You know that time before takeoff? When you hear about how these invisible oxygen masks are going to magically drop down to save you in case of an emergency? How if you’re traveling with a child or someone with limitations, you should put yours on first and then help those who can’t help themselves?
No matter how many times I hear this, I think twice. My gut instinct is to help those who can’t help themselves before thinking of myself.
So it’s fascinating to hear panelists at the Climate Change and Food Security side event yesterday agree that the key to global food security is to focus on small scale indigenous farmers. To make sure they can grow enough food to sustain themselves before they even think about branching out to feed the rest of the world.
No small concensus, considering the fact that today these people, who grow over 70% of the world’s agriculture, receive zero in subsidies from governments bedded down with big pesticide and agribiz. This would be the folks living in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and parts of India, whose lands are rapidly emerging as the sole candidates to feed a projected 370 million hungry people by 2050.
To some, it appears as if the perplexed industrialized world, now feverishly scratching its bloated, overheating head, is zooming in on the LDCs as key to the solution to this self-induced mess called climate change, which threatens to radically rock their yachts.
Talk about a paradigm shift! Think about it. Here we have a huge population of indigenous folk, enslaved for hundreds of years in poverty, force feeding their lands with toxic fertilizers, machine-driven farming and imported seed stocks to grow cash crops. Now, the negotiators up in ‘The Moon’ are devising highly sophisticated financial mechanisms to incentivize them to remain put and re-cultivate their land by planting low carbon yield crops and fruit-bearing trees to offset the rest of the world's carbon overloads.
Why? Cause the bigwigs just can't deal with their blatant addiction to fake energies and currencies. And they are the ones with the most bargaining clout who control the very language of the official documents which drive international policy.
Urgent Landing. Photo by Ben Heine.
Case in Point: South India
A farmer in Batu Arang, India. Photo by Zach
Currently, there are only a few pockets of food production in India, says Dr. Malla Reddy, whose organization works with a group of 3000 rain-fed farmers. "And the experts are arguing that these are the only places that are suitable to produce food."
Reddy says his country’s support of industrialized agriculture is responsible for the recent suicides of 800 small scale farmers who could no longer compete with the highly mechanized agri-machines.
"They don’t want to stay on the land. The young people are moving into the cities," says Dr. Reddy. "Farming has become the least preferred occupation. In India, 70% of the farmers have no other way to make a living. If someone offered them a job working in an office tomorrow, they would give it up."
Reddy envisions an India characterized by a highly nutritious, decentralized food production system, where each family is capable of feeding itself with crops grown on its own small plot of land. Creating sustainable livelihoods, he says, is dependent on climate sensitive agriculture and food security.
Budding farmers in Arusha, Tanzania, attend classes to learn about sustainable agriculture. Photo by Lizzy Leighty.
Today, groups of farmers gather together to attend Farmer Field Schools where local trained experts teach principles of sustainable agriculture, non toxic pest control, the use of tree-fed drought resistant crops like millets, vegetables and fruits.
All this, says Reddy, to overcome the damage caused by the ‘Green Revolution’ which introduced High Input Destructive Agriculture (HIDA).
The Future of Food
A Tanzanian women works in a community garden. Photo by Lizzy Leighty.
• Around 70 percent of the world population will live in cities or urban areas by 2050, up from 49 percent today.
• World population will rise from 6.8 billion today to 9.1 billion in 2050.
• Nearly all of the population growth will occur in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa's population is expected to grow the fastest (up 108 percent, 910 million people), and East and South East Asia's the slowest (up 11 percent, 228 million).
So how can we assure food for all in a warming world?
Experts at yesterday's panel advocate a radical shift in government regulations, providing incentives to protect local markets, public buying systems for staple crops and facilitating the efficient transfer of surplus to storage. National budgets would promote the value of the small scale farmer in food security. Training programs would include agro-ecological approaches and, as farmers become more self-reliant, food aide would gradually be removed.
All of these steps would ensure the creation of sustainable agricultural systems that enable adaptation and support biodiverse ecosystems.
"You can't universalize solutions, straight jacket the people by imposing one idea of how they should farm," says Reddy.
What works in Bangladesh, given its climate, its culture and its unique geography, is not going to work in sub-Saharan Africa or South India.
Reflection
Look up. That emergency oxygen mask is floating above your head. Look to your right and your first instinct might be that you have the ability to intervene in time to ensure someone else's survival. But in the process you just might die yourself. So who benefits?
Somehow the recent nightmare in the Gulf of Mexico flicks into my consciousness. All those millions of gallons of oil just 'disappeared.' Sunk to the bottom of the ocean through a toxic intervention so that we could avert the imminent death of a vital culture and delicate ecosystems that were already in need of major rehabilitation.
What if years ago, as the fist signs of cabin decompression appeared, we had placed the oxygen mask, not on the most discernably vulnerable first, but rather on ourselves? Before we got lightheaded. Lighthearted. Weakened and compromised in our ability to see with clarity what needed to be done.
Perhaps, in making that original correct decision, we would have gained insight, a purity of vision and the wisdom to avert the possibility of the very existence of a Deepwater Horizon. Of any off-shore drilling rig.
Perhaps we would have been able to recognize when the time came to just stop. Re-evaluate. Regroup. Re-vitalize.
Doing nothing is no longer an option. We have to believe, however, that doing the right thing is.
Don't we?