BLOG: Need Greater Public Investment in Agriculture
A blog based on ideas fermenting in the DC think tank/ policy sectors
The chicken farm in Food, Inc. reminded me of a poultry farm in a village in Karnataka, India. The chickens in that farm were healthy and caged in separate coops. It was a clinical operation; the neatest farm of any variety I’ve visited in India.
In Food, Inc., the fat birds (they have excess breast tissue) totter about on their feet, unable to carry their own weight before collapsing.
With a burgeoning population and the challenges that agriculture will face in the coming years with changing climate and water scarcity, the question of how to feed everyone is becoming increasingly relevant. The answer doesn’t have to be factory farming controlled by a small number giant corporations. It could be a network of smaller farmers using the best of technology to increase productivity despite smaller land sizes, according to an agricultural expert Gerald Nelson from the International Food Policy Research Institute. He was speaking at a conference in Washington, DC last week.
But to ensure that the control and choice of technology and farming remains in their hands, greater public investment in agriculture is critical. Food, and knowledge of food, needs to move back into the public sphere. The farm to table movement is important, not because it argues for a return to an ancient, unsustainable agriculture, but because it calls for greater transparency.
Not to say the private sector hasn’t made critical advances over the past few years as governments have slashed agricultural spending. But their responsibility to their shareholders makes profit the overarching ideal. They plan with the short-term motive of money in mind without seeing a grand master plan for the planet or the human race.