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I have been invited to write an occasional essay for Practical Farmers of Iowa. The following is an essay I wrote to my Growing Harmony Farm Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) members in Ames, Iowa.
Who will feed the world?
In a recent article in Seed Savers Exchange they posed the question: Who will feed us? Will it be the Industrial Food Chain or Peasant Food Web?
Allow me to quote from the article with the data coming from the ETC group (action group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration) in Canada which offers analysis of environmental concerns world wide.
There is a prevailing mindset among policy makers today, that a globalized industrial food chain is man’s best hope to feed the world in 2050, when an estimated 9.9 billion people will live on the planet. Arguing that 70 percent of the world’s food is presently grown and consumed within national borders or eco-regions by peasants , mankind is better served by a web of peasant relationships, not a chain. The report states that 85-percent of the world’s cultivated food is consumed relatively close to where it is grown.
There are 1.5 billion peasants on 380 million farms; 800 million more growing urban gardens; 410 million gathering from the forests and savannahs; 190 million pastoralists and well over 100 million peasant fishers. At least 370 million of these are also indigenous peoples. Together these peasants make up almost half the world’s peoples and they grow at least 70 percent of the world’s food. Better than anyone else, they feed the hungry. If we are to eat in 2050, we will need all of them and all of their diversity.
In many ways these are the people I choose to identify with and am in solidarity with as I farm. So much of our agricultural policy has sought to displace farmers off their land. It has happened here in the States and with Free Trade Agreements like NAFTA it is displacing small peasant farmers off of their land in Mexico and other countries. These dynamics only serve to increase the immigration flow into the United States. I believe if we wanted to slow the flow of immigration we would seek policies that support the peasant web that would encourage regional food security.
Allow me to introduce to you a couple of my friends. The first pictured with me in a bean field is Genaro Villka and his wife Julia. I worked with them in Bolivia. They were originally from Oruro, Bolivia but had migrated to the Eastern Lowlands to look for land to farm. It is a sad thing to see rainforests being cut, yet the pressure to feed ones family is always present and our organization, the Mennonite Central Committee, was seeking to help find more sustainable ways to farm in that setting so farmers wouldn’t have to continue to cut down the forests. It really was my first introduction to sustainable agriculture. At that time they made their living planting dry-land rice. We were involved with Heifer Project/Bolivia too. The bean field was an attempt to grow a cash crop during the dry season when the weed pressure wasn’t so high as well as it served as an additional protein source. Eventually, a few years later there was an export market for beans to Brazil that opened up. It had a significant impact in the region where they chose to grow some dry beans for market.
The rice crop was their cash crop yet to get it to market at that time, it cost nearly 1/3 to ½ the value of the crop to transport it into the city to sell. It was a lot of work for little gain, yet they were feeding a good portion of the Bolivian population with their rice. Involving Heifer Project in the zone was a way to provide additional protein and income for the family as a safety net. When there is an illness or emergency animals are often sold to pay for the costs.
The second farmer is named Elias and he is pictured in his corn/peanut field with Guazapa mountain pictured in the background(Guazapa was the most heavily bombed mountain the in the Western Hemisphere, ever) . Elias was a refugee. He used to live on the mountain but during El Salvador’s 12 year civil war he had to flee his home leaving all of his just harvested crops of corn and beans. He fled with his family to nearby San Jose Guayabal. When I first met him in 1987 he had been displace
d for 6 years already. MCC helped by providing emergency shelter and food and eventually fertilizer loans if he could find a piece of land to farm. Many land owners fled the region into the capitol but rented their pasture land, etc to anyone that wanted to farm it. The displaced population was the target population we helped with the loans. Even in the midst of the war our loan paybacks were over 90%. (These loans were no interest and it was a revolving loan fund, eventually when we left El Salvador we gifted the money to the160 families who had participated in the program).
d for 6 years already. MCC helped by providing emergency shelter and food and eventually fertilizer loans if he could find a piece of land to farm. Many land owners fled the region into the capitol but rented their pasture land, etc to anyone that wanted to farm it. The displaced population was the target population we helped with the loans. Even in the midst of the war our loan paybacks were over 90%. (These loans were no interest and it was a revolving loan fund, eventually when we left El Salvador we gifted the money to the160 families who had participated in the program).
Corn is King in El Salvador. It is the staple with people eating many tortillas, especially for their noon meal. I would occasionally have “work” days and would go out to help my friends plant, weed or harvest. They thought it was pretty funny to see a Gringo out working in the fields but they appreciated the help and solidarity. Pay had two wages one with lunch (less money) or without lunch (more money). I would work just for a meal and they would often serve me a soup with beans and a platter of thick while corn tortillas. At most when I was really hungry I could eat about 4 of these thick tortillas. I would often see some of these farmers eat 12 at a sitting! These were the farmers that were feeding El Salvador, yet because of land tenure and poor erosion control one had to apply more and more fertilizer to get the same yield. Now because of trade agreements corn from Mexico can flood the market so many farmers plant just enough for their families and not for the broader market. It is a disturbing trend. So while the Peasant Food Web feed the vast majority of the world’s people this is an example where the Industrial Food Chain can have disastrous affects on peasant farmers world wide. (If you every want to experience real Salvadoran cuisine i recommend Salvador del Mundo restaurant located just a couple blocks North of North High school on 6th Ave in Des Moines)
I hope you have enjoyed meeting my friends. They taught me a lot about life, love of the soil and what it means to be a peasant farmer. So, yes, I do work hard, but my friends lives are so much harder and riskier. If they have a bad year they literally eat less. It is through their eyes and experiences that I try to view my world. After all they are the majority. My vision here in Iowa, and what local, sustainable food is all about, is developing the Peasant Food Web here. The advantage that we have and I had as I started, is starting with the best resource in the world, good Iowa Soil!
If you have any further questions about Genaro or Elias or my experiences just let me know.
Gary Guthrie
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