Hunger and Nutrition 1   Last year Dennis Avery was the guest speaker at the CNR graduation— a gift from outgoing Dean Rausser?  Perhaps.   The acrimonious fight between economists and non-economists for the moral high ground in public policy debates is as bad today as ever.  From ABC’s John Stossel, protégé of the Cato Institute and Barbara Walters, to the Avery provocations on bioengineering, pesticides and world hunger, the conservatives have had free rein to provoke and question and criticize what they see as the sacred cows of environmentalism: agriculture and ecology, poverty and economic globalism, pollution and public health.  Their response is always the same: the free market will work it all out, the Cassandras are pessimistic alarmists who want to destroy the American way of life, and the government is only making things worse through regulation and spending on non-issues like global hunger.    Let’s take the point of view that former Dean Rauser would have liked the CNR to adopt as its own.  And let’s see what we can agree with, lest we be labeled Cassandras.   1)     Avery attacks the population/food axiom.  That is, he suggests that the choice between radical population control or famine is wrong on the facts.  Interestingly, so does Frankie Lappé and much of the so called left view. Lester Brown is attacked fro holding the neo-Malthusian view of WorldWatch Institute.  Nothing new there.  I do it all the time.  2)     Fall in global grain stocks is not to be blamed on population growth but on production factors such as fall in US capacity to produce bumper crops.  True enough, but he fails to see the significance of a global food system based on the Productivity of U.S. grain farmers.  He states that 1995 was a bad harvest year (drought in Midwest and east) and that China’s imports increased (Lester Brown’s big worry) and that US farm policy changed under Clinton.  3)     Artificially high prices supported by U.S. gov’t and EU have made US grains expensive, but cheap as world food aid, the U.S. taxpayer paid the difference 4)     Millions of acres of cropland diversion by US gov’t?  no explanation here except I do not think he refers to the loss of cropland to urban sprawl. 5)     China became a net food importer: no explanation here either though wee can exclude the population argument.  Was it economic reform in China that has affected ag negatively?  6)     Grain stocks will recover as high prices motivate “world” farmers. Which ones?  USA, Canada and Argentina?  Food production now outstrips pop growth.   • The World was never so well fed..  By the early 1970s farm output in the 3rd world was 2% annually.  No mention of what farm crops… Food?  Exports? Fiber?  • Everyone outside Africa has adequate caloric intake he says.  Africa’s problem is bad government.  It should have corn yields 4x higher than the current 0.32 tons /acre.  Based on what?  Comparison with where? • There are 800 million food insecure people in the world (IFPRI).  This is better than being a famine victim, he says.   Disingenuous since the two are no related.  • Famines in the world have been caused by civil wars and confined to the harshest areas of the world. True enough, proof that the latter point is a red herring. • Most countries have the capacity to feed themselves and simple poverty is the reason for hunger.  Also true..  he says if they use Green Rev and fertilizers.   I guess these do not have any known problems.  Effective government institutions that do not rob people and discourage farmers.  I’m encouraged to live in a country where the gov’t doesn’t rob people and encourages farmers.  He just said the opposite in explaining US grain shortfalls.  So I guess we have been Africanized.    High yield varieties Population increases are slowing casting doubts on the neo-Malthusian argument.  Leveling off is following the successes of modernity in surging the human population to its current size. Affluence is within reach of the world’s poorest people today and they will improve their diet to look like ours.  I guess that we won’t have to change our diet to deal with the world food situation. Beef cattle for all.  Who needs rainforests anyway?   What is the ceiling? Have grain production reached the limits?  The collapse of the USSR and Comecon account for the drop in grains… it’s a temp adjustment. Urban sprawl is not a problem (though he did say that US acreage was reduced, never gave us the cause.  Food crisis is not caused by urban sprawl.  Maybe not historically, but there is always a first time.  Is there any trend that worries Avery other than meddlesome government? The total land area idea is silly, it’s not about 1.5% of the global surface.  It’s about paving over the best farmland.  Good farmland is wasted or underutilized in USA and Argentina and other countries.  I guess urban sprawl does not waste good farmland.     Grain yields continue to expand despite pessimistic Lester. Biotech will solve it all.  Researchers are re-designing the whole layout of some plants… reasons to be optimistic.  Will we have spare room for nature as we feed ourselves? Answer: maximize land use efficiency…. Farming occupies over 1/3 of the global land area (FAO). High yield farmikng is the only way.. Competition for land here remains unresolved.  Agro-ecological mixed uses and overlaps don’t count I guess.    There is very little new crop land with the world farming the same 5.8 million acres of farmland since WW2.   So I guess cattle ranches are not part of the food system.  Neither is the grain that is fed to them.    We have not lost forests to food production.  We still have 1/3 of the land in forests.  Whew.  I knew the deforestation alarmists were lying with the pictures.  Most wildlife is still there to be saved.   He never heard of the mass extinction going on.  We must triple yields on existing land and this can be done with no taking of new land.     Despite the rebuttals, Avery makes compelling arguments many of which reasonable support.  In fact it would be very advantageous to arrive at the same conclusion, that modern technical farming methods can increase ag output on existing farmland and not impact wilderness yet meet future human needs.  In fact intensification and a productivist approach underlines most discussions about problems in agriculture.  Avery is saying we can have our cake and eat it too if we put more faith in the agrochem and biotech revolutions.    In my rebuttals I attack what I think are the weakest and most flip of his comments (deforestation, meat eating, urban sprawl).  And it seems that his approach is polemical and provocative for a reason.  He is trying to debunk some scared environmental cows.  He assembles some facts and observations but at times provides contrary reasoning to support a different point.  For eg: he allows for a reduction ion acreage argument to be caused by deliberate government policy but denies that another factor: sub-urbanization is reducing acreage, or at least that in that case it’ sOK.  Here there is no mention of what land is being taken out of production.   Allowing for the big bad gov’t argument, how do we know that gov’t policy took fragile land out of production while urban sprawl took the best topsoil, as it did in Santa Clara.    Nonetheless, we need Avery’s arguments to examine some of our own assumptions.  One of those assumptions is the meaning of a balanced good diet and the global consequences of providing this diet to a small fraction of humanity.  A more forceful rebuttal of Avery can be launched by examining just one of the claims.  Avery tells us that for the first time ever affluence is within reach of the world’s poor if only we embrace nest technological revolution.  He tells us that governments are the main obstacle to this great project.  But consider the American diet and the centrality of meat.    There is no greater example of successful industrial agriculture than the American Midwest.  These farmers out-produce most of the world’s farmers.  The American “breadbasket” is also the world breadbasket, for better or worse.   What are the environmental consequences of eating meat? Tyler and Miller (1993, Environmental Science, Wiley, NY)   The U.S. has only 4.7% of the global population but Avery says that the American diet should and will be the diet of all people on the planet.  Does the US grain belt supply food for the world?  Are we the global breadbasket? Here are some facts and factoids (sounds like a fact but takes a stretch to think out) Over 100,00 cows are slaughtered every day to feed US meat demand 18% of the US population is in the greater ag sector with 2% in farming, 2% in ag chem, 14% processing and marketing 19% of all private sector jobs are in the integrated ag food sector... more than any other industry 50% of world's grain exports go to feed cattle and pigs.  In 1976   58 persons in the world were fed and clothed by 1 US farmer In 1991 128 persons in the world were fed and clothed by 1 US farmer 0.08% of global population are US farmers US produces 25% of the global food and fiber US produces 22% of global beef production, worth $36billion annually 189 feedlots in the US hold over 16,000 head of cattle US is largest poultry producer and 3rd largest pork producer Each US citizen eats 7 steers of over 500 kg (1,100 lbs) in a lifetime US is largest global beef importer 17% of all energy used in US is consumed by agriculture More than 50% of the world's cropland gets used to feed livestock. 1 meat eater uses 20x more land than a pure vegetarian Livestock consume 38% of world's grain supply, growing at 2x the rate of human demand fro grain.  Of this, pigs and chickens eat 2/3rds and beef eat 1/3 Over 70% of the grain consumed in the US is fed to livestock, compare to 2% or India and sub-Saharan Africa. 2/3rds of US cropland is used to produce livestock feed, 2% is used to produce veggies and fruit eaten by people. 1/3rd of the global marine catch is fed to chickens, pigs and cattle in the developed world 40% of inorganic fertilizer in US is applied to cornfields used for fodder (animal food) Livestock uses >50% of the water withdrawn every year in the US to irrigate crops fed to livestock and to wash away manure The water used to produce meat on a 455kg grain fed steer would float a battleship Vegetarians save 5.3 million liters of water every year (= to 2 Olympic pools) Meat eating is associated with 60% of oil imports 50% of energy used in US agriculture goes to livestock.   85% of topsoil loss in US is directly associated with grazing Grazing is the major cause of desertification in the US Beef cattle exports are the biggest contributor to Latin American tropical deforestation.  Cattle contribute greenhouse gases directly in belching anf flatulence 12 to 15% of all methane released to atmosphere.   Here are two examples for N2: N2 in fertilizers becomes NO2, a greenhouse gas N2 in manure becomes NH3 (gaseous ammonia) in the atmosphere and contributes to acid rain. 55% of pesticide residues in the US diet come from the meat industry compared to 6% from veggies, 4% from fruit and 1% from grains Livestock in the US produces 114 metric tons (=125 tons) of excrement every day, 2x greater than the human waste, and it is not used to produce organic fertilizer but is instead a major contributor to water pollution.  Only 50% of anima waste is recycled to soil so farmers buy most as inorganic NPK (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium) which costs more money while they also pay for the proper disposal of animal waste that is not composted 50% of all the water pollution in the US comes from livestock (waste and soil erosion sediments combined)     At the center of this beef cattle complex is the large agribusiness firms.  These companies dominate the global food system.  In the next lecture we will discuss EM Young on the international nature of hunger and famine and the ideas of Amartya Sen as well as Ben Crow’s discussion of hunger and malnutrition.