Food Security: a short thought

gemsbok cucumber

The grand purpose of last week's workshop was: "To create a learning network that empowers communities to conserve, sustainably use, and benefit from their plant resources." We spoke frequently about "food security," which is a major issue for most of the people in Africa. Generally people try to achieve food security through agriculture. Indeed, most of the food security initiatives being pursued by groups at the workshop were based around small-scale agriculture (gardens), since their areas are too dry for larger-scale agriculture.


I find this all extremely ironic, because agriculture has in fact been the source - more or less - of food insecurity. Agriculture led to huge booms in population, resulting in the dire state of the earth today; and modern agriculture, with its excessive use of fertilizer, leaching of the soil's nutrients through perpetual aggressively-grown monocultures, and increasing emphasis on biofuel and animal fodder crops, has led to enormous food insecurity. From the very beginning, agriculture led people to dangerous dependencies on a few crops. (Exhibit A, the Irish Potato Famine!) Basically, food security requires a diversified portfolio.... Precisely the kind of food portfolio that traditional hunter-gatherers had. Living off of wild plants, you need to consume a huge variety to survive. Certainly there were a few staple foods - mongongo nuts, for example - but the enormous range of plants known and eaten by the Bushmen made sure they never went hungry if conditions were bad for certain species. No potato famine for them.


I don't mean to suggest that we should all go back to hunting and gathering, nor do I mean to suggest that all agriculture is bad. (Rotate your crops! Fertilize responsibly! Don't plant monocultures! Don't mow down the Amazon rainforest to PLANT SOYBEANS, you idiots! Apparently that's the leading cause of Amazonian deforestation at the moment...) There's room, however, for some bitter laughter. The Bushmen had, in a certain sense, greater food security than most agricultural societies throughout the ages. Now that the means to their traditional food systems are gone, they're encouraged to replace it with agriculture, something supposedly better but in fact much worse - especially because, in this case, it depends on pumping a limited supply of water out of the ground. SWEET. Like I said, nobody's going back to full-on hunting and gathering.... But pause, and take agriculture off the pedestal.