It will need high- input agriculture in order to grow far greater volumes of food from the limited land and water available to support the teeming urban populations— and it will need science- based organic and low- input systems because these are what most of the world’s farmers use and can be highly productive; they are also sustainable because they mainly use human labor instead of fossil fuel–based inputs. The ideological divide between high- intensity and smallholder farming is epitomized in the fierce public and media debates that have taken place in many countries over ge ne tically modified crops, the use of pesticides, and the role of agribusiness.
Regardless of the vehemence with which either side argues its case, it is highly unlikely the world will come down in favor of one and reject the other. To forcibly return the world to a condition of small- scale, low- input farming would be a prescription for mass starvation. And to turn global agriculture over wholesale to intensive modern broadacre farming would throw a billion subsistence farmers off their land, as well as expose the entire food supply to shortages of nutrients or fossil fuels.
Proponents of both forms of agriculture need to join forces to solve a common challenge facing the human race rather than decrying each other’s approach: organic, low- input, and smallholder farming systems need to become more science- based in order to raise yields reliably and lose less food post- harvest—and advanced farming systems must seek ways to produce more food with far less energy, water, land, and chemicals. Above all, both schools must continue to search ceaselessly for ways to minimize their impact on the wider environment and to share the resulting knowledge freely with each other.
That smallholders have a place in global agriculture is clear from evidence that the smaller the farm, the more food it tends to produce per unit of land. This has sparked a fifty- year dispute between advocates of largescale and small- scale agriculture on which, to be frank, the jury is still out so far as feeding the world is concerned. It may well turn out that productive smallholders are needed to feed their families and local communities, whereas high- intensity broadacre farming and agri- food systems need to lift productivity to feed the world’s burgeoning urban populace. Each, at present, feeds about half the world’s people, and both are essential to our future. Arguing about which is the better of the two systems and should thus become the global model for food production is therefore not only pointless but, in the present context of emerging shortages, risky. Both need far more support— and more than lip ser vice from governments.
Repair Damaged Land
