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FOOD SECURITY

CLIMATE CHANGE

BIOFUELS

INDOOR CROPS

A HUNGRY POPULATION2–3

QUINOA BRINGS RICHES TO THE ANDES4–5

FORCED VEGETARIANISM8–9

FOOD BECOMES PETROL12–13

FOOD EXPENSE BECAUSE OF BIOFUELS14–15

URBAN VEGETABLES18–19

A HUNGRY POPULATION

“Reduced harvests have meant the impacts could be worse than originally thought.”

It’ll take innovative technology, fair and efficient markets and sustained political will.

or missed. In developing countries, hunger is a chronic affliction. Images in the media often convey the realities of hunger – emaciated and starving children – in war-torn countries or in the aftermath of droughts, floods, or other calamities. Yet for nearly a billion people in the developed countries, hunger is a day-to-day occurrence, both persistent and widespread.

Achieving food security, having “access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life”, is not as easy as it might seem. Nobel Prize winner professor Amartya Sen was instrumental in pointing out that food security was not just about producing more food, but ensuring the needy had access to it. There can be plenty of food in shops, as was true of the famines in Ireland in the 19th century and West Bengal in the 1940s, but if poor people cannot afford to buy that food (or produce enough on their own), they will go hungry.

F or most people reading this, hunger is a feeling of slight discomfort when a meal is late

helped food production keep pace with population growth. Food prices fell and many (although not all) of the poor and hungry benefited.

Today food prices are rising again and we are experiencing food price spikes. These are caused by an actual or perceived shortage of grains, but are exacerbated by competition between food crops and biofuel crops, by countries rushing to impose export bans and by a degree of financial speculation.

In order to achieve a food-secure world, we must feed a population expected to be over 9 billion by 2050. We must also feed this population in the face of rising incomes and an increase in resource-intensive western-style diets, declining land and water availability and climate change. All of which decrease our ability to produce food for all.

Some 400 to 500 million smallholder farmers from around the world will provide the necessary increased food

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We are thought to be in the middle of the world’s third food price spike since 2007. Its effects have been predicted to be moderate, in part because the Agricultural Market Information System (Amis) has given us greater transparency. But recent announcements that the world’s grain reserves have fallen to a five-year low and that world grain production for the 2012-13 season is unlikely to match the level of need, due to failing or reduced harvests, have meant the impacts could be worse than originally thought.

production and access to food. In many countries, 80% of the population are farmers, as are 80% of the chronically hungry. So why can’t farmers, whose job it is to produce and grow food, feed themselves?

Mrs Namarunda is an example of the myriad problems faced by smallholder farmers. She farms a single hectare near Lake Victoria in Kenya. She has four children to care for. Without access to fertiliser, or the credit to buy it, she starts each season with a maximum

Gordon Conway & Katy WilsonThe Guardian18th October 2012

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THIS ARTICLE PIE FORK

A increasing population will slowly see us taken apart in small pieces, much like a pie fork would cut through a slice of cake.

This is not to say that we do not need to produce more food. As Sen acknowledges, the technologies of the Green Revolution

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potential harvest of two tons from her land, half of which is enough to feed her family and the other half to generate a modest income. But during the course of the season she is beset by weeds, pests and diseases and is subject to periodic drought, which means she actually harvests less than one ton. She and her children are often hungry and there is no money for schooling or healthcare.

How can we tackle this challenges?

InnovationWe need to invest in the development and adoption of appropriate technology. However, there is little or no new land on which to grow crops, and much of what is already farmed is being degraded and eroded – so we need to produce more food from less land, while also using fewer resources.

Sustainable intensification aims to do just that. Conservation agriculture, for example, which includes various systems of reduced or no tillage, can protect vulnerable soils from erosion and improve soil fertility while increasing yields and decreasing labour. In experiments conducted by partnerships between local government and Concern Worldwide in Zambia, new hybrid maize seeds produced

around four to five tons per hectare, compared with one ton per hectare on average across the continent.

MarketsFor these innovations to be delivered into the hands of smallholder farmers, we need fair and efficient markets with increased investment of agricultural capital to benefit the poor.

or contract farming group that can bargain for fair prices.

PeoplePeople, especially small farmers, are critical to success and need to drive the changes. Many are women and tthey provide a critical link between food production, consumption and future progress on food security as farmers,

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“In many countries, 80% of the population are farmers and 80% of the chronically hungry.”

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) has trained and supportedover 5,000 agrodealers in eastern and western Africa. The stores sell key inputs to farmers in small, affordable quantities and reduce the distances farmers have to go to get them – in one area of Kenya from 17km in 2004 to 4km in 2007.

Similar linkages are also needed to produce markets where farmers can sell crops for a fair price. Middlemen can take all the profit and government marketing bodies have in many cases proved highly inefficient. The alternative is to establish some form of co-operative

mothers, educators and innovators. If female farmers had access to the same resources as their male counterparts, the number of undernourished people in the world could be reduced by 100 to 150 million.

Political willFinally, if these interventions are to respond to the needs of the poor and hungry, we will need strong and sustained political will and vision.

This type of political leadership can be seen in Ghana under John Kufuor’s presidency. Under his leadership, the government invested in agricultural

research and farmer education as well as roads, warehouses and cold storage. Ghana’s agricultural sector has grown by an average of 5% per year in the past 25 years, while the percentage of the population living in poverty fell from 51% in 1991-92 to 28.5% in 2005-06.

Experience shows us that there are grounds for optimism. We can feed the world, but we need to focus urgently and specifically on food security, encourage the leadership to introduce the right policies, invest in research and development and ensure these actions reach the farmers who need them most.

QUINOA BRINGS RICHES TO THE ANDESBolivian and peruvian farmers sell entire crop to meet rising western demand, sparking fears of malnutrition.

plants in the Bolivian desert is a thing of beauty. A plant ready for harvest can stand higher than a human, covered with knotty blossoms, from violet to crimson and ochre-orange to yellow.

Quinua real, or royal quinoa, flourishes in the most hostile conditions, surviving nightly frosts and daytime temperatures upwards of 40C (104F). It is a high-altitude plant, growing at 3,600 metres above sea level and higher, where oxygen is thin, water is scarce and the soil is so saline that virtually nothing else grows.

The tiny seeds of the quinoa plant are the stuff of nutritionists’ dreams, sending demand soaring in the developed world. Gram-for-gram, quinoa is one of the planet’s most nutritious foodstuffs. Once a sacred crop for some pre-hispanic Andean cultures, it has become a five-star health food for the middle classes in Europe, the US and increasingly China and Japan.

That global demand means less quinoa is being eaten in Bolivia and Peru, the countries of origin, as the price has tripled. There are concerns this could cause

It is quinoa’s moment on the world stage. This year is the UN’s International Year of Quinoa as the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation recognises the crop’s resilience, adaptability and its “potential contribution in the fight against hunger and malnutrition”.

Evo Morales, the Bolivian leader whose government suggested the special recognition for the grain, said: “For years [quinoa] was looked down on just like the indigenous movement To remember that past is to remember discrimination against quinoa and now after so many years it is reclaiming its rightful recognition as the most important food for life.”However, there are concerns the 5,000 year-old ancestral crop is being eaten

burst of colour on a monochromatic panorama, a field of flowering quinoa

Dan CollynsThe Guardian14th January 2013

malnutrition as producers, who have long relied on the superfood to supplement their meagre diets, would rather sell their entire crop than eat it. “Royal quinoa has given hope to people living in Bolivia’s most destitute and forgotten region,” says Paola Mejia, general manager of Bolivia’s Chamber of Quinoa Real and Organic Products Exporters.

Royal quinoa, which only grows in this arid region of southern Bolivia, is to the grain what beluga is to caviar; packed with even more protein, vitamins and minerals than the common variety.

Averaging $3,115 (£1,930) per tonne in 2011, quinoa has tripled in price since 2006. Coloured varieties fetch

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“In Bolivia and Peru, the countries of origin, as the price has tripled.”

even more. Red royal quinoa sells at about $4,500 a tonne and the black variety can reach $8,000 per tonne. The crop has become a lifeline for the people of Bolivia’s Oruro and Potosi regions, among the poorest in what is one of South America’s poorest nations.

less by its traditional consumers: quinoa farmers. “They have westernised their diets because they have more profits and more income”, says Mejia, an agronomist. “Ten years ago they only had an Andean diet. They had no choice. But now they do and they want rice, noodles, candies, coke, they want everything!”

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THIS ARTICLE OLIVE FORK

Like being forked from one end of the jar to the other with the olive fork, we will be forked from the other side of the world by the demand for quinoa.

just for export, it’s more profitable,” she said. An 11.5kg arroba sack of quinoa can fetch eight times more than it did a few years ago, around $2 a kg, she adds.

But the Bolivian government – which like its neighbour Peru is heavily promoting quinoa nationally to combat malnutrition – insists Bolivians are eating more of the grain. Annual consumption per person has increased fourfold from 0.35kg to 1.11kg in as many years “in spite of the high international prices”, Victor Hugo Vásquez, Bolivia’s vice-minister for rural development and agriculture, said.

prevalent in poorer Andean regions. According to the World Bank, 27.2% of under-fives in Bolivia suffered chronic malnutrition in 2008.

Peru’s telegenic first lady, Nadine Heredia, is championing a colourful campaign to promote the Andean diet, of which quinoa is a key element, to combat infant malnutrition. In 2012 Peru banked nearly $35m from quinoa exports, tripling what it earned three years ago. In Bolivia exports tripled to around 23,000 tonnes, contributing some $85m to the country’s economy,Vásquez said.

But experts say both countries need to boost production to meet the rising external demand and provide the grain at lower prices for internal consumption. Bolivia, which produces nearly half the global supply, says it has given more than $5m in credits to 70,000 quinoa producers and wants to industrialise production to bring added value rather than just exporting the raw material.

Hydrocarbons and minerals are Bolivia’s two key exports, but Mejia believes if the country aggressively promoted quinoa agriculture “in 10 years it could easily surpass the income from gas and minerals”.

Meanwhile in the Peruvian capital, Lima, shoppers at food markets complain quinoa is becoming a luxury product. Selling at around 10 Peruvian soles per kg (£2.44) it costs more than chicken (7.8 soles per kg) and four times as much as rice. Official figures show domestic consumption has dropped.

“Unfortunately in poorer areas they don’t have access to products such as quinoa and it’s becoming more and more expensive”, Peru’s vice-minister for agriculture, Juan Rheineck, said at a breakfast for under-fives at the Casa de

Daysi Munoz, who runs a La Paz-based quinoa farming collective, agrees. “As the price has risen quinoa is consumed less and less in Bolivia. It’s worth more to them [the producers] to sell it or trade it for pasta and rice. As a result, they’re not eating it any more.”

Bitter battles are being fought over prime quinoa-growing land. Last February dozens of people were hurt when farmers fought with slings and sticks of dynamite over what was once abandoned land.

Many people who migrated to cities in search of a better life are now returning to their arid homeland to grow royal quinoa, says Mejia. Most land is communally owned, she adds, so “the government needs to set out the boundaries or there will be more conflicts.”

In the village of Lacaya, near Lake Titicaca, the farmers have recently sown quinoa. It grows faster in the wetter conditions but the variety quinua dulce is less sought after than royal quinoa.

Under the perpendicular rays of the intense altiplano sun, Petrona Uriche’s face is heavily shadowed by her bowler hat. She says in the three years her village has been farming quinoa it has become the biggest earner. “We produce quinoa

Previous government figures, however, indicated domestic consumption had dropped by a third in five years.

Judging by the supermarket shelves in Bolivia’s de facto capital, La Paz, where quinoa-based products from pizza crusts and hamburgers to canapes and breakfast cereals are displayed, Bolivia’s growing middle class appear to be the principal consumers.

los Petisos children’s home in Lima. The children are fed boiled eggs and quinoa and apple punch, part of a government programme to promote nutritious breakfasts. “That’s what we have to avoid, we have to produce better and more”, he said.

Peru’s government cut chronic malnutrition in under-fives nationally to 16.5% in 2011 but it is still widely

“Both countries need to boost production to meet the rising external demand.”

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“FOR NEARLY A BILLION PEOPLE IN THE DEVELOPED COUNTRIES, HUNGER IS A DAY-TO-DAY OCCURRENCE, BOTH PERSISTENT AND WIDESPREAD.”Gordon Conway & Katy WilsonThe Guardian18th October 2012

Water scarcity’s effect on food production means radical steps will be needed to feed 9 billion by 2050.

that the world’s population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.

Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world’s leading water scientists.

“There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected 9 billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations,” the report by Malik Falkenmark and colleagues at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said.

“There will be just enough water if the proportion of animal-based foods is limited to 5% of total calories and considerable regional water deficits can be met by a reliable system of food trade.”

eading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying

John VidalThe Guardian26th August 2012

Dire warnings of water scarcity limiting food production come as Oxfam and the UN prepare for a possible second global food crisis in five years. Prices for staples such as corn and wheat have risen nearly 50% on international markets since June, triggered by severe droughts in the US and Russia, and weak monsoon rains in Asia. More than 18 million people are already facing serious food shortages across the Sahel.

Oxfam has forecast that the price spike will have a devastating impact in developing countries that rely heavily on food imports, including parts of Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East. Food shortages in 2008 led to civil unrest in 28 countries.

Adopting a vegetarian diet is one option to increase the amount of water available to grow more food in an increasingly climate-erratic world, the scientists said. Animal protein-rich food consumes five to 10 times more water than a vegetarian diet. One third of the world’s arable land is used to grow crops to feed animals. Other options to feed people include eliminating waste and increasing trade between countries in food surplus and those in deficit.

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THIS ARTICLE PITCHFORK

We will be forked by the old guard’s pitchforks if we are forced into vegetarianism as many cultural traditions and institutions will haveto disappear.

FORCED VEGETARIANISM

“Nine hundred million people already go hungry and 2 billion people are malnourished in spite of the fact that per capita food production continues to increase”, they said. “With 70% of all available water being in agriculture, growing more food to feed an additional 2 billion people by 2050 will place greater pressure on available water and land.”

The report is being released at the start of the annual world water conference in Stockholm, Sweden, where 2,500 politicians, UN bodies, non-governmental groups and researchers from 120 countries meet to address global water supply problems.

Competition for water between food production and other uses will intensify pressure on essential resources, the scientists said. “The UN predicts that we must increase food production by 70% by mid-century.”

This will place additional pressure on our already stressed water resources, at a time

when we also need to allocate more water to satisfy global energy demand – which is expected to rise 60% over the coming 30 years – and to generate electricity for the 1.3 billion people currently without it,” said the report.

Overeating, undernourishment and waste are all on the rise and increased food production may face future constraints from water scarcity.

“We will need a new recipe to feed the world in the future”, said the report’s editor, Anders Jägerskog.

A separate report from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) said the best way for countries to protect millions of farmers from food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia was to help them invest in small pumps and simple technology, rather than to develop expensive, large-scale irrigation projects.

“We’ve witnessed again and again what happens to the world’s poor – the majority of whom depend on agriculture

for their livelihoods and already suffer from water scarcity – when they are at the mercy of our fragile global food system”, said Dr Colin Chartres, the director general.

“Farmers across the developing world are increasingly relying on and benefiting from small-scale, locally-relevant water solutions. These techniques could increase yields up to 300% and add tens of billions of US dollars to household revenues across sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.”

“Animal protein-rich food consumes five to ten times more water than a vegetarian diet.”

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FOOD BECOMES PETROLThe new EU policy on biofuels is resisted by the industry, but its limits are actually not harsh enough.

things ever to come out of Brussels.” Quite a condemnation, everything considered – and all the more so for coming from an Action Aid campaigner against poverty and climate change. For the EU biofuels policy is supposed to tackle both.

But that was putting it mildly. The growing use of energy from crops has driven up food prices and hunger, spurred enormous corporate land grabs in poor countries, and probably made global warming worse. Now, however, there is the first sign of a rethink. New proposed European Commission legislation, soon to be unveiled, could halt the rise in crops grown for fuel – and eventually put it into reverse.

Mind you, if Henry Ford and Rudolf Diesel had had their way, we would never have filled up with anything else. The Model T was designed to run on ethanol, and the first diesel engine was powered by peanuts. Cheap crude oil soon silenced the vegetarian vroom, until it became clear that fossil fuel was warming the planet.

It’s possibly,” someone remarked to me this week, “one of the worst

Geoffrey LewisThe Daily Telegraph5th October 2012

Biofuels seemed a gift to governments. Adding them to petrol and diesel made it seem as if something was being done, without having to address the harder tasks of making cars more efficient or improving public transport. Even better, they provided a way of paying powerful agricultural lobbies from motorists’ wallets, rather than the public purse. George W Bush rapidly expanded the use of ethanol from corn to enrich the mid-West, not reduce global warming.

For its part, the EU stipulated in 2009 that biofuels should effectively provide 10% of all transport fuels by 2020 – despite years of protests from many environmentalists and others that the supposedly green gasoline would do more harm than good.

As Lester Brown – president of Washington’s Earth Policy Institute – has long pointed out, biofuels pit the hungry against relatively affluent motorists in competition for crops. Unsurprisingly, the drivers are winning. 40% of the US corn crop now goes for fuel, not food, while the land used to grow biofuels for Europe alone could instead be used to feed 127 million people.

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THIS ARTICLE FISH FORK

It may not look threatening at first but food supplies disappearing to become fuel could easily cut through us like a fish fork could.

The competition drives up food prices – it has been partly responsible for recent abrupt increases that have driven scores of millions into hunger – and has helped stimulate a spate of land-grabbing in the Third World. Oxfam reported this week that an area of land eight times the size of the UK had been sold off over the past decade – and that two thirds of the deals appear to have been struck for the growing of biofuels. Often small farmers are thrown off the land, to join the destitute and hungry.

And all this may actually accelerate climate change. Studies show that most – if not all – biofuels cause lower emissions of greenhouse gases than the petrol and diesel they replace. But these do not take into account the indirect effects of displacing food production: as farmland is given over to producing fuel, cultivators move elsewhere to fell forests or plough up peatlands, emitting carbon dioxide as they do so. By some estimates, these emissions could, by 2020, be equivalent to putting over 25 million more cars on the road.

In fairness, the European Union applies the world’s strictest “sustainability” standards to its biofuels. But these cover only direct environmental effects, and excludes the all-important social damage such as increasing food prices and hunger.

And its mandatory 10% target makes things worse, for example, by taking slack out of the market – and thus fuelling abrupt price rises – and by necessitating the rapid acquisition of land.

Last year, 10 international bodies – including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Food and Agriculture Organisation – demanded that such “mandates” should be scrapped, together with the $20 million in subsidies provided to the $83 million biofuel industry. Now, finally, the EC is making a move.

On October 17th – in what amounts to an important admission that it had got things wrong – the EC climate commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, will propose that biofuels from food

“The Model T was designed to run on ethanol, and the first diesel engine was powered by peanuts.”

crops should be limited to just 5% of transport energy consumption, and that subsidies for them should be scrapped altogether when the present legislation runs out in 2020.

Yet, though her plan is being bitterly resisted by the industry as a “catastrophic U-turn”, its immediate effects will be limited, even if the commission, governments, and MEPs approve it.

At present, biofuels account for 4.7% of European transport fuels, so the measure would freeze their use rather than reduce it. In 2014 a more radical review of the legislation is due: governments should be preparing now to redress one of Brussels’s gravest mistake.

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overage of the US drought and the run-up in corn, soybean, and wheat prices has been extensive

and welcome. It has also been prone to the repetition of falsehoods and the perpetuation of myths about the causes of the food crisis – and the solutions. A recent Guardian article, “The era of cheap food may be over”, is a case in point. Specifically, it perpetuates the myth that the main driver of food price increases is demand for meat in fast-growing developing countries.

FOOD EXPENSE BECAUSE OF BIOFUELSYes the global community is facing a food crisis but biofuel production rather than rising demand for meat-based protein is to blame, and the solutions are relatively straightforward.

Timothy WiseThe Guardian5th September 2012

change targets and eschew the advances in science that might increase yields” he writes. “This is the stuff of fantasy.”

It sure is, but so his framing of the problem. First of all, the trend toward meat-based western diets is certainly worth resisting, for health and environmental reasons. But it’s been pretty clearly shown that rising demand for meat-based protein, particularly in India and China, is not the main cause of recent price increases. An FAO study

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This effectively down-plays the full impact of biofuels and ignores two problems underlying price volatility: financial speculation and the lack of publicly held food reserves.

Give Larry Elliott credit for posing the issue in terms of the difficult policy choices the world faces. He’s certainly right to pose the challenge. “The current assumption seems to be that the world can have a rising population, ever-higher per capita meat consumption, devote less land to food production to help hit climate

“Reduced harvests have meant the impacts could be worse than originally thought.”

documented that cereals demand rose more slowly since 2000 than it had in previous decades. So demand in India and China may have grown, but it did not create a “demand shock” that precipitated more recent price surges.

What is the demand shock that has occurred since 2000? The expansion of biofuels production, under a range of government incentives, particularly in the US with corn-based ethanol and in the EU with biodiesel. This has truly been a shock to tight commodity markets.

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THIS ARTICLE PICKLE FORK

We could be forked eternally by biofuels if we do not act on growing hunger and population quickly; in a vice like grip such as that of the pickle fork.

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US ethanol consumes 40% of the country’s corn, fully 15% of global corn production. Estimates vary widely on the impacts, but the National Academy of Sciences concluded that 20-40% of the price increases in 2008 were due to biofuels expansion.

That impact couldn’t be clearer than in today’s looming food crisis, triggered by the widespread drought in the US. Corn output is down dramatically, but ethanol refiners keep gobbling up the corn, driving global prices to new records. Elliott for some reason discusses this as a supply-side issue, but it’s pure demand, created by government programmes that seemed good at the time, as he points out, but are now a disaster. Or, more to the point, a set of recurring disasters as the world suffers its third price spike in five years.

To be sure, there has been one other demonstrable boost in demand since 2000, and it does implicate the rising demand for meat-based diets. Chinese demand for soybeans has jumped dramatically, mostly to feed its own growing meat production. This puts pressure on agricultural land and certainly contributes to rising food prices. But not on the order of magnitude accounted for by biofuels

expansion in general and US ethanol expansion in particular.

As Elliott points out, it is not easy to reduce the rising demand for meat-based diets in developing countries. And he calls on the west to “reassess the wisdom of biofuels.” That should be a priority in the current price crisis.

not in place to get them out of our food. Governments can act to reduce speculation-driven food price volatility.

3. Address waste. An astonishing one third of food is wasted all along the food chain. Public investments – in water systems, storage, roads, and markets – can save more food for the hungry. The impact would be even greater than reducing biofuels use. (So, too, would the related goal of more equitably distributing the food we produce.)

4. Expand sustainable smallholder food production. The current consensus recognises that the “yield gaps” are greatest among small-scale farmers, and that they can expand their food production through “sustainable intensification”.

Elliott puts his finger on the urgent crisis facing the global community in the ongoing food crisis, but he misses the mark on his diagnosis and the cures.

“You’ve saved millions of tons of grain for food and feed.”

Unlike changing global dietary patterns, it is an area in which government policy can have a quick and decisive impact. The biofuel boom began largely as the product of government policies.

Stop the further expansion of biofuels and you’ve saved millions of tons of grain for food and feed.

Reverse its recent growth, introducing more flexible mandates that are triggered by tight supplies, and you’ve placed people over cars in the global food chain.

Elliott’s solutions ultimately focus on the false choice between hi-tech industrial

farming to produce more meat or having the world eat less meat so we can live from what he says are “lower yields” from organic agriculture. We can feed the world, even China’s growing number of meat-eaters, and increasing agricultural R&D is an important part of the solution. But first we should stop putting food into our cars.

We should also consider four other straightforward and proven policies:

1. Expand food reserves. US reserves are virtually non-existent thanks to government policies to just let the market do its magic. The market’s magic has given us three price spikes in five years, and the absence of food reserves has left us no flexibility to handle a drought as severe as the current one.

2. Regulate financial speculation in commodity markets. The financial sharks are circling as prices spike, hungry to play the volatility for their benefit. Regulations are still

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“HUMANS DERIVE ABOUT 20% OF THEIR PROTEIN FROM ANIMAL-BASED PRODUCTS NOW, BUT THIS MAY NEED TO DROP TO JUST 5% BY 2050.”John VidalThe Guardian26Th August 2012

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urban agriculture initiative that claims to be the world’s first farm in a shop.

The aptly-named FARM:shop sits along a busy main road next to a ragtag bunch of more conventional retail outlets, most of which are in various phases of decay.

There are chickens grazing on the rooftop – seemingly oblivious to the red double decker buses roaring past below. Inside are fish tanks filled with Tilapia; mushrooms sprouting in the basement; fruit blooming in a polytunnel greenhouse; and endless rows of herbs and salad leaves growing from the hydroponic troughs that line the shelves.

“I think places like FARM:shop can reconnect people with their food,” says engineer and co-founder Paul Smyth. “We’ve had this separation of countryside and city living. So the connection has been severed between what you eat and how it’s grown.”

While the ethos is community focused, the shop’s interior is more like a laboratory than a local gardening center. White low-energy strip lights facilitate the growth of vegetables in lieu of sun

rays, and the cabbage patch looks more like a cluster of giant Petri dishes than an allotment.

“We’ve been learning as we go with most of this technology”, admits Smyth. That said, the shop – which opened in 2011 – is already a modest commercial success. Having diversified into a grocery store, cafe, rentable office and events space, it now employs two staff and is turning a profit – all of which is ploughed back into the business.

“We’ve experienced a great amount of goodwill and enthusiasm about the project. People just want to come off the street, learn how to raise a fish; look after a chicken; grow some food – and that means you get a more people-powered agriculture,” says Smyth.

While few would contest the rehabilitative social value of projects like FARM:shop, its founders argue it could be the start of something much more: A radical new approach to ecologically sustainable agriculture.

“If you’re growing food directly where it’s eaten, there’s less refrigeration, less energy use through transport and distribution,” claims Smyth. He says FARM:shop could be scaled up and

ehind a Victorian shop front in the Cockney heartland of London’s East End hides an

George Webster & Leo DawsonCNN3rd April 2012

The shop in London that farms everything in man-made environments, from lettuce to fish.

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THIS ARTICLE KNORK

The fork that is also a knife. A sharpened and serrated edge used as a secret weapon to tackle meals. Indoor crops could be our secret weapon used at times of desperate need.

replicated in cities around the world to help reduce the enormous carbon emissions linked to food production.

The connection has been severed between what you eat and how it’s grown Paul Smyth, FARM:shop co-founder. It’s a pressing issue. According to a 2008 Greenpeace report, the food industry is responsible for creating 30% of the world’s total annual carbon emissions.

“The dominant food production system is based on fossil fuel at every level”, says Dr Martin Caraher, Professor of Food and Health Policy at London’s City University. “It needs oil to make the fertilizer; oil for the farm; oil for the food processing; oil for the packaging and oil to transport it to the shops”, he adds.

Among these stages, transport, processing and packaging account for the lion’s share of pollutants. The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that between 65% to 85% of food-related emissions in the Western hemisphere is created once produce has left the farm.

“This is why these type of projects are much more than feel-good gimmicks, they are absolutely vital as part of a diverse array of sustainable agriculture systems that we must pursue further”, says Olivier de Schutter, the U.N.’s special rapporteur on the right to food.

For De Schutter, the fact that food is often produced thousands of miles away from where most people live represents an irrational system, both from an ecologic and economic perspective.

“Rising fuel prices and the increasing concentration of the population in urban areas is bringing about serious logistical problems for the delivery of food,” he says. “Traffic congestion, high refrigeration costs and, after all that, poor quality produce.”

Food destined for the UK alone travels 30 billion km a year – adding 19 million tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere – according to international development agency Practical Action.

“Right now, no-one is saying you’re going to feed nine billion people like this,” says Egal. “But agriculture reform is an incremental process requiring many solutions – and growing perishable, fresh produce near to where it’s consumed seems like one very sensible step.”

Back in east London, Smyth is optimistic about the future.

“FARM:shop itself is experimental, it will always be our laboratory at the heart of our ideas. But going forward we’ll be looking at bigger sites, scaling up, growing more food and selling more food together – and if we get those kind of sites we’re really confident we can roll this out and make a real lasting difference.”

It’s also easy to overlook the damage inflicted on local ecosystems and economies – a large portion of which are in the developing world – as a consequence of current industrial-scale agriculture practices.

“The system is not working,” says Florence Egal, chairman of the Food for Cities network. “Big agribusiness disrupts natural resource management with its demand for monoculture crops, synthetic packaging and habitat contamination from factory waste.”

The dominant food-production system is based on fossil fuel at every level Dr Martin Caraher, Professor of Food and Health Policy at London’s City University.

Both Egal and de Schutter agree that, even on a vastly escalated scale, initiatives like FARM:shop are unlikely to resolve the food sustainability issue by themselves.

“Food destined for the UK alone travels 30 billion km a year.”

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