Both subsistence and commercial agriculture face a complex challenge: to produce more food for a growing world while preserving Earth’s agricultural resources for the future. The future of food and agriculture is being pulled in global and local directions. On the one hand, an increasingly integrated global agricultural system is devoted to producing the most food at the lowest cost for the world’s nearly 8 billion humans. But critics charge that the global agriculture system is causing major long-term damage to the environment and to local ecosystems for the sake of short-term production.

Key Issue 4: Why Do Farmers Face Sustainability Challenges?

Global Food Trade Total agricultural exports from all countries have increased rapidly from $448 billion 2000 to $769 billion in 2016. Exporting countries benefit from increased revenues, and importing countries meet the food needs of their people. Prior to World War II, Europe was the only major food importing region, as they historically used their colonies as suppliers of food. East Asia and the former Soviet Union became net food importers in the 1950s, Southwest Asia & North Africa during the 1970s, South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa during the 1980s, and Central Asia in 2008. Japan is the clear leader in the import of food, followed by the United Kingdom, China, and Russia. On a global scale food exports are moving from the Western Hemisphere to the Eastern Hemisphere. Agricultural exports from developing regions, Latin America and Southeast Asia have increased.

Trade Challenges for Developing Countries To expand production, subsistence farmers need higher yield seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, and machinery. For many African and Asian countries, the main way to obtain agricultural supplies is to import them from other countries. Most developing countries raise funds through the sale of crops in developed countries. Consumers in developed countries are willing to pay high prices for fruits and vegetables that would otherwise be out of season or for crops such as coffee and tea that cannot be grown in developed countries because of climate. The more land that is devoted to growing export crops, the less that is available to grow crops for domestic consumption.

Drug Trade The export crops chosen in some developing countries, particularly in Latin America and Asia, are those that can be converted to drugs. Cocaine is derived from coca leaf most of which is grown in Colombia and its neighboring countries in South America. Heroin is derived from the opium poppy plant, with Afghanistan the world’s major producer. Marijuana is cultivated throughout the world.

Losing Agricultural Land In the past, world food production increased primarily by expanding the amount of land designated for agriculture. As population increased during the Industrial Revolution, people simply staked a claim of unsettled land in uninhabited territory to produce more agricultural land (as seen in the American West during the nineteenth century). Despite only 11 percent of the world’s land area being cultivated, population has increased faster than agricultural land.

Loss of Land to Urbanization Expanding urban areas have caused a significant loss of farmland, especially in the eastern United States. In the United States, 200,000 hectares of the most productive farmland, known as prime agricultural land, is subject to suburban sprawl. In Maryland geographic information systems (GIS) have been used to identify prime agricultural land for preservation as urban areas continue to grow and expand.

Desertification In a process called desertification, human actions are causing land to deteriorate to a desert-like condition. This process is more precisely referred to as semiarid land degradation. Excessive crop cultivation, animal grazing, and tree felling exhaust the soil’s nutrients and hinder agriculture. The Earth Policy Institute estimates that 2 billion hectares of land have suffered desertification. The leading causes of land degradation are: overgrazing (34 percent of the total), deforestation (30 percent), and agricultural use (28 percent). The U.N. estimates that desertification removes 27 million hectares of land from agricultural production every year. Excessive water also threatens agriculture in dry lands. Human-built irrigation systems may damage the land through inadequate drainage, or the buildup of salts that can severely damage or kill plants.

Improving Agricultural Productivity During the second half of the twentieth century, population increased at the fastest rate in human history. Massive global famine is projected by many experts, as increases in agricultural land cannot keep up with population growth. Increased agricultural productivity has prevented many famines, and has resulted in an expansion of food supply. Today, the same amount of land can produce greater yields due to new agricultural practices.

Increased Productivity: Commercial Farmers In the seventeenth century the second agricultural revolution increased productivity through crop rotation and livestock breeding. Recently, productivity has also increased among commercial farmers. New seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, mechanical equipment, and management practices have allowed commercial farmers to obtain greatly increased yields per area of land.

Intensification by Subsistence Farmers For hundreds if not thousands of years, subsistence farming in developing countries yielded enough food for people living in rural villages to survive, assuming that no drought, flood, or other natural disasters occurred. Suddenly in the late twentieth century, developing countries needed to provide enough food for a rapidly increasing population as well as for urban residents, who cannot grow their own food. Subsistence farmers increased the supply of food by adopting new farming methods and leaving farm land fallow for shorter periods of time.

The Green Revolution The invention and rapid diffusion of more productive agricultural techniques during the 1970s and 1980s is called the green revolution. The green revolution involves two main practices: the introduction of new higher-yield seeds and the expanded use of fertilizers. The new miracle seeds diffused rapidly around the world. To take full advantage of the new miracle seeds, farmers must use more fertilizer and machinery. Farmers need tractors and irrigation pumps to make the most effective use of the new miracle seeds. In developing countries, farmers cannot afford such equipment, fertilizers, or even the fuel for the tractors. To offset these costs, governments in developing countries must allocate scarce funds to subsidize the cost of seed, fertilizers, and machinery.

Applying Biotechnology to Agriculture In the late twentieth century, developments in genetic modification allow the alteration of genetic composition of plants and animals to ensure the dominance of the most favorable traits.

Sustainable Farming Low population growth and market saturation for most products has maintained a constant demand for food in developed countries. The most rapid increase in demand has been for organic food, including non-GMO food.

Organic Farming In organic agriculture crops are grown without the application of herbicides, pesticides, growth hormones, and only naturally occurring substances are used to promote growth. Worldwide, the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, classified 58 million hectares or 1 percent of the world’s farmland as organic in 2016. The leading countries with organic farmland include: Australia (47 percent of the world total), Argentina (5 percent), China (4 percent), and the United States (3 percent). According to USDA economists, organic food sales grew from $3 billion in 1997 to an estimated $50 billion in 2016. In organic farming GMO seeds are not used and animals consume crops grown on the farm and are not confined to small pens. The confinement of animals to small pens leads to surface water and groundwater pollution, while if they are allowed to roam, manure can contribute to soil fertility. Antibiotics are not used to promote weight gain, and are only used for therapeutic purposes.

Sustainable Land Management Soil erosion is an issue in the U.S. Midwest, where nutrient-rich top soil is washed away by excessive rainfall, or loosened by tillage making them susceptible to being washed away or blown away by wind. Conservation tillage is a method of soil cultivation that reduces soil erosion and runoff. Under conservation tillage, some of the previous harvest is left on the fields through the winter. No tillage leaves all of the soil undisturbed, and the entire residue of the previous year’s harvest is left untouched on the fields. Ridge tillage is a system of planting crops on ridge tops.

Conserving Agricultural Resources Plants and animals require water to survive and thrive. Lack of water is putting stress on agriculture in many regions, whereas an overabundance of water can cause soil erosion.

Agriculture and Water in California California’s limited water supply comes from two main sources: surface water, which is water that travels or gathers on the ground, like rivers, streams, and lakes; and groundwater, which is water that is pumped out from the ground. Recent persistent drought has severely reduced the amount of surface water captured. In years with normal rainfall, 70 percent of California’s water is supplied by surface water. Today, only 40 percent is supplied by surface water as a result of prolonged drought conditions. The distribution of water in California does not mirror the distribution of demand—most water supplies are located in the north, while Central and Southern California is where demand is primarily situated.

Government Policies In many countries, government policies affect food supply and prices. Some governments keep prices low, and in doing so reduce the incentive for farmers to increase production and sell their commodities for a profit. In the United States three agricultural policies aim to enhance the financial position of farmers.

• Farmers are encouraged to avoid producing crops that are in excess supply. To abate soil erosion the government encourages planting of clover and forage crops.

• The government sets a target price for a crop and pays the farmers the difference between market and target price.

• The government buys surplus production and sells or donates it to foreign countries.

The United States has averaged about $20 billion annually on farm subsidies in recent years. European farms are subsidized at an even higher rate compared to their American counterparts.

9.4

Biotechnology

The use of living organisms in the manufacture of drugs or other products or for environmental management

Combine

Machine that reaps, threshes, and cleans grain while moving over a field

Commodity chain (supply chain)

Links that connect production and distribution of goods

Conservation

The protection of wildlife and natural resources

Conservation tillage

A method of soil cultivation that reduces soil erosion and runoff.

Deforestation

Human-driven and natural loss of trees for not forest use

Desertification

The process of a dry area becoming drier and losing vegetation

Export commodity

Goods sent from one country to another for sale

Genetically Modified Organism

Living thing that has been altered through genetic engineering

Genetically modified organism (GMO)

A living organism that possesses a novel combination of genetic material obtained through the use of modern biotechnology.

Green Revolution

The spread of new technologies like high yield seeds and chemical fertilizers to the developing world in the 1960s and 1970s

Herbicide

A chemical to control unwanted plants.

Local food movements

Encouraging people to eat foods which are grown or farmed relatively close to the places of sale and preparation

Market gardening

Small-scale, manual labor agricultural production of a variety of crops to be sold locally

Organic agriculture

Farming that depends on the use of naturally occurring substances while prohibiting or strictly limiting synthetic substances, such as herbicides, pesticides, and growth hormones.

Organic farming

Farming that uses natural fertilizers and natural methods of pest control instead of artificial

Pesticide

A substance to control pests, including weeds.

Ridge tillage

A system of planting crops on ridge tops in order to reduce farm production costs and promote greater soil conservation.

Sustainable agriculture

Using farming techniques that protect the environment, public health, human communities, and animal welfare and can go on indefinitely

Truck farming

Commercial gardening and fruit farming, so named for the Middle English word truck, meaning "barter" or "exchange of commodities."