Switching to organic processing may be trendy green, but it won’t feed the world – Do you feel good?
A global food crisis is looming, so policymakers everywhere need to think hard about how to make food cheaper and more abundant. That requires committing to producing more fertilizers and better seeds, maximizing the potential yield by GMOs, and letting go of the rich world’s obsession with organic matter.
Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine is making for less food, because the two countries are already responsible for more than a quarter of global wheat exports and large amounts of barley, corn and vegetable oils. In addition to punitive policies on climate and the world emerging because of the pandemic, fertilizer, energy and transportation prices are skyrocketing, and food prices have increased 61% in the past two years.
Sri Lanka is a prime example of this moment
Sri Lanka has been self-sufficient in rice production for decades, but tragically it is now forced to import $450 million worth of rice. Tea, the nation’s main export crop and source of foreign exchange, has been devastated, with economic losses estimated at $425 million. Before the country went downhill in the direction of brutal state violence and a popular uprising, the government was forced to pay $200 million in reparations to the farmers and offer $149 million in subsidies.
Sri Lanka’s organic experiment has failed fundamentally for one simple fact: it doesn’t have enough soil to replace synthetic nitrogen with animal manure. To switch to compost and maintain production, it will require five to seven times more manure than the total amount available today.
Synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, mainly produced with natural gas, are a modern miracle, vital to feeding the world. Thanks in large part to this fertilizer, agricultural output has tripled in the past half-century as the human population has doubled. Artificial fertilizers and modern agricultural inputs are the reason the number of people working on farms is decreasing in every rich country, freeing people up for other productive occupations.
Lomborg concludes:
To sustainably feed the world and withstand future global shocks, we need to produce better food at a cheaper price. History shows that the best way to achieve that is to improve seeds, including by using genetically modified methods, along with expanding the use of fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation. This will allow us to produce more food, control prices, alleviate hunger and save nature.
• Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Association and a fellow of the Hoover Institute of Stanford University. His latest book is ‘False Alarm: The Panic of Climate Change Has Cost Us Trillions of Dollars, Hurt the Poor and Failed to Repair the Planet’.
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