Redesigning Agriculture
to improve efficiency
Olivia Cox
CPSP218L
Sec. 0201
Why Redesigning Agriculture Is
Important:
•
•
•
•
Need to feed growing population
Lack of land left for farming
Water shortages
Grain for fuel turns out to cause more harm
than good
• Protein is being produced inefficiently
Current Issues In Agriculture:
Feeding A Growing Population
• World pop. = 8 billion. World pop. starving or
malnourished = 1 billion (1/8 of the entire
pop.!)
• Reducing population would reduce demand
for food
• Consumption of unhealthy amounts of
livestock products (esp. in US)
• FIX:
– Reproductive health care & birth control services
“Eating Well”-Is This What We
Are Doing?
Current Issues In Agriculture:
Lack Of Land Left For Farming
• Lack of land leads to need to
increase productivity
• Acquisition of vast tracts of farmable
land by foreign countries
• FIX:
– Invest $ in helping low-income countries
develop their potential for expanding
food production, enabling them to export
more grain
– Raise land productivity by 1.) raising
irrigation efficiency 2.) producing largeryielding hybrid strains
Current Issues In Agriculture:
Water Shortages
• Need for more efficient irrigation systems
• FIX:
– Shift from less efficient flood or furrow systems to overhead
sprinkelers or drip irrigation
– Insitutional shifts—moving the responsibility for managing
irrigation systems from govnt agencies to local water users
associations
Current Issues In Agriculture:
Inefficient Protein Production
• 36% of the world grain harvest is used to produce
animal protein
• World meat consumption increased from 44
million tons in 1950 to 260 million tons in 2007
• Cattle: takes roughly 7kg grain to produce a 1kg
gain in live weight
• Pork: over 3kg grain per kg of weight gain
• Poultry: over 2kg grain per kg weight gain
• Herbivorous fish (carp, tilapia, & catfish): less
than 2kg grain per kg weight gain
Current Issues In Agriculture:
Grain For Fuel Does More Harm Than Good
• The 104 million tons of grain used to produce
ethanol in 2009 in the US is the food supply for
340 million people at average world grain
consumption levels
• FIX:
– Could focus on providing better ways of transportation,
public trans etc.
– Removing incentives for converting food to fuel
http://blogs.princeton.edu/chm333/f2006/biomass/ethanol%20cor
nheap.jpg
What We Are Doing!
• College of Agriculture & Natural
Resources
– 5 Ag research extension centers
– Center for Agricultural & Natural Resource
Policy
• http://www.sustainability.umd.edu/
– National Center for Smart Growth
Research and Education: deals with land
use
Sources
•
Asimov, Isaac, Asimov's New Guide to Science, pp. 152–153, Basic Books, Inc. : 1984.
•
Bhatia, B.M. (1985) Famines in India: A study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India, Delhi:
Konark Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
•
Brown, Lester R. Plan B 4.0 Mobilizing to Save Civilization. New York: W. W.
Norton & Company, 2009. Print.
•
Central Intelligence Agency. 2010. Web. 6 Mar. 2010.
<http://www.cia.gov>.
•
Country Reports.org. 2010. Web. 6 Mar. 2010.
<http://www.countryreports.org/>.
•
"Green Agriculture." Farm Industry News. 2010. Web. 5 Mar. 2010.
<http://farmindustrynews.com/greenagriculture/>.
•
"Land Reform (agricultural economics)." Encylcopedia Britannica. 2010.
Web. 7 Mar. 2010. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/616563/
United-States>.
•
Lonely Planet. 2010. Web. 7 Mar. 2010. <http://lonelyplanet.com>.
•
New World Encyclopedia. 2010. Web. 6 Mar. 2010.
<http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Info:Main_Page>.
•
"Research Centers." Campus Sustainability: Sustaining Our Terrapin Environment.
University of Maryland, 2010. Web. 7 Mar. 2010.
<http://www.sustainability.umd.edu/content/curriculum/
research_centers.php>.