Growing demand of food and reducing productivity of land.

The world is demanding more food each day. This is principally due to the demands of a growing population but also because people by and large are getting wealthier and want more and better food. Coinciding with this growing demand for food is the phenomenon of climate change which has already begun to threaten food output and reduce the amount of food available.

These two simultaneous developments are threatening the stability of the global food system. On the one hand climate turbulence , chiefly floods and droughts slash away the expected harvests of major staple foods like rice, wheat and corn so that there is less available. On the other hand, a ‘getting wealthier’ class of people in both developing and developed countries is wanting and able to eat better, especially meat and other animal products like butter, ghee, cream, cheese etc.

All this is putting a lot of pressure on the land , leading to more and more intensive farming practices, using chemicals to extract the maximum out of plants and animals. So you have an overdosing of the land with chemical fertilizers to put in chemical nutrients rather than allow natural organic nutrients to build up in the soil. Along with this comes the excessive use of toxic chemical pesticides to kill the pests that follow intensive chemical farming because their natural predators that keep them in check are dead.