This post was written by Pooja Mottl.
Food is getting some tech-savvy street cred as Wired magazine puts “The Future of Food” front and center in its November 2008 issue.
The magazine dishes about why the chemical age of agriculture is “running out of juice” at a time when demand for food continues to soar and output struggles to keep pace. It suggests it is time to put our heads together to innovate and incite a “new” green revolution in the midst of the current food crisis.
By way of spectacularly iridescent graphics, the article unveils some little-known and mind-boggling (and completely disturbing) facts about what really goes on behind the scenes in the food business. Through a stream of clever diagrams, charts, maps and tables, it educates us on how 31.4 gallons of water is used per ear of American-grown corn, how 4.83 pounds of methane is released in the production of one Big Mac, and how 1, 285 pounds of protein supplement is used per cow per year in our country.
What this color clad page-turner fails to point out, however, are the risks and irrefutable drawbacks this current system of agriculture represents and the externalities it has imposed on our health, our safety and our ecosystem. Although the Wired writers have added a few quotes highlighting the dangers of long food supply chains, exorbitant “food miles” and pollution from aquaculture, it never once mentions the words “local”, “sustainable” or “organic”. The cover story, instead, focuses on science and the potential of genetic engineering to solve our food woes.
There is no doubt that it is great to see food and its future take center stage in the culture and politics of technology, but we need to use America’s tech prowess in a manner that enhances and moves the methods of sustainability forward rather than having the potential to make our current crisis even worse. By promoting genetically modified crops and the hording of seeds, dependency on industrial-strength fertilizers and the impact on climate change that comes with it, the writers at Wired are taking forward-thinking in a backwards direction.
The magazine may have done better by optimizing its role as a pulpit for spreading high-tech wisdom and instead focused on how modern science may be used to promote more small-scale, local and organic systems of agriculture – those with the least number of negative externalities to us and our planet and which underscore the much needed principals of sustainability.
For example, organic methods involving intercropping, biological pest management, crop rotation, cover crops and other processes that utilize natural nutrient sources and nutrient-cycling techniques could be optimized and enhanced with the help of modern scientific innovations and focused efforts on behalf of the technology community. A case in point involves nitrogen fertilizer, an input invaluable to industrialized agriculture. Due to its intensive use, the nutrient has spilled into streams and groundwater and has caused hundreds of pollutant “dead zones”. Scientific research efforts could easily be focused on this problem and alternatives could be found to identify more effective and less harmful techniques.
Furthermore, attention to organic agriculture methods is imperative given the mounting evidence pointing to how organic systems can feed the world. Research recently conducted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) suggests that organic, small-scale farming can in fact deliver the increased yields thought to be solely the preserve of industrial farming. Commenting on a report (pdf) released earlier this month, Achim Steiner, the head of the UN’s program, noted that “the potential contribution of organic farming to feeding the world may be far higher than many had supposed”.
Although the writers at Wired did touch on a few, more sustainable-minded farming methods, such as “push-pull intercropping, “remote sensing” and “data-driven rotation”, dubbing them “next-gen” techniques, the publication did not make sustainable alternatives the beachhead of their food science campaign, taking away from readers the opportunity to learn about the wealth of benefits that come with these systems.
The bottom line is that although some mainstream publications are on the right track in terms of zeroing in on our food supply and underscoring the grave nature of our current global crisis, magazines like Wired should not aim to apply a high-tech approach to further strengthen industrialized, synthetically-based farming methods, but must instead use their tech genius to help showcase the importance of organic systems. This approach will not only bring more to the table in terms of solving our food crisis, but will do so in a more sustainable, less destructive fashion with a greater guarantee for future prosperity.
1 response so far ↓
1 MiPete // Nov 20, 2008 at 8:12 am
I read the “WIred” article at the Orthodontist office. It is puzzling to understand how future gains in ag production can be accomplished without attention to soil building and preservation. Industrial ag tends to view soil as a medium for seed and ammnedments to acheive a valued market product. The Organic/Sustainable model has a more realistic view of soil. As mentioned above, this is largely overlooked by the writers at “Wired”.
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