A recent report by the UK Government’s chief scientific adviser, Professor Sir John Beddington, on GM (genetically modified) foods has triggered discussion around the globe – Beddington states that GM is necessary if we’re to avoid a massive global food shortage and resulting hunger crisis in the future. Between 2009 and 2010, the area planted to GM crops increased from 200,000 ha to more than 650,000 ha, that’s about 2.5 times the ACT (ref). The increase was mainly due to cotton and canola, the two biggest GM crops in Australia. You can read more about Beddington’s report here.
There’s no doubt that food production is going to become a bigger challenge as the global population grows while agricultural productivity falls. But I for one am much more supportive of the ‘urban agriculture’, community gardens and growing our own food than I am of GM. To me, GM seems to be a response to the symptom, not the cause. It’s a way of making the current, unsustainable approach to farming – the large scale, monoculture-based style – work. But really, what we should all be looking at, and what many groups, cities and even nations around the world are looking at, is getting back to the basics of food production.
And by that, I mean growing, packing, selling and eating food locally. It’s about integrating food production into our way of life so that it’s not something that happens hundreds or thousands of miles away, but is a part of our every day. It’s about eating with the seasons so that each new season brings its own delights and surprises, tastes we haven’t experienced since the same time last year, instead of being able to buy the same things almost all year round, yet with those things never tasting like we remember them tasting from our childhood. It’s about having a veggie patch in the backyard and swapping produce with neighbours and friends to make up for failures or to pass on excess produce. To me, the potential global food shortage is a wonderful opportunity for us to get back to basics, to bring food production closer to home, to spend time outside instead of inside and to help build that sense of community that we all say is missing.
Here are just a few links to interesting and inspiring articles and events:
- An International Conference on Urban Harvest and Sustainability will be held in Seixal, Portugal, in April
- The role of urban agriculture and community gardening in the growth of cities in East-Africa: consequences for urban food supply
- Check out this audio clip of one man’s $US30 million vision to reinvent Detroit, USA
- The urban agriculture news website is an excellent resource for more information on urban agriculture
Community gardening at 'Organoponico', Havana, Cuba (borrowed from The Croft)
Urban agriculture in Chicago (borrowed from RUAF)
Well, that’s a wrap. Time to go and play in the veggie garden. Until next time…
