About this in his article "If the EU wants to fight hunger around the world, he needs to put an end to food elitism" argues the author - Fred Rider (defender of consumer interests and economist in the field of health from Germany, worked on reforming health in North America, Europe and Of several former Soviet republics. Since 2012, he worked as an associate researcher in the Montreal Economic Institute).
"By 2070, approximately 10.5 billion people will live in the world, and they all need to be fed.
Fortunately, technical progress in agriculture and technologies helped us to provide food with an additional 5.5 billion people in the last century compared to 2 billion people who inhabited land in 1920.
Stanford University calculated: if we were still used by the agricultural technology of 1960, additional agricultural land would be required in size with Russia, the largest country of the world to get the same yield as under modern technologies. However, despite such a huge success, the problem of hunger remained to be solved.
Unfortunately, the current political story in one of the richest regions of the world seems to ignore the problems facing us and requires us to turn to less effective agriculture.
The strategy of the European Union "from the farm to the fork" (F2F) is aimed at creating a more sustainable food system by the end of this decade. However, looking at the ideas offered at present, it is concerned about the fact that this new political basis will lead to the opposite result not only Europe, but also the whole world. Namely, to a potential food crisis with huge geopolitical consequences.
The EU plans to increase the proportion of organic agriculture in the total agricultural production from the current 7.5% to 25%. In addition, it is planned to reduce the use of pesticides by 50%. At the same time, the F2F strategy does not include new technologies that allow farmers to achieve the same crops that they can receive at the current level of use of pesticides.
For several reasons, including due to low yields and, as a result, the need to increase land for agricultural production, organic agriculture is particularly addicted to the satisfaction of global food demand.
What does this mean to feed 10.5 billion people in 2070?
More organic agriculture in Europe means lower yields / food volumes in the EU and price increases for consumers.
The shortage in Europe is likely to be offset by additional imports of food from other parts of the world, which will lead to a global increase in food prices. And if for rich regions of the world, such as Europe, the rise in prices will be unpleasantly affected by consumers, then for people already living on the verge of poverty and facing hunger, the situation will have extremely negative consequences.
According to estimates of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), farmers around the world would lose 30-40% of the harvest due to pests and diseases, having lost such means of protecting plants as insecticides or herbicides.
Up to 28% of all cases of liver cancer in the whole world can be attributed to aflatoxins, type of mycotoxins. Without allowing farmers to apply fungicides that reduce the impact of these toxins per person, we continue to risk millions of lives.
At the moment, pesticides are declared an ecological community of evil and in many countries work is underway to reduce the use of the SZR, many less safe substances are derived from use. The emergence of genetically modified cultures and the latest achievements in the field of gene editing make it possible to further reduce the number of chemicals on the fields.
Many critics of pesticides also oppose the use of gene editing. This leads to a dilemma: reducing food production during growing demand. No need to be an economist to understand the upcoming increase in food prices.
About 20% of the world's population lives in South Asia. Due to the Caste System of India, farmers from the lower castes live and are engaged in agriculture on Earth, due to climate change subject to regular floods with high probability. It will adversely affect rice crop. Genetically edited cultures allow rice plants to dive under water for up to two weeks and to ensure high yields. Such technologies clearly change the rules of the game for the poor and hungry, and they should be taken. There are no humanitarian arguments against them, and it's time to realize that our future agricultural policy can cause mass hunger in some parts of Africa and Asia with such a wave of migration, which we have not seen from the period of migration in the V and VI centuries.
Unfortunately, history shows that such mass uncontrolled migration flows are usually accompanied by wars and riots.
Western idea to make agriculture more organic will lead to a global increase in food prices and cause damage to those who are in a distress.
We live on the same planet, and therefore it is necessary to conduct a reasonable food policy that recognizes that hunger is still a problem with which 10% of the world's population is facing every day. No one, regardless of whether he is a supporter of mass migration or not, should not want a massive influx of starving. Some adjustments of the future EU policy are needed to soften many negative factors of poverty and hunger.
The EU strategy "from the farm to the fork" should take into account this and do not jeopardize our ability to feed the ever-growing population. "
(Source: ConsumerChoICecenter.org. Author: Fred Rider).