Its great to see such passion and interest in reforming our food system but these issues are complex. Sometimes obvious common sense solutions are not actually what is best. A good example of this is the belief that local food is always best.
For example in America there is a huge amount of interest in vertical hydroponic systems to supply there northern markets with salad greens, fresh vegetables and fresh fruits. Warehouses and vacant industrial buildings are being re purposed to grow food indoors where everything is provided for plant growth. Climate control to provide heat, artificial lighting to feed the plants and artificial fertilizers to nourish them.
In Australia we live in one of the most Urbanised societies in the world. It is impossible to grow all the food we need “locally”. We live in such large cities that the shear volume of food needed must be sourced from a wide area. If we combine this with the continual sprawl of our suburbs over productive farm land we can’t grow all our food locally even if we wanted to.
“Wanted to?” I hear you say. Yes wanted to. Sometimes local is worse.
In Australia the major limiting factor on agricultural production is water. To overcome this limitation the agricultural industry is turning to a range of technical solutions that are massively more water efficient but have a massively increased environmental footprint. Solutions like feed lots, piggeries, hydroponics and the like are all capable of producing large amounts of food with minimal amounts of water in very small footprints. An ideal solution for cities challenged for space?
Personally I can’t stand piggeries or feed lots and the new rules for so called “free range” chicken production are a cruel joke. However, industrial solutions can have their place and use. conversely the wider agricultural industry needs to understand that high impact industrial solutions are not always a good idea.
For example the basalt plains to the immediate west of Melbourne are in a rain shadow form the Great Dividing Range. The volcanic soils around Melton are incredibly fertile but not suitable for significant fruit and vegetable production because there is not much water. The water mostly falls on the west side of the range. It doesn’t make sense to use this land for methods of food production that require large amounts of water such as fresh fruit and vegetable production. It makes a lot more sense to grow these crops where the rain falls on the far side of the Great Dividing Range. Having said that the land is still highly productive and should still be used for farming low water intensive foods like grains and grazing.
The situation in Sydney is even worse with many areas close to the city just not capable of producing the quantities of food required to feed the city and large areas of bush land and mountainous terrain that is not suitable for farming forming a thick ring about the city.
It just shows there should never ever be ideology or dogma in sustainability. There are no silver bullets in the sustainablity game and sometimes the obvious and simplest choice is not the best. So local food should be part of the solution but not the focus of a solution.
The environmental footprint of the agricultural industry is set to exponentially explode. This trend is being driven by the uptake of massively energy and resource intensive production methods such as feedlots, piggeries, stand alone hydroponics and stand alone aquaculture.
We need to offer farmers and agribusinesses alternatives that are demonstrated to work and be profitable. Our integrated systems can be built for less, operated with less and produce more food compared to the standard industry solutions. Aquaponics is a solution that is incredibly water efficient without the massive energy footprint and many of the other environmental footprints of stand alone hydroponics or aquaculture. It is one method that is very good, there are others. Some appropriate for local contexts others for more distant contexts. Some high tech solutions others very low tech.
We need people to join our team to develop and deploy these solutions as well as the financial backing to make them possible.
If we don’t provide better solutions producers to will continue to turn to solutions that work but have huge environmental consequences.
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