children in the developing world starving, and like many people, I can’t accept that this is the way the world should be.

Now I am an admirer of Norman Borlaug, and his Green Revolution, though I imagine that if he had done his work today, it would certainly not be called that. Now his work led Mexico from being a net importer of grain in 1943, to self sufficiency in 1956 and finally to becoming a grain exported by 1964. The Green Revolution has a number of environmental issues though, substantial use of pesticides, loss of agricultural biodiversity, heavy use of water etc. But considering the rate of population growth this century, it clearly has helped to keep the world feed, and if we didn’t use these techniques, surly we would have seen many more famines that we have.

Now this leads me onto organic food, personally I like the idea of organic, personally I don’t like the term though, I prefer traditional agriculture, as for thousands of years it the only way we could grow crops. But yields is an issue, with some crops the yields can be as low as 50% compared with intensive farming methods, and I honestly do not think that we could feed the worlds current population if we went 100% organic. But environmentally speaking, organic is best, fewer pesticides, less water use and increased biodiversity.

Its clear that continued use of the techniques pioneered by Borlaug are not good, and the environment is suffering. So for my part I think the world needs to move towards more organic food production. But do I necessarily mean certified organic, no personally I think that if synthetic fertilizers are used that say contain only vitamins and minerals, that’s fine, I know its not with a lot of people, but that’s just my personal opinion. GMO is another matter altogether, I don’t understand the science to form any kind of opinion about it, though we have been altering crops for millennia with selective breeding, so I sometimes wonder if GMO is simply a more advanced version of that.

But I am a real hypocrite, I don’t always buy organic, and I don’t always buy local, I try, and I am getting better, but sometimes my budget just doesn’t stretch far enough, I wish it did though. And at the same time I am aware that I am thinking like a western elitist, as a friend from Pakistan says, I have never know the pains of hunger, and as he says from his point of view. He told me that he looks at me and my ilk and thinks we are simply rich idiots prancing around thinking we know whets best for the world and telling him if he has to starve to make sure our melons can be organic then tough.

Now I do think if I was in his shoes and was starving, I would be screaming at the top of my voice for farmers to farm as intensively as possible and use the finest GM crops science could manufacture, oh and use tractors galore and fly it to me on the fastest jet planes possible, cause I don’t care about carbon footprints, I am just starving to death!

So where am I going with all of this, well I really don’t know, this world has so many problems, most of them caused by man, we have grown simply too numerous for this world to handle and we need to start thinking about reversing population in order to ensure the world can sustain not only the human race, but the other wondrous plants and animals on earth.

But even if we don’t go down the organic route, how can we feed the ever growing world population without further damaging our environment, personally I don’t think we can, the world is at breaking point and we need as a matter of urgency to either bring population growth down to zero, or better still reverse it so its negative population growth.

So to sum up my thoughts on food:-

• I like the idea of organic food
• I am not sure if organic farming can feed the world
• Local is best
• For things that cannot be grown locally Fairtrade is best
• Synthetic fertilizers of vitamins and minerals are ok
• Population growth needs to go to zero or less to allow us to be able to feed the world.

None of it makes sense but then again, it something I can’t make sense of in my own mind anyway!

But I will finish with this question:- Did the Green Revolution solve the potential hunger crises caused by the human pollution explosion of the 20th century, or did it enable that growth to happen?

Sorry for rambling on!

Michael