A Radical Rethink Around Food Production

Britain FarmNow this is good stuff. Britain is asking for a radical rethink on food production- which sounds like a fantastic idea. Though if it is really the government asking for something radical from the people, they better be careful- and for a country with such bland food to begin with, maybe they are just playing culinary catch up…

But what does food production look like right now? I was writing about water footprint labels this weekend- their intention is to raise awareness around how much water is used in the production of food. I realized I had no idea how much water it took to create most of the food that I eat- and was surprised to learn that meat and dairy require far more water than any other kind of food to produce.

Will suggesting that people be vegetarian be part of Britain’s rethink? It is radical. Where will organic, local, hyper-local and self-produced suggestions fall? What kind of factors will they be evaluating? Well, as Britain is an island, they are dealing with the same issues the rest of the world is dealing with but on an enclosed scale, the way a city like San Francisco or New York deals with overcrowding- at some point you just run out of space and have to innovate. Cities find more space by making things smaller and building up and down. Islands will have to innovate in a few key areas to meet some basic challenges:

1.    How to grow more food using less water? 2.    How to grow more food using less energy? 3.    How to grow more food using fewer fertilizers?4.    How to offset the effects of climate change around agriculture?

Big questions. And a big challenge. Globally, food production will have to rise by 70% of current levels in order to meet demand in 2050. That’s significant and possibly not do-able. And then, of course, there is the next 50 years. At some point we have to hit the asymptote, the threshold, the plateau- but it’s not now, not when there are so many challenges to tackle. 

1.    Water is one of the most taken-for-granted substances on Earth, as well as the most absolutely necessary. It’s everywhere, and it’s wasted everywhere. More food using less water? Start with reducing evaporation, which means growing more things inside where we can control the growing conditions, the water given, etc.2.    Use less energy? For outdoor farming, upgrading farm equipment to run on renewable energy could be a huge benefit and energy-saver. And anything growing inside is easier to control down to detail, so we could track the energy, though it may require as much or more energy for all of the automated and tracking systems required indoors. 3.    You can’t, really. Fertilizers grow more of everything. If we stop using them food produced on the same land will go down. Unless we start to re-learn and use natural fertilizer methods, which may or may not be able to increase yield on the same plot of land. I imagine trying to maintain crop yield without fertilizer will be challenge enough. 4.    Move the fields to where the better growing areas are.

You want a real radical idea, Britain? Re-arrange your entire country around where the best areas are to grow food. As in, tear down cities and create farms on the water, which will require less water, use less energy, and give higher natural yields, and it will be new fields that will not be used to fertilizers. And the city will be gone which will fight global warming.