Urban sprawl...paving over farmland...turning once-fertile fields into cheap, poorly-constructed housing developments with evocative names like "The Olde Country Farm," or "Meadowlands Retreat," or something meaningless like that.

Aside from the fact that it makes anyone who works the land want to cry (or bust some developer's head), it begs the question of just how these people plan to eat. Someone, somewhere has got to raise that food from the ground and/or run that livestock.

"Oh," those proud homeowners say, "we just go to the Mega-Lo Mart down the street."

Right...

The whole scenario – combined with the issue we covered over the last couple of weeks on how human population is threatening to outstrip food supply – points up an issue that people will, sooner or later have to face: namely, where their food is coming from. Too many things in that grocery store travel over 1,000 miles from where they were produced. Not only does this require the use of petroleum (most of which is imported from nations whose people  are no fans of the U.S.A.), but it also means that if the weather turns ugly, or a landslide or other disaster takes out major transportation routes, there are going to be serious shortages.

Generally, it is a really bad idea to be so dependent on distant food sources.

In some places, people are starting to understand this and taking action by buying more locally-produced foods (from within a 200-mile radius) and adapting their diets throughout the year to what's available seasonally. Here's a good example: most lettuces and leafy salad greens are not readily available in the winter unless imported from warmer areas – but cabbages do quite well in the cold. What's wrong with coleslaw instead of a Waldorf or Caesar Salad when there's snow on the ground? And do you really need avocado’s from Mexico when its already summertime in your hemisphere?

Looking at country of origin (COOL) labes is a good start, but more could be done. Community gardens and home "victory gardens" are also part of the solution. The city of Portland, Oregon has already taken a vast inventory of arable land within its city limits for a time when they may have to depend on local resources.

In Detroit, Michigan, some folks are thinking about putting the idea of "community gardens" on steroids.

Without going into the economic policies of the last thirty years that have literally destroyed Motown, I'm happy to report that one of the last millionaires in that city is thinking of revitalizing it by re-inventing it – as a huge urban farm.

Urban farming is not a new idea, but it has not yet been proposed on such a massive scale. If John Hantz, who is willing to put $30 million of his own money where his mouth is, can convince the Detroit City Council to give his proposal a try, Detroit may yet be reborn into a better, more prosperous city than it ever was before – while feeding hundreds of thousands and serving as a model for the world.

More on this as it develops.

Last week I looked at the impending train wreck that will almost certainly occur if the human population continues to outstrip the ability of the planet to feed its members. Most population growth is happening in places like India, the Middle East, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa – places where arable land and water resources are not overly-abundant.

To make matters worse, the governments of these largely developing nations, in well-meaning but misguided attempts to "catch up" with the industrialized world, are paving over what farmland there is in the name of "development."

What, realistically, can be done?

It's Not Necessarily Shortages

Much of the problem has less to do with supply than it does with distribution. Used effectively, the existing cropland we have is more than enough to feed everyone on Earth. But while we may very well be able to increase production with fewer inputs than ever, most of this progress is not happening in those regions of the world most in need – and such progress may not be possible in those areas for reasons of climate or geography, or both.

Part of the problem lies with protectionist trade barriers as well as regulations that put some real constraints on farmers, particularly in Western Europe. It goes without saying that the EU, which is experiencing a population decline and can easily produce surpluses, is a lot closer to Africa than North America. Of course, the other problem is that many of these African countries (run by corrupt, self-serving dictatorships) would have difficulty paying for this surplus food.

Doing More With Less

Despite increased yields with fewer inputs over the past few decades, there are many places in the world where agriculture is still practiced in highly inefficient ways. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about Haiti and the devastating effect that centuries of "slash-and-burn" agriculture has had on that country.

Like it or not, most increased agricultural yields have occurred in industrialized countries using industrial methods. Perhaps, instead of sending armed troops to Haiti, we should be sending agronomists armed with plows, new kinds of fertilizers and more efficient scientific farming methods.

Water Equals What?

Finally, there is the ugly specter of water issues. Regions of the world that are the poorest are also those in which clean water is at a premium – or has been given over to industrial needs rather than agrarian ones. Farmers must consider what crops provide the greatest amount of caloric content for the least amount of water. For example, at current water costs (in US dollars), a pound of wheat can be grown for under ten cents, while protein-rich lentils and fava beans can be raised for a bit more, around 12.5 cents a pound. However, olives can run as much as .35 cents a pound, and when we start getting into beef, the cost goes up to a whopping $1.15 per pound or so.

Technology has been providing solutions to agricultural problems for many years, and there is no reason to think that kind of progress will stop. Yet, we must understand that a finite planet cannot support an infinite number of people. In the worst-case scenario, nature may take care of the problem with a cataclysm that we cannot imagine.

In the meantime, there will be difficult choices to be made.

Some people like to blame farmers and agriculture for most of the world’s problems – no, really! These folks start from the rise of city-states, the creation of economic and social hierarchies and the resulting oppression, and tie agriculture to the degradation of the environment, warfare and overpopulation. While there may be a small grain of truth in some of this (it is true that farming is the starting point of a high human population) it is a simplistic analysis of a great many complex variables.

Sure, farming starts us on the road to a big population – but consider that it took well over 100,000 years for the world's human population to reach one billion, which happened right around the year 1804, despite the fact that agriculture had been around for at least 10,000 years. Industrialization, not agriculture, is what makes genuinely huge (and environmentally destructive) populations possible.

Today, between 70 and 80 million new humans are added to the net population each year, mostly in regions of the world least able to support them with local resources. For the past several decades, countries in these regions have been struggling to industrialize and catch up with the "modern" nations of the world. It the process, they have de-prioritized agriculture, taking millions of acres out of production in order to build factories and cities. In fact, the portion of the world's GDP that is agriculturally based has dropped by half in the last fifty years, as more developing countries shift their economies to services, resource extraction, and industry.

Yet, despite real food problems in many areas of the world, starvation is no more a threat now than it was fifty years ago – less, in fact. This is because farmers have adopted new techniques and technologies, many as part of Norman Borlaug’s “Green Revolution”, that have massively expanded outputs while allowing fewer and fewer people to work in agriculture. Ever more output from ever smaller inputs - score one for technology!

However, it doesn't take a genius or an advanced degree in social and economic sciences to see the possibility of eventual tragic consequences. When a tiny fraction of the world’s people produce a huge fraction of the world’s food in an industrialized fashion, the potential for a global agricultural collapse becomes much higher, because all the eggs are in one technological basket.

Those risks are likely to grow worse as time goes on, in large part because people in poorer areas of the world (especially southeast Asia) are growing wealthier and adjusting their traditional diets in favor a more meat-heavy Westernized nutritional regime. (For example, beef consumption in China has increased eightfold in the last thirty years – both because the Chinese are growing wealthier and can thus afford more meat anyway, and also because patterns of consumer preferences are shifting to make beef a more popular choice.)

In some ways this is wonderful because people are living better – but at the same time, it represents a huge strain on the ecology and our food delivery system. Food for thought – and a balancing act that I will continue to address here.

The earthquake that struck Haiti last week has been much in the news, and while it was a humanitarian disaster, it was by no means the first – and it was exacerbated not only by a corrupt political regime, but also by previous natural disasters. The results of these disasters might have been mitigated had it not been for decades of poor land management and environmental stewardship. It’s by no means a stretch.  Haiti is the poorest country in the America’s and it is primarily an agriculture based society. 

A Once Rich and Prosperous Land

As a French colony in the eighteenth century, Haiti was a rich and productive land. Two-fifths of all coffee and two-thirds of all sugar consumed in European countries were grown on Haitian plantations. One problem - this wealth was produced on the backs of hundreds of thousands of African slaves living under brutal conditions that would have made Stalin's gulags look like Club Med. The other problem is that the colony's economy was based on those two cash crops – and not much else. Both required that thousands of acres of forest be removed.

During the bloody rebellion that resulted in Haitian independence in 1803, many of the plantations that might have sustained the people of the new nation were destroyed. Land was doled out to families who knew only of "slash-and-burn" farming techniques when it came to raising food.

Over the past eighty-five years, the population exploded while more productive land passed into the ownership of (or more often, was stolen by) the small ruling kleptocracy that has exploited its own people almost as brutally as their former French masters. Again, these commercial operations depend largely on monoculture, primarily coffee – which nonetheless accounts for only 6% of the nation's income.

At the same time, the burgeoning population has continued to cut down trees for building,  living space, subsistence farms and  fuel. Today, only 2% of Haiti's original forests remain as the country is becoming a desert.

The Dangers – And The Solution

By way of comparison, forests still cover approximately 30% of the planet at large. Unfortunately, these are being cleared at a frightening rate, not all of which is due to farming – although agriculture is the largest cause of deforestation. Haiti is a microcosm of what awaits the entire planet if such trends continue.

Agroforestry promises to play a large part in reversing these trends. Simply defined, agroforestry involves raising trees and food crops on the same land. This emerging science covers a broad range of farming activities that not only create a stronger ecosystem through biodiversity, but help to reduce the destructive effects of soil erosion and mitigate climate change (since trees absorb more CO2 than crop vegetation).

There are other problems facing Haiti that have little to do with agriculture. However, if Haiti ever comes under a government that can see beyond the immediate interests of the rulers themselves and actually commit itself to the good of its citizens, it is possible that experienced agronomists and farmers from the U.S., Canada and elsewhere could help begin the process of recovery by starting a program of reforestation, followed by the introduction of more sustainable practices that would allow the country to feed itself.

We are limited only by our own imaginations and aspirations. Haiti needs our charity right now because of the earthquake, yes – but much more than that, Haiti needs a new vision of how agriculture fits into the national economy and the lives of the people. Let’s hope they get it.