Global Resource And Food Scarcity

Times have changed, and so has the family, the community and our environment. And these changes have impacted our lives and earth immeasurably. This is where the factor greed comes in to play, the need for more. This need for more called for extensive measures, measures like fertilizers, pesticides and equipment to work the ground and harvest the crops became necessity. Agriculture became a booming business that did not and still does not promote the well-being of the employee nor the individual let alone the family unit and community. Since 1950 an average farm size has doubled, but the number of laborers decreased substantially and the number of small local farmers has been cut in half. Farmers have been forced to become more efficient and there 's been a reliance on greater chemicals and technology, which has become very extensive and expensive. Sadly, what has been short term expansion has become a long-term threat (Trautmann, 2012). This greed driven increase has led to subtle damaging ramifications that most people are ignorant to. Their needs are being met as quality is being forsaken. Our environment is being squandered. Selfishness abounds.

Following this food production in Australia will be discussed and the effects this has had on the land.

Without water, the lives of millions of children, and adults, are at risk. For children under five, water-and-sanitation diseases are one of the leading causes of death [4], along with malnutrition. [5] Unfortunately, studies show that in 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will be water stressed. [6] If this proves to be correct, then will two-thirds of the world’s population be hungry? We use so much water to produce even the simplest of agriculture. It takes 2,000 to 5,000 liters of water to make food for just one person, not to mention that humans need to drink 2.5 liters of water daily. [7]

The agricultural industry: the farms, plants, animals, and farmers, have supported this great country for so long, but lately we have turned our backs on it. Today, we live in a materialistic society, people wanting more and better items, not settling for products that will accomplish the same job.From looking at the fruits and vegetables in the grocery store, we see the bruised or smaller ones left, while the big and brightly colored ones are selected first. In our society today, changes are constantly being made to help expand and evolve the agricultural industry, but it has yet been able to do so. To this day farmers across this nation have not been completely successful in providing for the people who make up this country. In the stores

In the 2015 article for The Atlantic “Farmland without Farmers”, Berry writes a thought-provoking piece about how industrial agriculture has taken over American landscapes, and as a result, stewards and culture are lost. Berry gives us the impression that an urge to change is needed, and the sense of knowledge and community is required to help farms thrive again.

I also agree with Lyson and Kloppenburg on the idea that the distancing of humans from their food sources and the consolidation of farms into the hands of absent agribusiness owners contributes to the socioeconomic problems of our agro-food system as well as perpetuates a culture in which people are unaware of where their food comes from, as described by Berry (39, 35, 43). However, an issue and recurring theme in all these papers is related to Lyson’s description of civic agriculture, or more small-scale, local ways of farming. Although this idea of re-embedding farms into communities could have positive environmental and socioeconomic impacts, all four authors seem to rely on a sense of nostalgia and the idea of returning to former ways of agriculture. Although there are aspects of former systems that would be beneficial to reincorporate, the social, economic, and environmental problems of today differ from those of the past and should therefore be treated with different solutions. Because the authors rely on this narrative, they do not extensively address today’s socioeconomic problems. For example, while decentralizing the food

This food crisis is consequently causing an increasing gap between the rich and poor. This gap includes the amount and quality of food that is being consumed. Along the way, a solution to produce the amount of food needed to serve the population was to use Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). With the growing signs and evidence of the risk that GMOs bring, people have a right to know what is in the food that they are eating. Through conflict theory we can identify that the elite deter us from educating ourselves on the truth of what we are eating and make it almost impossible to change Genetically Modified Food (GMF).

Hunger stalks America and many other countries. How the world deals with hunger is dependent on cultural attitudes and the understanding of what hunger means to the individual and communities. In the United States, the majority of hungry people are the elderly, children, and the disabled which represent a bloc of people unable to provide for themselves with employment. The understanding that governmental systems and institutions responsible for food insecurity are failing, is becoming mainstream in the population, not the previous idea that agriculture does not produce enough food. How to provide physical and economic access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to meet dietary needs and food preferences for healthy lives is a problem of political and economic exclusion, social injustice and discrimination (Cunningham 2017, Lecture 1). The right to food security should be an uncompromised right of humanity, no matter the cost to government or agriculture.

The fourth reason for why we may run out of food by 2050 is due to Salinity. Salinity is the main reason as to why lesser crops are being grown. Salinity is caused by trees being cleared. When the trees are in the ground, their long roots keep the salt water further below the surface of the earth. When they are cleared the salt water rises to the top. This salt water kills crops causing production to slow as the farmers then have to find a new place to produce their crops. This problem can be fixed slowly by both not clearing trees from the land and planting more trees to push the salt water down further.

We currently have no known means of being able to feed 10 billion of us at our current rate of consumption and with our current agricultural system. Indeed, simply to feed ourselves in the next 40 years, we will need to produce more food than the entire agricultural output of the past 10,000 years combined. Yet food productivity is set to decline, possibly very sharply, over the coming decades due to climate change; soil degradation and desertification, both of which are increasing rapidly in many parts of the world; and water stress. By the end of this century, large parts of the planet will not have any usable water.

The current global population of 7.6 billion people is expected to reach 11.2 billion in 2100 (UN DESA), and as the Earth’s population continues to grow exponentially, the topic of environmental sustainability is being debated with increased urgency. In the past few years, many large-scale environmental issues have emerged due to human activities: climate change, air and water pollution, rising sea levels, habitat loss, species extinction, and worsening natural disasters are all becoming more and more prevalent. But perhaps our most immediate concern should be whether or not we will be able to continue feeding this ever-increasing population.

The Green Revolution was created by Norman Borlaug who was a scientist that specialized in agriculture. The Green Revolution began when Borlaug found a way to make a wheat plant resident to diseases which allowed the wheat plant to grow bigger and better in the 1940's. Which was amazing, however the Green Revolution has its downfalls. A positive of The Green Revolution is the increase in crop production. The increase in crop production causes a decrease in the amount of world hunger. World hunger is an issue because we are unable to feed our growing population. So if we stop the Green Revolution we would have an increase in world hunger. There would be children that would grow up not knowing where there next meal was or where their next meal

Brueckner, M., Durey, A., Mayes, R., & Pforr, C. (2013). The mining boom and Western Australia’s changing landscape: Towards sustainability or business as usual?. Rural Society, 22(2), 111-124. doi: 10.5172/rsj.2013.22.2.111

With the growing population of the world, demand for food is increasing. This means that Australian farmers are struggling to provide enough food for the global market, and clean water for irrigation is as important as ever. In Australia, agriculture is the largest consumer of water, representing around 70% of our total annual water consumption. Australia is a major exporter of food, particularly wheat and beef, to the rest of the world. In 2009, 60% of Australia's agricultural produce was exported overseas. Overall meat production is expected to double by 2050, meaning that even more pressure will be put on the Australian meat industry. Recent droughts have meant that less water has been allocated to irrigating crops,

Coxe has studied the sector for more than 35 years as a strategist for BMO Financial Group. He says it didn’t have to come to this. “We’ve got a situation where there has been no incentive to allocate significant new capital to agriculture or to develop new technologies to dramatically expand crop output.”