Green Social Work by Lena Dominelli

Author:Lena Dominelli [Dominelli, Lena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Polity
Published: 2012-05-16T21:00:00+00:00

Environmental Degradation and Food Production

Population growth has considerable implications for food production and consumption and environmental degradation. Until the Green Revolution increased food yields so that food production could keep pace with population growth, the balance between them was an uneasy one. This advantage was undone to some extent by the environmental damage caused by nitrate- and phosphate-based fertilizers. De Moor and Calamai (1997) argue that this gain has been lost because technological innovations carry deleterious environmental costs that eventually caused soil erosion and a decline in food production over time. Consequently, current population growth globally could see the return of conditions in which population size seriously outstrips food supply, and inadequacy in the quality and amount of food available carries with it malnutrition, hunger and famine across more parts of the globe.

Environmental degradation carries implications for all aspects of life. The pollution of land, water and soils, desertification and soil erosion can undermine food production on two levels: pushing out small producers; and increasing reliance on externally produced foods. The spread of industrial mass-produced food through agribusiness has deleterious consequences as people often experience ill-health, including respiratory ailments, from living in a polluted environment and/or obesity caused by eating fast food with high levels of calories, carbohydrates and transfats. These outcomes raise questions of equity because it is mainly low-income populations that consume health-poor foods by ingesting products that are mass-produced, cheap, but nutritionally of poor quality compared to health-rich foods, as exemplified by the more expensive organic, locally grown fruit and vegetables that are rich in vitamins, minerals and other nutrients essential to good health (Schlosser, 2001).

The mechanization of agriculture and need to feed large numbers of people living in urban areas encouraged the rapid rise of industrial, mass-produced food. This successfully reduced uncertainty of supply, but could produce irreversible damage to the environment through the chemical ingredients used to grow food rapidly and in sufficient quantities. Although environmental degradation was often an unintended consequence, chemicals utilized in fertilizers seeped into groundwater; and those used in herbicides could compromise soil texture and the ecosystem (Carson, 1962). Carson’s book The Silent Spring is credited with the banning of the pesticide DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) in the USA in 1972 by exposing its deleterious effects on human health and the physical environment. In the industrialized production of food scenario, manufactured capital used in producing food replaces natural capital in food production and consumption, thus promoting the drive for technical innovations that transcend the limits to growth. The Green Revolution that enabled humanity to increase food production to unprecedented levels so that now, at least in theory, enough food is produced to feed all the Earth’s inhabitants is the classic example of this. However, food is not equitably distributed, and so billions of the Earth’s people continue to suffer from hunger. Such developments challenge neither the dominant hegemonic mode of capitalist production, nor its structural inequalities based on ‘race’, gender or other social divisions that intensify poverty and marginalization and contribute to some people lacking food while others have a surfeit of it.

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