The World Has Plenty of Food, Yet Millions Starve Every Day
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SPECIAL REPORT: THE WORLD’S FOOD CRISIS Feeding theFuture The world has plenty of food, yet millions starve every day. We can end hunger, obesity, and most environmental destruction by adopting a veg diet, but will the projected population boom bring with it an unsustainable taste for meat? Writer Mark Hawthorne investigates the future of feeding the world. 28 VegNews Think. Eat. Thrive.™ March+April 2010 WITH 1.3 BILLION MOUTHS TO FEED (AND Determined to turn China into an industrial 44,000 babies born every day), China knows a power to rival the US and the former Soviet thing or two about hunger. The world’s most Union, Mao forced farmers off their land to populous country, China instituted a strict work on massive infrastructure projects, policy of one child per family 30 years ago, yet creating a loss of food production that left tens it still faces food-security challenges. Though of millions of people dead from starvation. As rice has been an Asian staple for thousands if to exorcise those years of extreme scarcity, of years, there’s been a dramatic shift toward today’s Chinese are choosing to eat several animal protein in China, where an emerging rungs up the food ladder. Thirty years ago, middle class is scaling back on traditional when China had a population just shy of 1 grain- and vegetable-based diets in favor billion, the average Chinese person ate 44 of more industrially produced meat, eggs, pounds of meat annually. Today, an additional and dairy foods. In fact, the country recently 300 million people later, the average is 120 emerged as the largest meat producer in the pounds—still well below the whopping 260 world, thanks to help from such international pounds of meat consumed by the average food giants as Smithfield andT yson Foods and American each year. their pack-‘em-in-tight model of agriculture. This movement toward more expensive, Large-scale operations in China are adapting “luxury” foods is also demonstrated in an eight- quickly to their Western counterparts, with year study published in 2003 by the American some businesses developing a streamlined Society for Nutritional Sciences, which noted food-production system in which everything that while the intake of vegetables declined involved in the farm-to-fork trade—raising in China, the consumption of fruits, generally animals, producing feed, pharmaceuticals, more costly than veggies, increased. The transportation, and slaughter—is owned and country’s nascent love of pears and mandarin managed by a single company. oranges hasn’t been enough to offset the City dwellers are also contributing to the chronic ailments associated with eating meat country’s demand for factory flesh, says Mia and dairy, however. Osteoporosis, for example, MacDonald, executive director of Brighter has been linked to increased levels of animal- Green, a nonprofit that is documenting the based proteins. Once practically unheard of growth of factory farming in Africa, Central in Asia, this disease of compromised bone and Latin America, and most of Asia, known density has become a major health concern in collectively as the Global South. “Nearly half of China, where the International Osteoporosis China’s people live in urban areas more than Foundation believes cases of osteoporosis will six months of the year, and urban Chinese more than quadruple in the next decade to consume more meat and dairy products than 286 million. China is also seeing an increase in people in rural areas of China,” she says. obesity, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes— “Considering that every fifth person on the all linked to meat-based diets. planet is Chinese, even a small increase in China’s meat and dairy consumption will Traditional Turmoil have a major impact on the environment. For generations, Subhash Mahapatra’s family Clearly, what the Chinese eat, and how they has grown rice on their loamy parcel of land in produce their food, affects not only China, Odisha, a mountainous Indian state formerly but the world.” known as Orissa. Mahapatra, 41, is among But why their demand for meat in the India’s 600 million farmers—who comprise first place? For millennia, the foundations of half of the country’s 1.2 billion population— the Chinese diet were grains (especially rice) and he relies on his nine-acre paddy to feed his and vegetables. Meat was rare, a side dish at family and earn enough rupees to scrape by. best. Like India and other cultures that have Farmers throughout the subcontinent revere prospered, China’s recent economic success the soil, reaping from its fertility life itself, has been reflected in its cuisine, with more and they take pride in every nutritious crop. Chinese viewing animal-based foods as both “I was born a farmer, and I will die one,” says status symbols and protein sources they were Mahapatra. But state officials have other ideas denied in previous generations. Famine is for the land: They are eager to make way for still a painful memory for those who survived a manufacturing plant that will provide the under Mao Zedong’s attempts at radical community with jobs and help industrialize a social transformation in the 1950s and ‘60s. traditionally agrarian society. VN celebrates 10! vegnews.com VegNews 29 SPECIAL REPORT: THE WORLD’S FOOD CRISIS Displacing farmers like Mahapatra in excessive use of water, depressed property favor of enterprises that supplant productive values, and loss of crop and species diversity. FastFoodPlanet farmland with pollution-spewing factories Fueling Asia’s growing appetite for certainly seems shortsighted—at least from The Grain Drain meat, KFC, McDonald’s, Burger King, a food perspective. With the world’s human Whether we favor the output of modern and other fast-food mega-chains have population on track to hit 7 billion by 2011, technology or the GMO-free harvests of organic extended their fatty franchise fingers and more than 9 billion by midcentury, farming, the question staring us in the gut is across the Pacific, tailoring their menus scientists, food-security advocates, and the the same: Why are more than a billion people to local tastes and positioning themselves green cognoscenti are debating how best living with chronic hunger when there are just as family-oriented restaurants. In the US, to feed all those stomachs. Perhaps the as many people overweight? The short answer where rising prices and unemployment family farm cannot compete with hyper- is that, well, there are no short answers. The have contributed to a 14-year high in productive systems, especially with powerful global food system is so complex that even a the nation’s hungry (now pegged at 49 multinational interests and vertically capricious change in the weather can affect million), cash-strapped households integrated agribusinesses nudging small-scale food supplies, costs, and distribution. Droughts often rely on burger joints and other farmers out of the way. Or can it? According in India and flooding in the Philippines last “convenience” retailers as a way to fill to the United Nations Food and Agriculture year, for example, are expected to double the up on cheap calories and keep starvation Organization (FAO), one-third of the world is price of rice on international markets this at bay. Not only are fast-food outlets made up of farmers owning and working a year. Elsewhere, political instability, trade consuming a high percentage of grain small piece of land, and FAO Director General protectionism, and economics put even greater through meat production, but they are Jacques Diouf says that supporting them would strain on the malnourished, while the world’s helping to pack unhealthy pounds be “the most effective way to eliminate hunger growing desire for meat can leave farmers on diners. from the face of the earth.” wondering where their next meal will come The paradox of poor families becoming obese is a concern for Lauren Ornelas, founder and executive director of the Food experts often argue about scarcity versus Food Empowerment Project (FEP), which “distribution. But it’s not one or the other—it’s both. helps consumers recognize the power of ” their food choices. “One of the areas we Others are even blunter. When asked from. “Instead of using their land to grow food work on when it comes to food insecurity recently if we can feed the planet without for their families and become self-reliant, is the lack of conveniently accessible, help from industrialized agriculture, Michael farmers in Third World countries devote their healthy foods in low-income communities Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and resources to meat production, either in the and communities of color,” she says, In Defense of Food, quipped that we’re not form of raising livestock or crops to feed those adding that liquor stores and fast-food currently feeding the world with it. Indeed, animals,” says John Robbins, who asserts in restaurants in these neighborhoods although agribusiness apologists continue to his book The Food Revolution that using 2.5 promote animal-based diets. “The way we tout mega-farms as The Answer to starvation, acres of land to raise cattle would only support at FEP look at this is that the corporations mounting evidence suggests that organic the energy requirements of one human being, that are exploiting and killing animals agriculture, which rejects the use of genetically while the same land growing potatoes will are the same ones exploiting these modified crops and synthetic pesticides meet the needs of 22. “Initially, the hope was communities. Their only interest is and fertilizers, can match or even surpass that increased beef production would help money.” Ornelas explains that often conventional methods of producing food.