Thought for food

The current spate of global natural disasters has highlighted both the fragility and resilience of human occupation of Earth. Nowhere is this tension highlighted more than in food production and distribution, as evidenced by the graphic images of empty supermarket shelves in Tokyo and the previously prosperous citizens of tsunami-ravaged Sendai scouring rubble in their desperate search for food.

“We’ve just got out of touch with food and how and where it’s produced, what is particularly nutritious and what choices we can make and as a result we undervalue it,” says Professor Robin Batterham, Kernot Professor of Engineering.

“A major part of the challenge is the long supply chain we have in international food production and how that might move in the future. We have an energy-dense, nutrient-poor diet in many cases because what’s on the supermarket shelves takes our fancy, it’s well presented and we like our added salt and sugar and it’s cheap.”

However, in a context of climate change, rising population, diminishing supplies of oil, fertilisers, water and arable land the developed world’s disconnect with its food appears to be neither sustainable nor desirable.

And the issue of food security even without these challenges is already pressing, with the world now having only three months’ supply of food on hand at any given time.

And the means and methods of boosting food production that worked in the recent past when a six months buffer existed simply no longer exist.

“The global challenges in the future for more food mean we must consider global intensification which is about solving the global equation of nine billion plus people, the same or even less amount of land and probably shortages of water,” says Professor Snow Barlow, the Foundation Professor in Production Horticulture and Viticulture in the Melbourne School of Land and Environment.

“The last time we fed the world with a green revolution we could get access to more land, we introduced huge amounts of fertiliser and we accessed more water. Fundamentally, this time we have none of those at our fingertips.”

Professor Batterham points out that some 63 per cent of farms worldwide are still small, ranging from subsistence to viable suppliers of local communities, and that these scales of production offer valuable models to sit alongside the efficiencies of scale that now characterise grain and dairy production.

“I believe we should encourage shorter supply chains with direct farm-to-consumer contact such as occurs in organisations like Food Connect where farmers sell directly to consumers and get a better cut and people who have that direct connection eat more fruit and vegetables.”

The next step in the reconnect is the consideration of urban and peri-urban food production as a serious contributor of scale.

“The intention is not to do the large food producers or the large farm holdings out of a job – far from it,” says Professor Batterham.

“But when you look at the supply chain connection and the appreciation of food, if the peri-urban small farm holdings around major cities are encouraged to grow food and sell it then you have more food production near big cities, and 86 per cent of Australians live in big cities with the percentage increasing, and the supply chain becomes shorter in distance and more connected.

“With urban food production it is about people valuing food and fresh food in particular. There’s nothing like the notion of being involved in producing some of your own food to give you an appreciation of the value of food – we undervalue food, it’s as simple as that.”

This tension between large- and small-scale production and distribution reverberates in Professor Snow Barlow’s professional and personal connections to the land.

“I suppose I sit closer to highly mechanised industrial agriculture but I always liked the biodynamic or organic pathways some producers have chosen and the future’s going to be somewhere in between,” says Professor Barlow, who is also co-owner of Badaginnie Run wines where more than 100,000 trees have been planted in the area to restore its landscape.

“There are a lot of things that people have worked hard at getting to work properly, particularly in vineyards, and you get balances that we may be able to borrow into broader mass produced areas.

“It largely resolves around an understanding of the soil and the landscape and climate around it. The high intensity systems could learn and borrow from biodynamic and quality-based systems producing quality products and something that is very much in harmony with the spot they choose.

“What we look for in a great wine is the expression of the terroir where it is and that’s why we love them because they are all different according to where they grow.”

Dr Chris Williams knows his terroir, the river bend on the Yarra that has been cropped since at least the 1860s.

“Students and researchers have been working this Yarra alluvium for vegetables and orchards for well over 120 years, and it remains a great practical teaching site so close to the city ” says Dr Williams, Lecturer in Horticulture at the Burnley Campus in the Department of Resource Management and Geography.

It is this up-close “dirt on your hands” experience that his first-year horticulture students gain in the Burnley field station that he believes more and more city-dwellers want to experience for themselves. Dr Williams believes that the resurgent interest in the backyard vegie patch is more than just a passing fad. It could be that small-scale producers of revived backyard and community gardens complement large-scale food production acting as insurance if urban populations are required to become more self-reliant in their food consumption.

 “This is an institution that is rooted in the urban production of food and as the premier horticulture college of this country since 1891 has been trialling and teaching the practical art of and craft of growing food for all that time. So it’s not a new thing here, we’re just maintaining and enhancing a tradition seen in the earliest Melbourne backyard vegie gardens while giving it a contemporary focus,” says Dr Williams of the new Associate Degree in Environmental Horticulture.

“Students here are going to start learning about the potential role of urban food production even as they learn the very basic art of getting their hands dirty and how to grow plants.

“The humble vegie garden which they might grow for themselves or develop for clients is part of the bigger picture of the healthy aspects of gardening as an activity producing good clean healthy food. Students are taught that urban food production can realistically complement what you buy at markets and supermarkets and we make the the connection to nutrition, environmental health and the fight against obesity and poor mental health too.

“If climate change is as bad or worse than the models predict and if our attempts to make broad acre farming super-efficient so we have higher yields at less environmental cost doesn’t work out as planned then the reality is that we will need to take urban agriculture very seriously indeed.

“It’s something that should be encouraged, building up resilience for our food systems, a risk management approach. Our view is that the more students we have like those in this degree who have these basic food-growing skills the better; it’s a great way to spread that culture of food-growing across the urban population as many of our students will eventually work in residential and community gardens bringing a practical and science based approach to their work. Complementary urban food production also has the capacity to influence the practices of major producers.

“Urban food gardening is a part of awareness-raising for consumers because they are seeing for themselves that it’s not always easy to produce a lot of food in a backyard. This will give them more appreciation of what farmers go through to produce quality food; at the same time backyard food gardeners can grow a much greater array of vegetables and fruits than is available in supermarkets, really opening their eyes to the limitations of our contemporary diet and perhaps encouraging a more adventurous approach from mainstream producers,” he says.

 “So there’s a relationship between backyard urban food growing and mainstream agriculture that has great potential. Informed consumers who have actually grown food themselves begin taking steps to understand large-scale food production, not just demanding healthier food but having more sympathy for the producers themselves. To some extent we have seen that in Western Europe for many years. Consumers expect that farmers are encouraged and given as much support as possible to have environmentally healthy properties so that the food that comes out of them is good for consumers but good for farmers too.”

Another area that is looking for reassessment is Genetically Modified production.

 “It’s time to move away from the extremes – too much fear on one side and exaggerated claims of benefits on the other are hindering rational discussion,” says Professor Robert Saint, Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne. His research centres on the genetic regulation of cell division and cell migration during animal development, and he has conducted pioneering research into cell cycle control during animal development.

Professor Saint will chair a panel discussion “The Genetic Revolution II: Food and Power” at the Festival of Ideas in June to consider questions including does the genetic revolution open the way to feeding the world and providing it with safe, renewable sources of energy and power; why does the public react against genetically modified food; and are genetically modified crops the only way forward for the world?

“To me it’s not helpful for one group to say the only ethical consideration here is that we have to maximise the health of the maximum number of humans and we have a moral obligation to genetically engineer crops to make sure that more people can survive versus the other extreme approach of saying we must not under any circumstances manipulate life,” Professor Saint says.

Professor Saint believes universities with their strong commitment to rational debate will play a critical role in breaking this either/or nexus around GM.

“Universities are the primary institutions in which those arguments can be developed. Often we have views on both sides of an issue, a good example being nuclear power where there are strong proponents and strong opponents within this University and what we have within the University framework is a strong commitment to rational discussion and debate.”

http://www.land-environment.unimelb.edu.au/