By Maggie Romuld

The most recent United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) figures indicate that 1.02 billion people are under-nourished worldwide. Conventional wisdom would suggest if that many people are hungry, we need to boost our efforts to modernize agriculture. After all, it worked in the past. Industrialized agriculture, the post-war "Green Revolution," dramatically increased agricultural output and for decades the world enjoyed more of everything - more wheat, more rice, more cows per hectare, more meat, more eggs and more milk per animal. But if the Green Revolution was the answer, how can it be that one-sixth of humanity suffers from continual and severe hunger, and last year, 100 million more people than the year before went hungry? How is it possible that in 2008, in the midst of plenty, a global food crisis erupted?

Some authors suggest that even more people, perhaps two billion more, live with perpetual food insecurity. If close to half of all humans are apparently either hungry or malnourished, the great techno-agricultural movement of the past half-century was not progress at all, and fifty years of unchecked and unsustainable development, inequitable trade and unbalanced agricultural policies have combined to throw the global food system into complete disarray. As we move into a period of mounting environmental degradation, escalating fuel costs and changing climate, some people are starting to question how history will reconcile the successes of the Green Revolution against its environmental and human costs, and there are those who believe that in the future, agro-ecologically managed farms may be the only viable form of agriculture. The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), with support from the United Nations (UN), the World Bank and hundreds of scientists, has declared that the most promising solutions to the world's food crisis include investing in agro-ecology through research, extension and farming. Numerous scientific reports from the UN suggest that African productivity, in particular, can be most effectively increased through investment in organic and agro-ecological farming, and a recent report backed by the UN and World Bank argues for sustainable agriculture rather than a "reliance on chemical-intensive practices and genetic engineering."

Agro-ecology, the "science of sustainable agriculture," employs methods that aim to achieve social, economic and environmental balance. Critics of organic agriculture worry that the agro-ecologic methods it employs - of small scale, integrated and low-input production - can effectively address environmental issues, but cannot possibly feed the world. University of Michigan researchers, however, were able to demonstrate that current scientific knowledge does not support that concern. They found that even under conservative estimates, organic agriculture could provide almost as much food on average at a global level as is produced today, and using a more "realistic" estimation, organic agriculture could actually increase global food production by as much as 50 percent.

It has also been argued that organic agriculture would be more conducive to food security in developing countries than most conventional production systems because it is more likely to be sustainable in the long term. In developing countries, especially among the most impoverished groups, land is farmed at a very low level of intensity because the farmers do not have the means to buy chemicals or high-yield seeds. Poor farmers need inexpensive farming methods and organic agriculture, relying solely on local resources, fits that requirement. Anti-hunger and faith groups also argue in favour of organic agriculture and have warned about the effects of promoting conventional agriculture and biotechnology to the poor. They fear that poor farmers, left behind by the last Green Revolution, will again be cast aside if the world turns to biotechnology, and they suggest that genetically modified (GM/GMO) crop technology is disastrous for small farmers and rural communities because farmers get deeper and deeper into debt as they struggle to pay for high-yield GM varieties and all the fertilizers and herbicides they require. As we wait for a second Industrial Revolution to clean up the unintended consequences of the first, we need also to plan for Green Revolution 2.0 - a transformation of agriculture that could increase opportunities for people in the developing world to produce their own food. Trying to secure food for six billion people is a daunting task. To provide global food security for an estimated nine billion people by the year 2050 will require an intensive commitment. Industrial agriculture technologies have benefited from decades of public and private research. If the same level of funding and expertise is applied to developing organic agriculture into a neo-traditional blend of science, technology and traditional knowledge, there is tremendous potential to prevent wide-spread famine and save millions of lives.

It has been amply demonstrated that agricultural systems focused on local development and the sustainable use of natural resources are at least as efficient and productive as conventional agricultural systems, and numerous scientists and global leaders believe that developing countries, in particular, should return to sustainable methods of agriculture better suited to their local culture and environment. However, whether sufficient food is produced organically, conventionally, or through biotechnology, the problem of equitable distribution also needs to be resolved. No amount of tinkering with food production can get food into the mouths of the hungry if political systems leave them without access to it or the money to buy it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------