The impending food crisis will require unprecedented collaboration between engineers and the farming industry
The beginning of the year often has a vaguely doom-laden air about it, and 2010 hasn’t disappointed so far. Brought to its knees by the white stuff, the UK, warns National Grid, could soon be facing up to the ugly reality of an energy shortfall.
Meanwhile, if the government’s direst predictions are to be believed, the current spate of snow-induced panic buying could be a grim foreshadowing of a future food crisis.
Talking at this week’s Oxford Farming conference, environment secretary Hilary Benn, warned that the spiraling world population and the ravages of climate-change could quickly undermine the security of the UK’s food supply.
Benn’s comments were made at the launch of the government’s 2030 food plan, a package of ideas aimed at shoring up the UK’s food supply by boosting domestic food production.
No one would dispute that this is an issue requiring serious attention. Back in 2008, the government’s chief scientific adviser John Beddington, described the impending food crisis as the biggest challenge facing humanity. With the amount of land available for cultivation decreasing, the world’s food supply, he said, needs to increase by 50 per cent by 2050.
The main thrust of the government’s food plan appears to be that by urging people to grow their own and buy sustainably farmed food it should be possible to effect positive change in farming and retail practice.
It’s a worthy aim, but given the scale of the challenge, the idea that people power will avert a food crisis is, we would argue, somewhat naïve. The reality is that to produce enough food at the right price, will require the farming industry to engage with Engineers to an extent not seen since the golden days of the industrial revolution.
It will be ever greater levels of sophistication – from fleets of robotic harvesters to smart sensors that monitor the soil for nutrients, pests and disease – and not a mass grow your own movement that will keep food on our tables over the coming decades.
Fortunately, as a forthcoming report in The Engineer points out, engineers are already awake to the challenges and opportunities this crisis presents. The Technology Strategy board along with DEFRA and the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) is investing to £75m in a food Innovation platform – that’s investigating a variety of new approaches to boosting production. Admittedly, it’s a drop in the ocean alongside the investments in some other sectors, but it’s a start – and it might just herald the dawn of a new age of hi-tech farming.
Reviewing the history of farming and agriculture I don’t see anything to suggest that increased mechanisation, monoculture and artificial nutrient addition has lead to a more sustainable food production model in fact the opposite is true if anything.
On the other hand, re-connecting people with the sources of food by local production and home production will promote a healthier respect for its value and lead to less food waste.
It is not just about making more tones of food at any cost for us to squander but also about restoring a healthy relationship with the food we consume.
As an engineer myself, i somtimes fall into the trap of assuming that we can engineer our way out of problems with greater technology but somtimes a more wholistic interpretation of the problem gives a better solution.
Food production requires, amongst other things, warmth and CO2. Clearly the high level of human population and its increasing emmisions of Carbon Dioxide should be a benefit in combatting food shortages! This could be either a flattening spiral, or a steepening one, depending on how we produce food, and how we damp population growth.
WHY Oh! WHY do we not simply stop paying farmers for ‘set-aside’ and start growing food in all the fields that are currently unused? In my area in Ash all the fields around me are unused now, but used to be highly productive. Politicians take off the blinkers.
Why has this suddenly landed at the doors of engineers, this issue has been around for a long time, and should be at the doors of Government where it belongs.
Modern farming technologies demand larger machines, larger fields, and the destruction of numerous hedgerows, and the wildlife it sustains; wildlife essential to farming. Many countries have the space to utilise these large fields and machinery, the UK does not, our current road networks cannot cope with traffic demand, let alone significantly larger farming machines.here we encounter our first problem, moving machines from field to field, then there is the investment needed from cash strapped farmers, as well as the technically complex machines maintenance costs when they go wrong.
Many of us are old enough to remember the European Agricultural policies, these essentially divided up farming between many European countries, UK farmers were essentially frozen out, and all this while good food was turned back into the ground as it did not conform to a specified shape or colour. Much of this food could have been used for the processing industries for ready meals, who cares what shape their carrot was when it was harvested? when its chopped up in their can of vegetable soup it is irrelevant, and another waste of food.
My opinion is that it is another political issue, both UK and European, which has failed; and everyone is looking to engineers to give them a simple solution to a complex problem.
It seems to me that it is time that Government woke up to the reality that the Financial Sector may be good for the Balance of Payments, but it is precious little use for anything else and started to show some real support for our productive industries, such as manufacturing and agriculture ~ can we eat money?
Wealthy nations like ours have very low risk of food supply and affordability. However, if ever supply and affordability were compromised, the bulk of the nation would actually be healthier, as in the war, by the fact the less desirable foods became scarce.
The comments made are right; any problems are entirely human and political. Engineers have little part to play in the efficient UK production.
However, globally, politically minded engineers can help. Stop the almost criminal use of land and food crops for biofuels and promote the efficient use of solar power to heat desalination plants to allow for intensive agriculture in hot dry countries.
Treat CO2 as a vital ingredient for plant life on which all life on earth depends and stop treating it as a pollutant.